Tourists have been left afraid to go into the water off UK beaches because of fears the sea is contaminated with sewage, a senior Tory MP warns today.
North Devon's Selaine Saxby is demanding new laws to force the Environment Agency to carry out more sophisticated year-round water quality tests to boost the confidence of swimmers and surfers.
She said that currently the EA tests only between Mid-May and September in its official 'bathing water season', and simply classifies it as clean or contaminated with raw sewage, with no information about what contaminants are present and in what quantities.