Portsmouth Liberal Democrats have been accused of dragging politics into the gutter ahead of the local elections following the circulation of a “nonsense” advert on social media.

Recent polls have shown a huge fall in support for the Liberal Democrats in Portsmouth South with the party now placed fifth in the constituency, trailing behind the Reform (12%) and Green (10%) parties.

Following this fall in support, instead of scrutinising the government, Portsmouth Lib Dems have resorted to publishing misleading attack ads on Labour MPs, falsely accusing them of voting to weaken the sewage dumping watchdog.

Rather than weaken regulators, Labour has been very clear on how it would strengthen them to force water companies to clean up their toxic filth.

Protecting Portsmouth’s precious environment is one of Portsmouth Labour’s top priorities. Unlike other parties, Labour has also consistently campaigned against sewage dumping.

Labour would put failing water companies under special measures. The party would also introduce severe and automatic fines, make law-breaking water bosses face criminal charges, and give the regulator the power to block bonuses for polluting water bosses.

A Portsmouth Labour spokesperson said: “As we’ve said before, from unrealistic proposals to buy out Southern Water to misinforming the public about our MP’s efforts to tackle sewage pollution is little more than a shameful distraction from the Lib Dems’ own record in Government, overseeing underinvestment, aggressive cost-cutting and huge dividend payments to water bosses.

“Only Labour has a plan to end sewage dumping once and for all. Labour’s Water Quality Bill will deliver mandatory monitoring on all sewage outlets, introduce automatic fines for discharges, set ambitious targets for stopping systematic sewage dumping and ensure that water bosses are held to account for negligence”.

See latest YouGov MRP Polling here:

https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/49061-yougov-mrp-labour-now-projected-to-win-over-400-seats

Labour’s plan to tackle sewage pollution can be found here:

https://www.stephenmorgan.org.uk/portsmouth-mp-and-feargal-sharkey-back-labours-pledge-to-end-sewage-pollution/