Camelford Water Pollution Incident - Allegations of A Cover-up

Allegations of A Cover-up

On 13 December 2007 Michael Rose announced that, in light of "a possible attempt to initially suppress the seriousness of the incident, I am asking the chief constable of Devon and Cornwall to hand me evidence gathered at the time of the original investigation," and for the chief constable to appoint a senior detective "to look into the allegations of a possible cover-up."

At the time of the incident the water industry was about to be privatised by the Conservative government of the day; a letter written from a water official to Michael Howard, then Minister of State for Water and Planning, emerged which stated that a police investigation into the poisoning incident was viewed as "very distracting" and that any subsequent prosecution of South West Water would also "be totally unhelpful to privatisation... and render the whole of the water industry unattractive to the City". The Western Morning News, using a Freedom of Information Act request, uncovered a briefing note to the then Environment Minister, Nicholas Ridley, warning: "Those of the South West board with a commercial background are deeply concerned by the investigation." There was speculation in the news media that commercial concerns were given priority over public health.

The former North Cornwall Liberal Democrat Member of Parliament (MP) Paul (later Lord) Tyler also uncovered documents contradicting the water authority's claim that it had advised consumers not to drink the water, and that this advice had been given in a radio broadcast at 6am on 7 July 1988 and subsequently. The documents, relating to the prosecution of South West Water, alleged that this "was not the advice given to the public on the 6th, 7th, 8th, or indeed on the 12th," and added that the prosecution would say that the authority "misled Mr Healey (the head of the drinking water division at the Department of Environment)... There is evidence that a deliberate decision was made to conceal the truth from the public." Tyler said "I can't think of any comparable accident or mistake anywhere in Britain, particularly one involving what was a government agency, where there was no attempt to investigate what went wrong and why."

In 2001 Environment Minister Michael Meacher claimed that the Government feared what an unrestricted inquiry might find, and that "There was then a great deal of shenanigans about the terms of reference and fighting at all levels in order to limit the ambit of the committee to get the result they wanted. This inquiry was always potentially hugely damaging and hugely worrying to the establishment in terms of the way they handled the incident and clearly there are elements that want to shut it down." No named individuals were ever prosecuted. The national water industry was sold, under the Conservative government, for £3.59 billion, with the sale of South West Water Authority raising around £300 million.