The slacker’s poster girl has resigned as Secretary of State for Pollution. On leaving for the last time she gave an air punch and called out ‘and that is how you do it!’.
Thérèse Coffey has managed to achieve an incredible thirteen months in the post without doing anything at all. Is she the epitome of minimal government, or a disinterested career politician coasting out the last year of her ministerial tenure before stepping down at the next election?
“I consider it is now the right time to step back from government”
https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/british-environment-minister-coffey-quits-2023-11-13/
As she has left before she is 65 she gets 25% of her salary as severance.
She has left a legacy of water firms making healthy profits and shareholder dividend payments while doing nothing to rectify the problem of sewage being pumped into the sea, rivers and streams. In England and Wales there were 384,000 reported discharges of raw sewage in 2022. The figure may actually be higher as the water companies are being investigated for under reporting.
Rishi Sunak skilfully ignores this disastrous record in his statement in response to her resignation.
“You have driven work across government to support the rural economy and taken measures to protect food production here at home”, Rishi Sunak
Difficult to see how he can say she has done anything positive for food safety when there are worrying reports of growing gaps in critical roles that create gaps in routine testing of food and the highest number of Shiga toxin-producing E. coli outbreaks since 2015. She has at best been complacent.