On 25 April, Labour accused the Tories of turning the green land into an 'open sewer' after they tabled an amendment to Labour’s sewage bill. The environment secretary, Thérèse Coffey, said that people are ‘rightly disgusted’ about the excessive sewage dumped into rivers, and the Government would be making sewage reduction targets legally binding. Pray for our government to agree to a reform of the water industry that is both successful and economically sound. Also, on the same day a hosepipe ban came into force across most of Devon to help replenish water supplies ahead of the summer. An earlier ban, covering Cornwall and a small part of Devon, is still in place. 390,000 homes are affected by the restriction.