Undertones frontman turned environmental campaigner Feargal Sharkey brought his battle to stop the pollution of the country’s rivers and seas to Cornwall yesterday, saying the Duchy had “led the charge” in raising awareness pollution spills and sewage dumping.

However, a Conservative Party spokesperson accused the Teenage Kicks singer of twisting the facts “to fit his warped narrative” during his tour of Cornwall.

He may have once sang Here Comes The Summer, but it was a horribly rainy day when Mr Sharkey toured the county as part of his nationwide tour to highlight the issue of pollution in Britain’s waterways.

A keen Labour Party supporter and president of SERA, the party’s environmental campaign, he met constituency candidates in Looe, Falmouth, Par and Perranporth. 

At Gyllyngvase beach in Falmouth – a Blue Flag beach that had 70 sewage alerts in 2022 - he joined Truro and Falmouth candidate Jayne Kirkham as well as campaigners and supporters in the sort of conditions which have led to spills caused by an overflow pipe to the west of the beach.

Mr Sharkey also chatted to local anti-sewage campaigners, sea swimmers and traditional Fal oyster fisherman Chris Ranger, who is losing as much as 80 per cent of his catch due to concerns over the local water quality.

In Par, he met opponents of South West Water plans for a controversial seawater desalination plant at Par Beach, along with Labour’s Noah Law, standing in St Austell and Newquay. Plans to meet on site were abandoned and the bedraggled crowd hastily reconvened at the nearby Ship Inn.

Finally, in Perranporth Mr Sharkey joined Camborne and Redruth candidate Perran Moon and Surfers Against Sewage chief executive Giles Bristow. 

The former singer took up his clean water activism as a keen fly fisherman who had seen the impact of sewage on some of his favourite river haunts. 

Of Surfers Against Sewage, he said: “They were blazing a trail on this before people like me ever knew there was a trail to be blazed. I’ve got huge, huge admiration and respect for people like Surfers Against Sewage. Cornwall in many ways had led the charge on all of this.

“When are we going to get change? We have an incumbent MP that three years ago voted for the first time to allow water companies to carry on legally dumping sewage for another 25 years. That’s why you’ve not seen change because sitting behind it has been an utter lack of political oversight and nothing but corporate greed.”

He’s incredibly passionate about the issue. Has he ever considered standing for Parliament?

“Here’s the thing, I just wanted to go fishing and I still just want to go fishing. We can change this in the next three weeks and after that I will leave you all alone, and look forward to going fishing and gently going back to obscurity, leaving the good people of Cornwall to a peaceful and prosperous future.

“All I’ve actually done is take my career as a musician – I’ve always liked the idea of there’s a stage, a microphone and an audience – and helped to raise awareness of people like wild swimmers in Falmouth, people who have been out there doing this and drawing attention to it. They’re the ones who should be getting all the praise. This always was and always will be about people power. When that small mice squeaks it can become a lion’s roar.”

Mr Sharkey added: “If I had my way we’d completely review root and branch the whole regulatory system and rebuild it so that’s actually functioning and does its job by holding the whole of these water companies to account. If that means jail sentences for companies that openly and blatantly flout the law, then so be it.”

Alluding to the recent incident in Brixham when the parasite cryptosporidium entered the water network, Mr Sharkey added: “[South West Water] has a chief executive who runs a company that just managed to poison a whole village in the Westcountry and put one teenage child in hospital and yet gets rewarded with a 58 per cent increase in salary; a water company that has just applied to increase its water prices by 48 per cent, that has just announced a new chairman who will be paid £250,000 a year for chairing six meetings.

“It needs to change, it’s out of control, it needs to be brought to heel and it needs to start delivering not only for the people of Cornwall but for the people of England and for the future of our children.”

A Conservative Party spokesperson responded to Mr Sharkey’s comments during his Cornish visit: “Feargal Sharkey’s comments are nothing more than a shameful political attack by a Labour activist determined to twist the facts to fit his warped narrative.

“The Labour Party have no credible plan to reduce the use of storm overflows and sewage in our rivers, promising to only give Ofwat the powers we have already given them in the Environment Act.

“Meanwhile, the Conservative government have increased monitoring of sewage overflows to 100 per cent, are banning bonuses for bosses of water companies that have committed serious criminal breaches and are quadrupling water company inspections.”

A spokesperson for South West Water said chief executive Susan Davy “has voluntarily declined her bonus for the second year running”.