A Kent MP has been mocked on Twitter after reminiscing about swimming in sewage as a child.

Damian Green, who represents Ashford, made the comments on ITV’s Peston politics programme last night.

The Conservative was responding to a question about how wastewater releases into the sea has become a major issue – and was a factor in how people voted in the recent local council elections.

Mr Green said: “I’m absolutely not denying that it is a big issue but it always has been.

“I remember as a child in South Wales swimming in sewage, absolutely.

“Jackson’s Bay in Barry used to be a sewage outlet where we all went and paddled and swam and it was sort of regarded as acceptable. Of course, it wasn’t acceptable.”

Mr Green was a boy in the 1950s and 1960s in an era when there was less awareness of the environment.

But his comments still received some disparagement, including from the scientist Brian Cox who quoted Monty Python’s Four Yorkshiremen sketch about hard childhoods.

He tweeted: “You were lucky. I had to get up in the morning at ten o'clock at night half an hour before I went to bed, drink a cup of sulphuric acid, work twenty-nine hours a day down mill.

“And you try and tell the young people of today that ... they won't believe you.”

Meanwhile Shadow Foreign Secretary David Lammy also took the opportunity to take a dig at the Tories.

Retweeting a clip of Mr Green on the show, the Labour MP said: “The Conservatives in 2023. Trying to normalise swimming in human excrement. We desperately need to get rid of this rotten government.”

It comes as the water industry has announced the biggest modernisation of sewers “since the Victorian era”.

Water UK said plans for the largest ever investment in sewage networks will cut overflows by up to 140,000 each year by 2030, compared to the level in 2020

Environment Agency figures earlier this year showed there were a total of 301,091 sewage spills in 2022, an average of 824 a day.

Ruth Kelly, chairman of Water UK, said that more should have been done to deal with spillages sooner and said the public was right to be upset about the current quality of rivers and beaches.

Water UK said £10 billion, more than triple current levels, was ready to be invested for the biggest modernisation of sewers since Victorian times.

The government has a Storm Overflows Discharge Reduction Plan, published last August, which aims to eliminate sewage dumping by 2050.

Even when 11 Kent beaches were presented with Blue Flag awards for cleanliness a environment campaigner warned they they could become “brown flag” beaches due to frequent pollution.

Thanet-based Ian Driver had told KentOnline: “It doesn’t take away from the fact that the waters are being polluted. I think they will become brown flag beaches.

“It won’t take a lot for pollution to spoil the awards.”

The awarded beaches are in Thanet, Whitstable and the Isle of Sheppey.

Tankerton beach was among those recognised but last September got its second “no swimming” warning in two months after concerns over pollution.

Sheerness and Leysdown-on-Sea beaches were also given the honour – but last August bathers were told not to go into the water due to storm oveflows.