Westminster Hall

Thursday 3rd April 2025 Westminster Hall

Thursday 3 April 2025

[Emma Lewell in the Chair]

Backbench Business

Thursday 3rd April 2025 Westminster Hall

Waste Incinerators

Thursday 3rd April 2025 Westminster Hall

13:30

[Emma Lewell (in the Chair)]

I note that Mr Barclay has removed his jacket, so others are permitted to do so if they wish.

[Baggy Shanker (Derby South) (Lab/Co-op)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered waste incinerators.

I declare my interest as a Derby city councillor of almost 17 years and a former leader of the council. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Lewell.

I pay tribute to the amazing residents of Sinfin, Osmaston and Normanton; I have campaigned with them against an incinerator in our community for the past 16 years. I promised them that I would take this fight to Parliament, and that is exactly what I plan to do today.

Many present will be all too familiar with stories like that of Sinfin—and worse. It is a story of broken promises and good money thrown after bad. At its heart is a community that has suffered the consequences of poor planning, poor management, poor decision making, and a lack of transparency and scrutiny. Residents have lived in continuous anxiety and fear that the incineration plant in Sinfin will become operational. They have endured a protracted planning process, with the incinerator eventually being approved only on a technicality following a High Court ruling. They are rightly concerned about the impact that the incinerator would have on their health, local environment and quality of life.

Unfortunately, so much of the story is not unique to Sinfin or Derby. Incinerators loom large over so many communities across the UK, so we are here to say that incinerators do not have a place near schools, people’s homes, allotments, elderly residents, or spaces where our children grow up and play. We are here to say that enough is enough. Incinerators must be kept to a minimum, especially when they impact local communities.

I recognise that waste must be disposed of responsibly, and we have to accept that some incinerators will be needed to achieve that, but they must be safe, be appropriately located, use proven technology and be kept to a minimum. We do not need local plants that impact the lives of local people in local areas. For the sake of our communities and environment, we must also take bold steps towards increased recycling rates and a circular economy. When we talk about waste disposal, we are also talking about the future that we want to create for our children and grandchildren.

It is important to highlight what it is like to live next to an incinerator. Nobody wants to live next to noise pollution from a constant stream of heavy goods vehicles, deal with a fly infestation because waste is being left on site, or worry about their health and their children’s health because their next door neighbour is an incinerator that is leaking sulphuric acid and damaging air quality. All those are lived experiences from the plant in Sinfin, which has never operated for a single day, and which failed during commissioning.

It is not just the experiences of impacted residents—the statistics on incinerators speak for themselves, loud and clear. BBC analysis has found that burning household waste in incinerators to make electricity is now the dirtiest way that the UK generates power.

[Catherine Atkinson (Derby North) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend and neighbour has spent many years fighting on behalf of residents on this issue, and I thank him for that. Does he agree that, after 16 long years and with no working incinerator, it is time to say that enough is enough and to explore cleaner, safer alternatives for waste disposal in Derby, particularly given that producing energy from waste is as bad for the environment as burning coal?

[Baggy Shanker]

I thank my hon. Friend and constituency neighbour for that timely intervention. She is absolutely right. Incinerators are right at the bottom of the waste hierarchy, and recyclable material in incinerators is being burnt because it has a higher calorific value. It is time to say that enough is enough. Nearly half the rubbish produced by UK homes is now being incinerated. While we continue to burn waste, recycling rates have stalled over the past 14 years. The message is clear: too many incinerators are not working for our environment or for our communities.

There could not be a better example of a failed incinerator than that in Sinfin, where poor decision making, exaggerated business cases and hidden truths have landed our community and local authority finances in an absolute mess. This incinerator has been nothing short of a nightmare from the start, and unfortunately there is no finish yet. After a drawn-out planning process, years of opposition from residents and the staggering sum of nearly £150 million of council tax payers’ money going down the drain, the incinerator still has never operated and, in my view, will never operate. Let us imagine what the community in Derby could have done with £150 million invested in local projects, delivering real outcomes for our community.

Instead, the incinerator has never processed operational waste and has created minimal employment. It gives me no pleasure today to say, “We told you so,” because at every opportunity the community has spoken out against the incinerator, and has been ignored by big business, council officials and decision makers. Clear warning signs were not heeded, at the expense of residents.

As a joint project between Derby city council and Derbyshire county council, the incinerator was intended to be a gasification plant. Gasification is a largely unproven technology with a history of failures and technical challenges, and unfortunately Sinfin has been no different. The facility has consistently failed commissioning tests, and we now need to say, exactly as my hon. Friend the Member for Derby North (Catherine Atkinson) just did, that enough is enough. The incinerator does not have a place in Sinfin and we do not want it there.

The councils have now selected three potential partners to try again to operate the plant, but huge question marks over the project’s viability remain. I urge all involved to do the right thing by our local community and say of this incinerator that enough is enough, because over the past 16 years it is the people of Sinfin and Osmaston who have suffered the consequences of its shocking mismanagement. Understandably, they have lost trust in politicians and council officials because while residents have been ignored, consultants have made millions on this project.

During attempts to commission the plant, residents have suffered vile smells, despite a promise from operators and officers that there would be no smell off site. In fact, they were told that it was impossible for the plant to emit odours. One resident said:

“Where we are, the stench is really strong and smells like rotting food. We have been getting loads of flies around here as well. The summer has been horrendous, we have had to keep our windows closed in the hot weather because when we open them it is just awful.”

Sitting with the windows shut throughout the summer is no way to live. I am absolutely confident—I wish I was not—that other hon. Members present will share similar stories from their constituents. Whether the concerns relate to health, noise, pollution or the environment, incinerators are not working for too many of our communities. But we know that waste needs to be disposed of responsibly, so where does that leave us?

As the Climate Change Committee states, we need a step change towards a circular economy. That means transitioning away from incinerators and urgently increasing recycling rates, which have been shockingly low in recent years. Data from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs shows that higher rates of incineration mean lower rates of recycling. That is known in the industry as “deliver or pay”, where clauses in council contracts demand that a minimum amount of waste be sent to incinerators for burning. We are facing a climate crisis, and that is not good enough. We do not have time to lose getting it wrong on waste disposal methods that harm our communities and planet.

I wholeheartedly welcome the Government’s action to crack down on waste incinerators by introducing stricter standards for new builds, which include tougher local and environmental conditions. It is absolutely right that projects will be required to maximise efficiency and support the delivery of economic growth, net zero and the move to a circular economy. But for Sinfin residents, sadly, the measures are too late. Residents are stuck with an incinerator that does not and will not work. They can be certain of only one thing: every attempt to get the incinerator working means more of their hard-earned taxpayer money thrown down the drain on this white elephant.

I urge the Minister to instruct senior officials in her Department to investigate this mess and to meet me to discuss better protecting communities such as Sinfin, whose residents are stuck living a prolonged nightmare with the incinerator looming over their lives. We have to say that enough is enough, so that councils do not throw good money after bad at the expense of local residents. Ultimately, we need to turbocharge our transition to a circular economy, moving away from incineration, which is the dirtiest way to generate power.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Emma Lewell (in the Chair)]

Order. I remind Members who wish to speak to make sure that they bob. I am putting a limit of four and a half minutes on all Back-Bench speeches.

13:42

[Ben Obese-Jecty (Huntingdon) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Lewell. I commend the hon. Member for Derby South (Baggy Shanker) on securing this important debate. Huntingdon could be impacted by two waste incinerators just four miles apart from each other, and I rise to express my opposition to them once again.

Warboys incinerator was first proposed in 2022, put on hold in 2023, and then revamped in October 2023. The plant would operate 24/7 and process 87,500 tonnes of waste per year. I commend Councillor Ross Martin in my constituency for campaigning against it. There are many concerns about the significant impact on local residents in Warboys and nearby Pidley of not just the Warboys site but of being slap-bang in the middle of two sites of this scale.

Just four miles away, another plant in Huntingdon has already been approved, known as Envar. I have met the local campaign group POWI—People Opposing Woodhurst Incinerator—and have heard their opposition to the plans that would blight our land with a 26-metre-high chimney, create even more congestion and raise concerns about health risks. There are also concerns about the increase in vehicles, particularly given the proximity to the dangerous Wheatsheaf junction, which still has not been repaired. The incinerator was originally rejected by both Conservative and Labour councillors—the Lib Dem councillors, who did not live locally, voted in favour of it. The rejection was overturned on appeal, and the Labour Government then approved it.

On 30 July last year I was concerned that, in the Deputy Prime Minister’s response at the Dispatch Box to my question about her approving the site despite the council rejecting the initial application, she claimed not to have dealt with that decision, deferring responsibility to the Minister of State, and ignored my request for her to meet the people impacted by the decision. That request was further ignored in a letter from a Minister on 13 September.

The Government have updated the national policy statement in order to meet their ideological aims, and I feel strongly that the Government are doing their utmost to silence the opposition of people in Huntingdon to railroad through their plans. Residents across Woodhurst, Old Hurst, Pidley, Somersham, Colne, Bluntisham, Needingworth and the market town of St Ives will likely be impacted by Envar, with residents of Pidley and Warboys being impacted by both the Envar and Warboys incinerators. St Ives is the second largest town in my constituency, and the incinerator is right on its doorstep.

The Deputy Prime Minister did not consider the scheme to be in accordance with the Huntingdonshire local plan, and my constituents need clarification on precisely why the decision was deemed beneficial above and beyond the local plan. Local job creation was given significant weighting in the decision-making process, even though only 22 additional jobs would be created at the site. My constituents want to know the reason for that weighting, given that so few jobs would be created.

The NHS 2023 clinical waste strategy outlines the need to reduce waste incineration, and that the development of in-house capability should be viewed as a strategic priority, so I am at a loss to see how the approval of a privately owned healthcare waste recovery facility can be justified. I would be grateful if the Minister could explain that. I asked the Government the current medical waste incineration capacity in the county, and they did not know, so I do not see how they can know that the additional capacity is required.

I want to hear why the Government seem to be rewriting rules to fit their aims without doing my constituents the courtesy of listening to them. I want clarity about why things such as the creation of just over 20 jobs outweigh the raft of concerns from the affected local residents. Finally, I extend my invitation, for the third time, to the Deputy Prime Minister or any of the ministerial team: I want them to sit down and explain the process to the people of Pidley, Woodhurst, Old Hurst, Somersham, Colne, Bluntisham, Needingworth and St Ives, and explain why the Government have thus far ignored their voices and those of their elected councillors.

13:45

[Lee Barron (Corby and East Northamptonshire) (Lab)]

It is an honour to serve under your chairship, Ms Lewell.

I want to raise the issue of an incinerator that has received planning permission on Shelton Road in Corby. I believe that, at best, the planning system is being exploited —without a shadow of a doubt, it is being played.

Corby is a growing new town. The site I will refer to is on an ex-ironside site with a sludge lagoon. The planning permission for the Corby incinerator was applied for in 2013 and granted on 7 February 2014—more than a decade ago. The only public consultation lasted for 20 days, and one single notice was placed in the Northamptonshire Telegraph, so most residents had no idea about the incinerator.

DEFRA’s temporary pause on issuing permits ended on 24 May 2024, and the Environment Agency permit for the incinerator was granted just 11 days later. No community funds—section 106 money—have ever been raised from the project. Planning permission has not expired, despite the fact that it is more than a decade old, because work has started on the site—basically, a pathway has been built, but the site itself has not yet been built out. That leaves residents uncertain about the future.

The planning permission was initially granted because the site was on the outskirts of Corby, but there has been expansion ever since, which has not been taken into consideration. The site is no longer on the outskirts of Corby; it is in the heart of a community, right next to local businesses and thousands of houses. It is 750 metres away from the houses and 1 km away from Priors Hall school and nursery, all of which did not exist when the planning permission was granted.

The traffic impact assessments carried out 10 years ago have not been updated, and even then they estimated that there would be 175 lorries a day carrying waste through Corby. Do Members not think that, after seeing “Toxic Town”, the people of Corby have had enough of lorries with waste being driven up and down its streets? They do not need it anymore.

Ministers have informed us that the Government’s crackdown on incinerators will not apply to proposals with existing planning permission, although the fact remains that waste incineration is the dirtiest form of power generation, so councils must now reconsider. That shows that the waste incineration system is broken. The incinerator in Corby must be reconsidered, and we must have a full review of the planning permission that was given for that site more than a decade ago, given that not one brick has been laid and the local circumstances have changed beyond all recognition. That is the least we can do for the people of Corby.

13:49

[Samantha Niblett (South Derbyshire) (Lab)]

It is an honour to serve under your chairship, Ms Lewell. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Derby South (Baggy Shanker), my constituency neighbour, for securing this debate and giving me the opportunity to address this important issue.

I want to voice the concerns of some of my constituents about the proposed new incinerator in Swadlincote. I have met the lead campaigner against it and—for balance—the two companies that want to build and run it, so I want to start by acknowledging that we have a significant waste management challenge in our county. This has been identified and reported on by DEFRA. No campaigner against the incinerator denies this.

Shamefully, the east midlands is the second worst region in the country for the amount of waste sent to landfill. Even more shamefully, Derbyshire is the worst-offending county in our region, with almost 750,000 tonnes being sent to landfill and just over 308,000 tonnes being sent to incinerators. We produce a lot of waste.

A challenge in South Derbyshire is that existing incinerator facilities at Drakelow and in neighbouring Derby have struggled. The latter has rightly been mothballed since 2019, having never worked at all. The former has failed to reach its full potential because it is no secret that gasification technology, as used in these plants, has had a “litany of failures”, as described by experts including United Kingdom Without Incineration Network.

In Derbyshire, the proximity principle—which emphasises that waste should be treated as close as possible to its source—has been undermined by these two existing incinerators not solving the problem. We therefore need to transport waste over long distances to facilities outside of Derbyshire. Sending waste elsewhere not only impacts our carbon footprint but contradicts the very principles outlined in our local waste plan. We are exporting our waste to distant incinerators, including to northern Europe, and in doing so we miss an opportunity to truly address our local waste management issues. That is not to say that we need incinerators in local towns, as is being called out today.

In terms of local economic benefits in South Derbyshire, we have been told that the proposed incinerator promises over £200 million in investment and 39 skilled jobs. However, nothing more of benefit is being offered to the local community, which will have an eyesore to look at for something that does not solve our county’s waste problems. It is claimed that it will process 186,000 tonnes of residual waste. That still leaves us with almost 564,000 tonnes of waste going to landfill, so it is hard for people to believe that yet another incinerator is the answer. Are we not better to prioritise reducing waste in our county, region and country? Even when there are claims that new tech mean zero emissions, and when some of the outputs from incinerators can support sustainable practices such as creating sustainable aviation fuel from plastics as the aviation industry targets net zero by 2050, the truth is that where materials are burnt there will always be concern about the release of harmful chemicals and emissions into the atmosphere.

We must challenge ourselves to think beyond incineration and invest in a future where waste is managed sustainably and the environment protected for generations to come.

13:52

[Lincoln Jopp (Spelthorne) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Lewell. I congratulate the hon. Member for Derby South (Baggy Shanker) on securing this debate.

I hope my speech will be a lesson to those hon. Members lucky enough to not yet have an incinerator in their constituency. The Surrey waste transfer station is in my constituency of Spelthorne. For those Members who thought Spelthorne was in Lancashire or Lincolnshire, it is actually the only borough in Surrey north of the River Thames. Why someone decided to put Surrey’s eco centre right on its northern boundary remains a mystery to me. It was opposed by the borough council and by the public, although in the face of that opposition it nevertheless went through.

Those Members who represent constituencies to the west of London may subliminally know the centre. As you drive out on the M3—just as it starts and before the M25—all is green and beautiful and then there is this horrific chimney pumping out goodness knows what into the atmosphere. It was planned to be a gasification plant; post recycling, waste would go into the gasifier, which would then produce the electricity to run the anaerobic digestion plant, where food waste would go. The trouble is that, like the provision mentioned by the hon. Member for Derby South, it does not work. The gasifier has never worked to optimum capacity and has continually broken down, and the process does not work because it does not produce enough electricity to run the anaerobic digester. Anyway, Surrey is not diverting enough of its food waste into the anaerobic digester for it to run at capacity and throw off additional electricity on to the grid system.

I hope that that is a lesson for those who want to build their case against further incinerators—come and have a look at the case study. The noise pollution, the air pollution and indeed the water pollution caused by food waste leakages have all plagued local people. That is a source of considerable frustration.

What can we learn from all of this? The first thing that we all ought to learn is that we should all waste far less food. Between a quarter and a third of all food in this country ends up in landfill, which is appalling when so many people are hungry. I am blessed to have in my constituency an amazing charity called Surplus to Supper, which takes in 4 tonnes of food a day from supermarkets within a 7 to 8-mile radius, and produces hundreds of thousands of meals a year for before and after school clubs. I recommend that we look at that model.

There is a second lesson that we can take from all of this. I heard the Secretary of State say that we were in a “sprint to decarbonise” our economy and I heard the Deputy Prime Minister say that, under the planning framework, nimbys were not going to stand in the way of development. Those two things concern me, because they could combine to allow further programmes and plans simply to ignore local concerns. If local concerns had been listened to at the time that the Spelthorne eco park was being built, it would not have been built and would not have become the failure that it is.

We need to have a weather eye on these cutting-edge and bleeding-edge technologies that promise the earth at the time they are developed but cost the earth in the long term.

13:56

[Ms Julie Minns (Carlisle) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Lewell, and I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Derby South (Baggy Shanker) for securing this very important debate.

On 8 October 2021, a fire broke out in a warehouse at an industrial site near the villages of Cargo and Rockcliffe in my constituency. The fire forced the local primary school to close, residents were advised to keep their windows shut, and for nearly a month the fire burned at the site, fuelled by hundreds of tonnes of plastic, household waste and wood that had been kept in the warehouse. Calls to the Environment Agency show residents complaining of breathing problems, sore throats and headaches from the fumes.

I share this because, just three years later, the owners of that site, on whose watch that fire took place, brought forward a proposal for a gasification facility. As we have already heard today, this appears to be an unproven technology, and it is one that has raised a great deal of concern among residents in Rockcliffe and Cargo. I pay tribute to them for the concerted campaign they have waged for well over a year now in opposition to that application.

The proposed facility would allegedly heat pellets made of plastic, wood and paper, creating a gas of hydrogen and carbon monoxide. It is claimed by the applicant that that gas would be used to fuel the generation of electricity and to power the site, enabling the replacement of the diesel generators now. I would fully support the reduction in carbon emissions that that would bring were it not for the fact that those diesel generators could be dispensed with today if the site owner would only use the grid connection to the site that already exists. It is also worth noting that other emissions from the proposed gasification plant will fall on adjacent farmland, which is used by two local farmers, both of whom I have met in the last month and both of whom have very real concerns about the proposed plant.

I am not opposed to incineration in principle, but in recent years it seems to have become something of a panacea for the challenges of recycling. Over the last 14 years, recycling rates have stalled. Almost half of waste collected by local authorities in 2022-23 was incinerated, with just 40% being recycled. Rather than pursuing recycling, we appear now to have regulations that encourage businesses simply to burn waste, and that unfortunate trend is all too apparent in my constituency of Carlisle and in north Cumbria.

Just a stone’s throw from the proposed gasification plant is another site that is the subject of a planning application—for, yes, another incinerator. It should not fall to villages like Cargo and Rockcliffe to become unofficial waste clusters. That is why I am glad that the Government are proposing new, stricter local environmental conditions. Incinerators can have their place, but they must not be allowed to be a means to make a fast buck out of burning resources that we should be recycling.

14:00

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Ind)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Lewell. I welcome this crucial debate, the way it was introduced by the hon. Member for Derby South (Baggy Shanker) and the excellent intervention by the hon. Member for Derby North (Catherine Atkinson).

We have had debates in the past in Westminster Hall in which, unusually, the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) and I joined forces—[Laughter.] Yes, it is true. We joined forces to oppose the expansion of the Edmonton incinerator for a number of reasons: first, that it would create high levels of pollution; secondly, that it is in quite a poor area of north London; and thirdly, that the exhaust gases would descend over Essex and land there, causing all kinds of problems. We opposed it because it was over capacity. The modelling even predicted that it would import waste from Europe to keep the incinerator going, because the design was far too big. I can see hon. Members nodding in agreement, because exactly the same kind of nonsense has been talked elsewhere.

When the Government are represented at the UN plastics treaty convention in Geneva this August, they might, if they have a moment, have a chat with the mayor of Geneva. I spent an interesting evening with him some years ago, and I asked him what problems he had. I complimented him on the levels of recycling in the city, which are very high—it is well run. He said, “Fantastic. The problem is that we are stuck with a private finance initiative-type incinerator that needs a vast amount of rubbish to keep it going.” Geneva has to truck burnable waste from Milan through the Alps to keep the incinerator going. This is the economics of the madhouse.

I recognise that we cannot immediately end all incineration, but the fact is that the Edmonton incinerator, which produces 700,000 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions every year, is being expanded. The recycling rates of north London boroughs are better than they were, but none of them is very good. The Minister will probably remember the occasion when she and I were both in Islington—she was a councillor—and we discovered that some Islington waste had turned up in Indonesia, which is obviously a handy place to take waste from Finsbury Park. It is utterly absurd. We need a different and better approach to waste in this country.

Incineration is a sort of faux recycling. People say, “It’s okay—it’s burned; it’s gone.” It is not gone. It is burned, and pollution comes from it. Yes, we generate electricity from it and get some road-building materials from the ash, but surely we should look at recycling rates instead. The Government’s own estimate is that 55% of all waste is readily recyclable, quite a bit more is partially recyclable and only 8% to 10% is absolutely impossible to recycle. Our society needs a different approach and a different attitude.

I hope that the Minister will tell us that there will be no new licences for new incinerators in this country. I hope that she will look at the existing licences and see where we can reduce incineration to a much lower level, although I recognise that it is difficult to get rid of it straightaway. Finally, I hope that there will be a big Government initiative on recycling rates. That will mean looking at household as well as industrial collections. Too little is recycled, and too much food waste goes into landfill or to incineration when it could and should be composted. But if we have 45 different systems to collect household waste, we are bound to get confusion. Let us have a simpler system, much better composting and recycling, and an attitude that is about working with our environment, not destroying it.

14:04

[Lloyd Hatton (South Dorset) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Lewell. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Derby South (Baggy Shanker) for securing this important and timely debate.

Yesterday, a High Court judge rejected a statutory review into Powerfuel’s planning application for a proposed waste incinerator on Portland in my constituency. It follows the granting of an environmental permit by the Environment Agency earlier this year. This week’s legal decision is deeply disappointing, but we should never have reached this stage in the first place. Constructing a waste incinerator on Portland makes no sense, for a whole list of reasons.

First, there are serious health concerns about building an incinerator so close to a built-up area and to a prison. The proposed location of the incinerator is only a few hundred metres from the prison. I remain deeply alarmed by the idea that polluting technology should get the go-ahead on the island. Secondly, alongside my community I am deeply concerned about the negative impact on our precious Jurassic coast. Building an incinerator on the edge of a UNESCO world heritage site would be a deeply damaging world first.

Thirdly, I worry about the potential impact that an incinerator would have on our local economy and our status as a hub for sailing and water sports. Countless local business owners have raised objections with me at every stage. They must not be overlooked. You need not take my word for it, Ms Lewell. Portland is the proud home of the National Sailing Academy, where Olympic sailors train, and live nearby. Elite sailors have made it abundantly clear that building an incinerator next door to the academy would be a disastrous decision. Just recently, the Royal Yachting Association has also taken the unprecedented decision to announce that it will independently investigate the potential health impact of an incinerator if it is built.

Finally, there is little need for a waste incinerator to be built on Portland. As the United Kingdom Without Incineration Network—UKWIN—has highlighted in its research, we are at risk of building too many incinerators across the country, which could lead to a problem of overcapacity. I do not want a nightmare scenario in which Britain is importing waste from across the world simply to keep the incinerators running.

To be completely blunt, I am opposed to any new incinerators being built locally or anywhere else across the country at the present time. As has been mentioned, incinerators are the dirtiest way in which Britain generates power, as underlined by a recent BBC investigation. Regretfully, incinerators across the country have been found time and again to have breached environmental permits by emitting harmful pollutants. That is why I am once again calling for a nationwide ban.

The Government are moving in the right direction, but they must move so much further and faster. They have introduced strict environmental rules for new proposals, but the scope of those rules must be widened significantly. If the crackdown measures were applied to the proposed incinerator on Portland, it would not be built. Taking all these arguments into account, I urge the Minister to reassess the plans and prevent an incinerator going ahead on Portland.

The case against the proposal is strong. Hardly anyone living in Weymouth and Portland wants an incinerator to be built. I find it completely baffling that Portland port and Powerfuel—the firm behind the proposals—are still pushing ahead. I urge them to listen to our community and abandon the proposals. When I look to the future of South Dorset, I see green investment opportunities and well-paid green jobs, not an unwanted and polluting waste incinerator. I believe that we can deliver a cleaner and greener future for South Dorset, but harmful, dirty and outdated waste incinerators are simply not part of it.

14:09

[Steve Barclay (North East Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Lewell. I welcome the debate called by the hon. Member for Derby South (Baggy Shanker); it highlights the cross-party consensus in opposing further incinerators.

In terms of the Wisbech incinerator, it is remarkable that an application to build an incinerator half the size was rejected in the local authority next door, so the response of developers was to double the size in order to make it a nationally significant infrastructure project, to get out of the local planning rules; to put it next to the biggest school in the district—only 700 metres away; to take waste from six different counties, all on small roads in a rural market town; and to have a chimney bigger than Ely cathedral in the flat landscape of the Fens. One can understand why so many people share my concern with the proposal.

I do not want to repeat the very good points that colleagues have made. I want to highlight two new points that the debate has not highlighted so far, which I hope will help Opposition and Government Members and support my own case in empowering the Minister. First, I will cite the Government’s own figures. On 30 December —quite recently—the Government’s own analysis showed that as of 2024 there was already 20.6 megatonnes of residual waste infrastructure capacity in England, of which 14.3 megatonnes was incineration. To put that in plain language, we already have enough incinerator capacity today to deal with the amount of waste that was projected in 2023 to arise by 2035—19.4 megatonnes of residual municipal waste. In other words, our existing capacity, at over 20 megatonnes, is more than we will need in just nine years’ time.

My first question to the Minister is whether DEFRA will commit to publishing analysis assessing the environmental damage of building incinerators, such as the huge incinerator at Wisbech, against the fact that they will be surplus to requirements in as little as nine years’ time. In other words, it will three years to build the incinerator, and after six years of operation it will be additional capacity to what we will need. We therefore need to assess how those two things compare.

[James Naish (Rushcliffe) (Lab)]

Does the right hon. Member agree that a sense of where incinerators are located around the country would be helpful, so that we could see the demand for incineration versus the capacity? That might reveal oversupply in certain parts of the country.

[Steve Barclay]

That is a fair point, which is addressed in DEFRA’s December paper. But as my hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon (Ben Obese-Jecty) highlighted, there are two at Huntingdon, another at Peterborough and two at Boston. There is already a concentration, so I do not accept the point about the east of England in that paper. My point is that we need to see analysis from DEFRA around the bridging issue for the next few years as the Government meet their legal target to reduce the amount of waste by 50% between 2019 and 2042. The amount of residual waste is coming down and we already have sufficient capacity, but there is a bridging issue. There will be short-term options around landfill refuse-derived fuel exports. We need to look at the respective merits of building huge incinerators and the damage that they will do compared with the short-term bridging options.

The second point is that the waste mix has changed. That was a feature of the BBC report that the hon. Member for Derby South highlighted. Burning food waste produces less CO₂ than putting it in landfill, but burning plastics produces 175 times more carbon dioxide than burying it. The reason that that matters—to my first point about bridging—is that the mix going into incineration has fundamentally changed from when the planning rules were initially put in place. What we have seen, and what the BBC highlighted, is an increase in food waste being dealt with through anaerobic digestion. As the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) pointed out, the predominant waste now going to incineration is plastics. It is the burning of plastics that drives the environmental damage, and that is why the hon. Member for Derby South correctly pointed out that it is the dirtiest way that the UK generates power.

My second question is whether the Minister will commit to publishing a composition analysis study of the residual waste treated at energy recovery facilities, as I asked for in a written question on 16 October. DEFRA has confirmed that it is undertaking a composition analysis study, but it was not published with the December analysis. Will the Minister commit to publishing that, so that we can see where the waste is going? Again, that fundamentally changes the environmental case around incineration.

14:14

[Josh Fenton-Glynn (Calder Valley) (Lab)]

It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Lewell. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Derby South (Baggy Shanker) on securing this debate. Much like him, I am going to tell a story about companies using the courts to ride roughshod over local people’s opinions.

I rise to speak about a proposal for an incinerator in Calderdale; my hon. Friend the Member for Halifax (Kate Dearden) and I feel like we have spent months banging our head against a brick wall about it. The incinerator is to be built on the border between our constituencies, and while it will be located in Halifax, I speak with her permission, as Members will be well aware that fumes from such incinerators do not respect constituency boundaries.

The story of this incinerator is also a cautionary tale about the way that wealthy companies can ride roughshod over the wishes of the local community. The Calder Valley Skip Hire company was given an environmental licence by Calderdale council in 2022—a decision made on the basis of the legal advice that the council got about the rules that left it powerless to intervene or refuse. I know this because I was a council member at the time. The local community, however, appealed that decision and reviewed the finding. The planning inspector reversed the decision to grant the application on the basis of the risk to health and the lack of good information about the impact of the valley and vegetation on smoke dispersal. That meant that the company could not go ahead with it.

So far, so good—the system is working as it should and the courts are upholding standards. However, rather than making changes and appealing the decision, the site owners just withdrew the application and resubmitted it as a fresh application, showing no respect for the community or the decisions that had been made. The council, with similar legal advice to the advice that was received last time, then went ahead and granted the application again, and the decision is being reviewed again.

The incinerator in Calderdale has been opposed many times by our local communities and local councillors, particularly Councillor Adam Wilkinson. It has received more than 900 objections and has been objected to by both the local MPs. Unfortunately, when unscrupulous developers wish to seek legal options, they attempt to water down communities’ voices and force them into submission. Frankly, there comes a point when our job in this Chamber is to stand up for our local communities, and to say that enough is enough.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Derby South for securing today’s debate, and I will continue to speak for my residents in Calder Valley and Halifax on this issue, because, frankly, some things are more important than the profit of a company.

14:17

[Euan Stainbank (Falkirk) (Lab)]

I extend my thanks to my hon. Friend the Member for Derby South (Baggy Shanker) for securing this debate and for all he has done today to represent his constituents. The concept of the waste hierarchy, while not new, remains as relevant as ever. As waste generation continues to increase and risk greater environmental impact, waste management needs to evolve accordingly. We need to prevent, reduce, reuse, recycle, recover and then—and only then—dispose. Sadly, we have seen too much stagnation in driving waste up this hierarchy.

Cleaner technology than incineration is progressing rapidly, and many of the options presented in Project Willow last month for investment in Grangemouth involved novel waste management or bio-feedstock technologies. Those advancements could help to reduce the demand for incinerators in Scotland, so if anyone is interested in investing in the opportunities in Grangemouth, I urge them to get in contact with the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero.

I served as a councillor for the Falkirk South ward, and I was the Labour group portfolio lead in climate and waste for two years. Waste management issues were at the forefront of my work there, including addressing concerns about waste disposal sites. It is clear to me that what happens to waste after collection is as critical to our constituents as how it is collected. In my Falkirk constituency, the principal landfill site is Avondale. It serves a nationwide need and is currently the only landfill site in Scotland capable of storing hazardous waste. However, the smell from the site can often be a persistent concern for my Polmont constituents.

Although they are preferable to landfill, my view is that incinerators have served a purpose in allowing the transition away from landfill, but their costs increasingly outweigh the benefits. The BBC report from October revealed that emissions per unit of energy from waste incineration are comparable to those from coal and nearly twice as much as those from gas. Energy from waste now accounts for a fifth of emissions from electricity production in the UK, while generating only 3% of the UK’s electricity.

That highlights the need for a strategic approach. Waste incineration is not a viable long-term solution if we are serious about our climate goals. The Scottish Government have accepted recommendations from the “Stop, Sort, Burn, Bury?” review by delivering a moratorium in 2022, but contrary to another recommendation of the review, they have not provided an indicative cap on waste incinerators. That risks entrenching a practice that they are otherwise indicating should be phased out. Many groups have raised reasonable concerns about the prospect of the overcapacity of incinerators beyond the ban on biodegradable waste to landfill, which kicks in later this year in Scotland.

In the meantime, councils continue to commission long-term energy-from-waste contracts. Falkirk council, for instance, announced a 10-year contract for energy from waste in 2023. Luckily, the contractor is now looking at integrating carbon capture and storage on site to mitigate the environmental impact of the site. The reality is that rising emissions from this practice, efforts to build infrastructure to mitigate its environmental impact and the risk of incinerator overcapacity point to the need for a faster push on improving recycling rates, as many colleagues have said.

Recycling rates currently stand at 44% in the UK but at 42.1% in Scotland, with Wales largely leading the way. I welcome the fact that Falkirk’s recycling rate is 50.7%. I credit that to the ridiculously hard-working waste and climate change officers at Falkirk council, with whom I had the honour of working when I was a councillor, as well as fantastic community volunteers, including my successor, Labour Councillor Claire Aitken, who has set up regular litter picks in our ward. There is still so much more to be done to drive up recycling rates.

A clear strategy is needed if we are to phase out incineration across the UK. Calm, clear heads are the order of the day. I have three key questions for the Minister. What discussions has she had with the waste management industry and local authorities about phasing out waste incinerators, and how can any transition away from incineration be managed strategically? What targets are in place to improve recycling rates across the UK by the end of this Parliament, and what expectations do we have for our devolved partners? What conversations are taking place regarding integrating carbon capture and storage with any existing or further waste incineration projects?

14:21

[Luke Taylor (Sutton and Cheam) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Lewell. I congratulate the hon. Member for Derby South (Baggy Shanker) on securing this debate.

Waste management is a huge issue, which requires the attention of us all in this House. We Liberal Democrats are committed to strengthening incentives to reduce waste and our country’s reliance on incinerators. Although incineration of residual waste might be the least bad option available at the moment to handle our unrecycled and unseparated waste, it is far from the long-term solution that we need. Let us be absolutely clear: incinerators are currently an unavoidable solution for many local councils. They are a deeply imperfect solution to a much bigger problem, though. When we get to the point where all of our commercial and domestic waste is avoided, reduced, reused, recycled and composted with no residual waste remaining, I will be at the front of the march to shut down our energy-from-waste facilities, for they will have served their purpose.

As several Members have correctly observed, incineration sits at the very bottom of the waste hierarchy. The energy that incinerators produce for local heat networks will ideally have been switched to air source and ground source heat pumps or perhaps waste heat from server farms, leaving these towering structures finally silent, but we are a long way from that point. Today, well-managed and well-maintained incinerators are an effective and safe method for disposing of our residual waste.

[Ben Obese-Jecty]

Can the hon. Gentleman clarify whether the parliamentary position of the Liberal Democrats is pro-incinerator? Can he tell me how many incinerators there are in Liberal Democrat constituencies?

[Luke Taylor]

I am happy to clarify. Incineration and ERFs are the least worst available option for disposing of our residual waste. The hon. Gentleman referred earlier to the ping-pong in approaches to incineration between different Administrations and different political parties. On his question about where the incinerators are, well, my constituency, Sutton and Cheam, is next to Carshalton and Wallington. Our borough, Sutton, has an incinerator in Beddington. It was initially given planning permission by the local council because of legal advice, but it was called in by a fella called Boris Johnson, and what political party did he represent? He was the Conservative Mayor of London, and he reviewed the plans and approved the incinerator in Sutton. We have an incinerator operating in our constituency because it was approved by a Conservative London Mayor.

In his 2022 report, chief medical officer Professor Chris Whitty wrote:

“The ERF is preferred over the use of landfill due to the opportunity to recover valuable and sustainable power.”

But they are not all well maintained and not all well managed. We know that we must move beyond them as soon as possible, but we can do that only by speeding up the changes in the ecosystem of waste management in this country that would enable their extinction.

Let us begin with plastic and packaging. We support the strengthening of incentives to reduce packaging and waste sent to landfill and incineration. In the coalition Government, we pioneered the plastic bag levy, which was exactly the kind of successful societal change that we need. It is almost impossible to remember a time when we were not charged for a plastic bag or did not give a second thought to our need to take one.

The reuse of bags and the growing market for stronger reusable bags is fully normalised—we do not bat an eyelid. It is akin to the removal of lead from petrol. Something that once seemed pervasive and impossible to imagine an alternative for was phased out entirely in such a way that whole generations have no recollection of it ever being any other way. That did not happen overnight. It took a mission-driven Government to step in and lead the way, incentivising the right kind of behaviour in waste management to light a path forward for society to take. I accept that that is already happening in some areas, but we need to go further and faster.

To meaningfully tackle plastic pollution and waste and get Britain as close as possible to full recycling, we have called for a deposit return scheme for food and drink bottles and containers, working with the devolved Administrations to ensure consistency across the UK. We must learn lessons from the difficulties with the Scottish scheme.

To further reduce residual waste, we have been calling on the Government to expedite the complete elimination of non-recyclable single-use plastics within three years and their replacement with affordable, reusable, recyclable or compostable alternatives. That would enable us to set an ambition of ending all plastic waste exports by 2030. The separation of plastic waste for reprocessing is critical to reduce the amount of recyclable plastic that is unnecessarily burned in incinerators. We know that peer group pressure and normalisation of behaviour is critical to that.

The comments made by the hon. Member for Huntingdon (Ben Obese-Jecty) remind me of the former leader of the Sutton Conservatives, who told residents recently that

“most of your recycling goes up the chimney”

at the local ERF—untrue claims that undermine efforts to increase recycling. If there are efforts to improve recycling and our diversion of plastics from incineration, perhaps he can remind his colleagues of the importance of recycling as often as they possibly can.

Turning to food waste, in this age of food banks, according to the company Waste Managed, the UK throws away 9.5 million tonnes of food every year. That is nearly 24 million loaves of bread. In Sutton borough in my constituency, we recently had a campaign to improve the participation in the recycling of food waste that targeted about 15,000 households. That campaign saw an increase of 17% by tonnage of food waste recycling in the areas targeted and a 10% increase in the number of households participating in the programme. The evidence is clear: targeted programmes can be effective at improving participation rates and getting food waste down.

The previous Conservative Government failed to take the measures needed to support businesses in becoming more efficient and to support communities in moving beyond the throwaway culture. Many private sector enterprises, such as Too Good To Go, are opening up in this space and, frankly, doing a far better job than the Government. That is welcome, but a reminder that there is room for the Government to take steps of their own.

The Government have to look again at the enormous mistake that is their family farms tax, which will undermine any last vestiges of localism in the food chain that remain in this country. If we do not incentivise local produce being sold to local people through local businesses, we stand no chance of getting our emissions down, minimising food waste, encouraging healthier eating or moving beyond incineration.

On air pollution, let us be clear that we do not have to accept that the way incinerators currently operate is the only way in this final phase of their history. A significant amount of the concern around the use and potential misuse of incineration stems from mismanagement and the fact that our regulator, the Environment Agency, is prevented from doing the pervasive monitoring that it should be able to.

In my borough of Sutton, the Beddington ERF, on occasion, exceeds the pollution levels set out in its facilities permit. Although those breaches are minor and often for a very short period, and are often caused by nitrous oxide canisters getting into the waste stream, they are not investigated very often by the Environment Agency. The local council and waste authority lack the powers to compel the operator to address problems in their sorting and filtration systems. We can move towards the managed extinction of this form of waste management and wean ourselves off incineration altogether only if we make sure that existing sites are properly managed and meaningfully regulated.

The Liberal Democrats want the UK to be world-leading in its efforts to improve air quality. We have called for a £20 billion emergency fund for local authorities to tackle the clean air crisis, and a £150 billion green recovery plan. We need to pass a new Clean Air Act based on World Health Organisation guidelines and enforced by a new air quality agency, to codify in law that nobody should be subject to consistently awful levels of air pollution. Not passing those measures makes a mockery of the Government’s already opaque plans for meaningful climate action. We were deeply concerned by the finding of the Climate Change Committee’s seventh carbon budget that the UK has deliverable plans for only a third of the emissions reductions needed to meet climate goals. If the Government want to rectify that then they should get a grip, with a beefed-up approach to managing waste and dealing with air pollution. We can do a lot more to prevent waste going to incineration in the first place, and better regulate the existing stock of incinerators.

The recent progress report of the Office for Environmental Protection noted that waste generation and incineration rates have continued to increase, but recycling rates have stalled. That is not the case in my borough of Sutton, where we have seen reductions in the tonnage of waste sent to the ERF from residents, but elsewhere more effort must be made. We need an active Government to step up to the plate and reverse that worrying trend. We must take meaningful action to regulate existing incinerators and look more closely at proposed new incinerators, such as at Canford Magna in the south-west of England, where data suggests that 95% of the required capacity already exists. We must implement a better food waste strategy, eradicate plastic waste and speed up the energy transition to alternative technologies that would hasten the end of residual waste. That would allow us to move away from incineration, and finally consign incinerators to the oblivion of history, to sit in engineering museums alongside Victorian technology as a reminder of how important waste reduction is, and how critical it is at the top of the waste hierarchy.

14:31

[Robbie Moore (Keighley and Ilkley) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Lewell. I thank the hon. Member for Derby South (Baggy Shanker) for securing this important debate, in which we have heard incredibly powerful views from all hon. Members who have participated.

Incineration is a strongly felt issue for many people across the country. I have my own strong feelings on the issue. I am familiar with it from my constituency, where we have staunchly campaigned against the Aire valley incinerator, which is due to be constructed, at some stage, on the outskirts of Keighley. It is not yet built, but it was given the green light by Labour-run Bradford council and the Environment Agency some years ago. I put on record the staunch work that the Aire Valley Against Incineration campaign group has done for a number of years, working with me and many residents to campaign strongly against the Aire valley incinerator. My view remains as it has been since I was first elected to this place: the Aire valley incinerator should not be built. Similar opinions have been expressed by many hon. Members in this House—although, dare I say, not by the Liberal Democrats, who seem to be staunchly warm to incineration. All other hon. Members have staunchly expressed their views against.

We heard from the hon. Member for Derby South about the Sinfin incinerator, which he has campaigned long and hard to oppose; from the hon. Member for Corby and East Northamptonshire (Lee Barron), who is staunchly against the Corby incinerator; from the hon. Member for South Derbyshire (Samantha Niblett), campaigning against the Swadlincote incinerator; from the hon. Member for Carlisle (Ms Minns); from the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn), no longer in his place, who is campaigning against the Edmonton incinerator; from the hon. Member for South Dorset (Lloyd Hatton), who is against the Portland incinerator; and from the hon. Member for Calder Valley (Josh Fenton-Glynn), who raised his concerns about incineration.

My hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon (Ben Obese-Jecty) spoke against two incinerators in his constituency, Warboys and Envar. He rightly raised concerns that despite him making valid challenges on behalf of his constituents, not only to the Secretary of State but to Ministers, they have not even had the decency to come back to him. I can only urge the Minister to take those concerns to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, and hope that a response is received to the planning challenges that were raised. My hon. Friend the Member for Spelthorne (Lincoln Jopp) shared his experiences of a live incinerator in his constituency, giving us the warnings that we all need as we continue our campaigns against incineration in our own constituencies. He was right to highlight the challenges with not only the feedstocks going into that incinerator but the wider problems associated with it.

My right hon. Friend the Member for North East Cambridgeshire (Steve Barclay) has campaigned consistently against the Wisbech incinerator. The applicants seemingly decided to get around their application being determined by the local planning authority by making the scheme so big that it would cover six different counties, meaning that a national strategic decision had to be made. He rightly raised concerns around capacity, which as he said already exists in the system. He also raised the huge challenge that, by the time a planning application has been approved for incinerators, technology and the feedstocks that are being incinerated have changed dramatically. This happens even in the case of the incinerator in the Aire valley in my constituency, which dates back to 2015. He is therefore quite right to advocate for the Government to look at that.

Members have consistently raised wider concerns to do with planning applications that are in the pipeline—at the local planning authority or the environment agency—relating to noise, smell and odour, insect infestations and topography. In my constituency, Bradford council, a Labour-controlled local authority, approved a planning application for an incinerator to be built at the bottom of a valley that, when temperature and cloud inversions and the significantly low stack height are taken into account, would cause emissions to get trapped in the cloud and have a detrimental effect on those residents who are higher up on either side of the valley. That is a challenge that we have consistently put to not only Bradford council but the environment agency.

Other concerns to do with consultation processes that have been raised include the lifespan of an incinerator, the decommissioning process once that comes to an end, challenges with the number of job that will be created as a result of a positive incinerator being approved, and the failure of an incinerator to meet the initial expectations around electrical efficiency that are provided when an application is considered. We have also heard challenges around section 106 moneys coming, challenges associated if schools, nurseries and residents are in close proximity to an incinerator, and challenges relating to highways.

Prior to the general election, the last Government rightly paused new incineration licences due to concerns around there already being capacity in the system and oversupply being prevalent. That moratorium expired during the election, and has not been renewed by the new Labour Administration. The end goal of our waste system must be to reduce the volume of residual waste as much as possible. That means absolute focus on reducing, reusing and recycling, but we must also be realistic in recognising that there will always be waste that must be disposed of. While the Conservatives pledged to stop all new incinerators for good and double down on efforts to reduce waste in the first place, Labour has instead attempted to manage the issue of incineration.

In new regulations announced late last year, the Government said that incineration plants would be granted licences only if they can demonstrate that they are reducing landfill. That is a rather low threshold, as almost any waste heading to an incinerator would otherwise be landfilled. More importantly, that criterion misses the key point that methane emissions from landfill will simply be replaced with carbon emissions from waste incineration. In fact, greenhouse gases from incinerators are more intense, as landfill releases its carbon much more slowly than incineration plants. I fear that this landfill criterion is merely an attempt by this Government to give a veneer of environmentally friendly credibility to a policy that actually represents a failure to tackle the broader waste challenge.

Another requirement is that new plants be carbon capture-ready, but one wonders how the Government will assess that criterion when carbon capture technology is still in its infancy and remains unproven. This is not the basis for sensible, long-term policy. Incineration is the dirtiest form of electricity generation in the country, and has a huge impact on local air pollution, as has been raised by many Members across this House when challenging decisions that have been made by their local planning authority or the environmental operational licence that is then awarded by the Environment Agency. They are rightly advocating, on behalf of their constituents, that such decisions should not go ahead as planned.

At the same time, Labour has claimed that it has introduced tough new rules to clean up incineration and is considering introducing a carbon tax on councils that incinerate. That reveals a gaping hole in the Government’s thinking. I ask the Minister: will the Government’s changes to licensing be effective in reducing pollution? If so, why tax cash-strapped councils—or does the tax reveal that the Government expect their licensing policy to fail and are hoping to deter the use of incinerators as a result? Incinerators are dirty and as a result should be taxed as we tax landfill, but clearly a long-term strategy should be adopted to phase out incineration. Why will the Government not commit to that vision?

In its announcement on the new rules, DEFRA explained that the need for new incinerators was small, as waste capacity is now almost sufficient for UK demand. In that case, why will the Government not reassure the thousands of campaigners across the country—many Members on both sides of the House have referenced many who have worked alongside them and I also mentioned the Aire Valley Against Incineration group in my own constituency —and commit to building no more incinerators? Surely we would hope that the existing incineration plants reach the end of their lives, and that we are reducing residual waste sufficiently that we do not require any replacements.

The Government must come forward with a comprehensive vision for the future of UK waste; otherwise, we will be flying blind. I urge the Government to instigate an immediate stop to all new incinerators being built, regardless of whether they have been approved, and whether that approval was through planning permission or an operational licence awarded by the Environment Agency.

14:42

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Mary Creagh)]

What a pleasure it is to speak under your chairship, Ms Lewell, I think for the second time in a fortnight; we are truly blessed to see each other so frequently. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Derby South (Baggy Shanker) for raising this important issue and congratulate all right hon. and hon. Members from both sides of the House who have taken part in the debate. We have heard some disturbing stories; I was horrified to hear about the fire in Carlisle and the consequent impacts that had, particularly on local children.

As we have heard, the process for extracting energy from waste through incineration is an important issue up and down the country. My hon. Friend the Member for Derby South has drawn attention to the Sinfin waste treatment facility in Derby. He will understand that it is not for me to comment on individual decisions that are for waste authorities to make; however, I am able to say that the operator will need to apply to the EA for a variation to review the permit before it can be recommissioned, which would include a comprehensive assessment of measures to prevent odours and pests. If the recommissioning does happen, the EA would ensure that a robust commissioning plan is in place to prevent any adverse environmental impacts, including from nuisance. He asked whether my officials would meet him to discuss his many concerns; I am happy to offer him that undertaking.

I am sure council tax payers in Derby and across Derbyshire are disappointed that a facility that promised so much and cost so much has yet to treat waste, but I am pleased to set out the progress this Government have made in delivering the long-awaited recycling reforms, our circular economy ambitions and our position in relation to energy from waste. I do not think anyone can accuse us of being slack in those areas. I am sure that through the magic of Hansard and the Government processes, the hon. Member for Huntingdon (Ben Obese-Jecty) will shortly receive a response to the letters that he has written to Government colleagues in the MHCLG.

Let me take you right back, Ms Lewell, to 15 years ago, when the Conservative party was governing in coalition. Basically, over the last 15 years recycling rates have stalled, and in some places gone backwards. Too much waste is still dealt with through incineration or landfill. More than half of waste collected by local authorities in 2023-24 was incinerated, and just 41% was recycled. Incidents such as those that the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) raised—he and I go back a long way—have really damaged people’s confidence in our recycling system. That incident of litter turning up in Indonesia shows us that there is no such place as away. We only have materials.

In an uncertain and turbulent world, we need to take steps to address this, and we have done so at pace. We have introduced reforms that will create 21,000 green jobs and stimulate £10 billion of investment in our recycling capability. That is what underpins our ambition to recycle 65% of municipal waste by 2035. We will get from 41% last year to 65% in 10 years’ time. That is a bold ambition. These are the biggest changes to waste recycling since the last Labour Government introduced the landfill tax back in 2001-02. This is a step change.

I would gently point out that not everybody in this room voted for the deposit return scheme, which is one of the three big pillars of reform that the right hon. Member for North East Cambridgeshire (Steve Barclay) developed when he was the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. The hon. Member for Keighley and Ilkley (Robbie Moore) was absent for the vote in the House on the deposit return scheme. I am glad that somehow, despite his absence, he may have supported the reforms that he worked on as a Minister.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

On recycling, does the Minister agree that one of the problems is that there are too many collection systems that operate differently in different boroughs and different places? Secondly, people living in flats often find it very difficult to store waste for weekly collection, and the levels of compostable waste recycling are very low in those places. Does the Department agree, and is the Minister prepared to take any action to improve those rates of recycling?

[Mary Creagh]

I have set out the actions that we are taking to drive up recycling rates, one of which is to put paid to the proposal we inherited for up to seven bins through the simpler recycling reforms. We have been really clear that we will have black bin waste and mandatory food collections in every local authority, because that does not happen. It obviously happens in Islington, but it does not happen with uniformity across the country. Mandatory food waste recycling came in for businesses on 1 April this year, and it will come in for local authorities on 1 April 2026. That standardisation of recycling and collections should help us all to do better and play our part.

I take on board the right hon. Gentleman’s point about collecting from flats. There are really serious problems. One issue is that recyclable waste is often put into black bins, so they get full very quickly, when actually a lot of stuff could be taken out. The deposit return scheme, the simpler recycling reforms and the extended producer responsibility scheme are really big changes developed under the previous Government and carried on by us at speed, because we have no time to waste. We have to move away from our linear, unsustainable “take, make, throw” model, where we just extract things, make things and throw them away. We want to end the throwaway society, and for things that are made in Britain to be built to last, as they were in olden times.

[Steve Barclay]

Just to follow the logic of the Minister’s point, if more recycling is being promoted by the Government, which is what she has set out, self-evidently both the composition of waste and the existing capacity for incineration will be sufficient. In their December paper, the Government said:

“While there are a number of waste incineration facilities that are consented, but not yet under construction, it is highly unlikely that these will be brought forward.”

If that is the Government’s expectation, and if the Minister is increasing recycling and the capacity is sufficient, why not give clarity to the public and her own Back Benchers by saying, “No more incinerators”?

[Mary Creagh]

The right hon. Gentleman asked about a couple of things in his speech, so I will respond to those first. He asked about composition analysis—we are getting into deep technical detail—and it is about what is actually being incinerated. What is being burned? The right hon. Member for Islington North asked why we do not just put plastic in the ground, as it would just sit there, inert. What is going into incineration?

My understanding is that the emissions trading scheme was consulted on under the previous Government—that bringing local authority energy-from-waste facilities into the ETS from 2028 was consulted on in 2024, so it was an in-flight proposal—but I am very happy to be corrected if I am wrong. The residual municipal waste composition study, covering the period from May 2024 to May 2025, will be published later this year, and I know we cannot wait. It will be interesting, because it is essentially the baseline. It is where we will see if the changes are going to start feeding through.

We said in our manifesto that we would reduce waste by transitioning to a circular economy, which is one of the Secretary of State’s five priorities for DEFRA. I am really proud to be the Minister responsible for that.

The right hon. Member for Islington North asked why we cannot just landfill waste plastics, but there are wider environmental impacts from landfilling plastics than simply carbon emissions, including the issue of microplastics. We do not yet fully understand how plastics degrade in landfill in the long term. Emerging research is exploring the potential of plastic-degrading bacteria in landfills, which could break down plastics and in turn impact greenhouse gas emissions. However, I gently say that we cannot solve today’s problems by storing them up for future generations.

The UK emissions trading scheme is minded to expand the scope of the emissions trading scheme to include energy-from-waste facilities. A consultation on this was published in 2024, which included a call for evidence on incentivising heat networks. With the energy-from-waste plants, there is electricity generation, but there is also a massive excess of heat. Most of that heat just dissipates, but it would be much more efficient to use it, as Coventry city council has with its mile-long pipe under London Road, which heats the local swimming pool or Coventry University’s buildings. I understand that the authority will respond in due course.

At the end of last year, we set out that we will require proposals for new facilities to demonstrate that they will facilitate the diversion of residual waste away from landfill or enable the replacement of older and less efficient facilities. This position reflects the evidence and analysis we have published. It also reflects the waste hierarchy and is congruent with the transition to a circular economy.

Even after the successful delivery of our recycling reforms, there will be sufficient residual waste capacity to treat forecast municipal residual waste arising at national level. On that point, my hon. Friend the Member for Derby South is correct. However, there are five areas in England where more than half the residual waste collected by local authorities was sent to landfill in 2023-24. Landfill was also still relied on for an estimated 5.4 million tonnes of non-municipal, non-major mineral waste in 2022, which is the most recent year for which data is available.

We know about the waste that goes into our bins, but there is a lot of other stuff coming out of construction sites, and so on. My hon. Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (James Naish) and I had a chat about this issue in the Lobby, but the analysis the Government published at the end of last year sets out the regional disparities and the regional capacities. It is a good read.

[Ben Obese-Jecty]

I am listening to the Minister’s comments about capacity. I appreciate that she may not have the specific details in front of her, but I would be interested to know whether Cambridgeshire sits within one of the undercapacity regions, and whether that is why so many incinerators are being built in those constituencies.

My other point—I appreciate this is slightly tangential—is that residents of the village of Pidley in my constituency will find themselves equidistant from two incinerators if both are approved. Is there a minimum distance that a village can expect to be from an incinerator? If so, what is it?

[Mary Creagh]

In law, as I understand it, it is for local planning authorities to decide on planning applications. The hon. Gentleman will be surprised to hear that I have not memorised the full 60 pages—I do my best, but I am just not that good. I am very happy to write to him about the Cambridgeshire point, but he can see it online.

The consultation proposed aligning the ETS with the extended producer responsibility for packaging to allow local councils to pass the emission trading costs from the incineration of plastic packaging waste to the producers of plastic packaging. It also sought views on how best to support local authorities in managing ETS costs.

It is not for the Environment Agency to decide where an energy-from-waste plant is built, or whether it is the right solution for treating waste. It can revoke environmental permits only where there is clear evidence of ongoing non-compliance.

I have discussed simpler recycling, and we heard some excellent examples from the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Luke Taylor) about food waste, including Too Good To Go. The Government have set up a £15 million food waste grant to tackle on-farm food surplus.

We have also set up the circular economy taskforce, bringing together experts from the Government, industry, academia and civil society. It will work with businesses on what they want to see to create the best possible conditions for investment. We are developing a new circular economy strategy for England, which will mean an economy-wide transformation in our relationship with our precious materials. It will kick-start the Government’s missions to have economic growth, to make us a clean energy superpower and to accelerate the transition to net zero. Through our efforts to tackle waste crime, of which there is a great deal in the waste sector, we will take back our streets.

On our capacity announcement, we know there is a need to minimise waste incineration, but it is still a better option than throwing rubbish into landfill. Energy-from-waste facilities provide around 3% of the UK’s total energy generation. They can support the decarbonisation of heating our homes and businesses, helping to cut customers’ bills. Energy from waste can both maximise the value of resources that have reached the true end of life and avoid the greater environmental impact of landfill, which creates its own problems.

I will conclude to give my hon. Friend the Member for Derby South time to respond. I encourage investors, financiers and businesses to invest in infrastructure that supports the movement of resources up the waste hierarchy. Our recycling infrastructure capacity analysis, published in partnership with the Waste and Resources Action Programme, alongside our packaging reforms identified forecast capacity investment opportunities of 1.7 million tonnes a year for paper packaging reprocessing and 324,000 tonnes a year for plastic packaging reprocessing by 2035.

We want to unlock investment, and last week my officials met the Lord Mayor of London, Dutch officials and members of the UK and Dutch financial sectors to agree to form a circular economy finance coalition to boost investment in the transition to the circular economy to which we are committed. That is no small task, but by working together we will keep our resources in use for longer.

[Emma Lewell (in the Chair)]

Baggy Shanker, you have one minute to wind up.

14:59

[Baggy Shanker]

I thank everybody for participating in this really important debate. I thank the Minister for agreeing to my request to ask DEFRA officials to look at the concerns I have had about the Sinfin incinerator for many years.

Right hon. and hon. Members made important points about the industry as a whole. There is a lack of transparency when planning applications are going through and, in certain cases, when the plants are running. The business cases are also not tested when the plants are in operation. Those two things, in my experience, do not marry up, and the Environment Agency and other authorities seem powerless when the incinerators do not perform—

Motion lapsed (Standing Order No. 10 (6)).

Thames Water: Government Support

Thursday 3rd April 2025 Westminster Hall

15:00

[Emma Lewell (in the Chair)]

I thank all hon. Members who were eagle-eyed enough to spot that my name has changed. The nameplate in front of me is correct and accurate.

[Luke Taylor (Sutton and Cheam) (LD)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered Government support for Thames Water.

It is again a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Lewell. I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting me this important and extremely topical debate. I also thank hon. Members from across the House for joining me this afternoon. I hope that we are all of the same opinion on the problem, although we might well differ slightly on the solution.

Sixteen million Britons are gaslit daily by Thames Water. The company has unleashed filth in our waterways and homes, while cutting deeper and deeper into our personal finances. When I think about the performance of Thames Water, I imagine the very excrement it fails to manage. Despite all the years of historic under-investment in favour of profit, the business has been run into the ground. It now finds itself on the brink of collapse, counting down its days of cash remaining, as we all saw in the recent documentary. It makes an absolute mockery of the water utility industry that fat-cat shareholders are enjoying obscene payouts and company executives rake in sky-high salaries and bonuses, all while our rivers and our wallets suffer. River ecosystems are dying, and our children are denied the joy of swimming in nature because of the threat of swallowing human waste.

[Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Slough) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Member on securing this important debate. It is beyond clear that my Slough constituents are not happy with Thames Water—in fact, recent figures demonstrate that this company is one of the worst scoring for customer satisfaction for the fourth year in a row. We all know that the last Conservative Government had a rotten record on water companies: they were laden with debt and there were ridiculous executive bonuses and sky-high bills. That is not a sustainable future. Does the hon. Member agree that the Government must ensure that customers and our environment are at the heart of future reform and regulation in the sector?

[Luke Taylor]

I completely agree that customers and residents, our constituents, must be put at the heart of any solution. We must find a way to ensure that people do not have to endure this anymore. As the hon. Member correctly says, there customer satisfaction ratings have been absolutely awful, which alone gives us a credible excuse to raise their concerns in this place.

To go beautifully back on to the script, just this Tuesday Thames Water customers were slammed with a 31% hike in their bills, in the middle of a cost of living crisis, to pay for this utterly appalling service. I say “customers”, but those of us unlucky enough to call Thames Water our provider are more like prisoners. I say that because choice in this market is an illusion. In this country, taxpayers cannot choose their water utility company. They are trapped. This afternoon I shall argue that the only way this Government can support Thames Water is by saving it from itself.

[Calum Miller (Bicester and Woodstock) (LD)]

I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for securing this debate. My constituents in Bicester and Woodstock are fed up of Thames Water providing a poor service yet continually hiking the charges for it. I am thinking of constituents like Martin, who lives in Bladon, whose toilet floods regularly because of a collapsed sewer and who now has a tanker parked outside his house 24/7 because Thames Water has so delayed making the repairs. Does my hon. Friend agree that we need a reset at Thames Water after years of financial and operational failure? Does he further agree that the Government are quite wrong to be resisting special administration, which would be the best way to ensure that the financial mismanagement of the past sits rightly with the vulture funds and bondholders and not with future bill payers?

[Luke Taylor]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to say that the burden must lie on the vulture funds, and his comments are as wise as the residents of his Bicester and Woodstock constituency.

We Liberal Democrats have long called for action to reform this lousy company. It has been clear to us for a very long time that the current position is untenable. Recognising that it is fundamentally broken, we have no fear in stating exactly what we need: to rip it up and restructure it, so that it can finally work for our constituents.

To make my argument, I will begin by touching on the sheer mess that the company is in. Naturally, many of the points I make will come as no shock to the hon. Members across this House whose residents are flooding their inboxes as Thames Water floods our rivers with sewage. I will then outline why the Government must, with the utmost urgency, put this failing water company into special administration. Finally, I will argue that the only way that this Government can support Thames Water is by scrapping Ofwat and finally getting a regulator that uses its teeth.

Thames Water is knee-deep in a nightmare of its own making. In 2024, it set a new record by pumping 50% more untreated sewage into our waterways. In 2023, the company was named the worst performer in England and completely failed to meet its own performance metrics. In 2022, it made an extra £500 million in profit despite pipe bursts during a heatwave that caused a regional drought and a hosepipe ban. Untreated sewage now pumps through waterways in southern England like it is part of the furniture.

I fear that, were it not for the new Thames Tideway tunnel, which I was fortunate enough to visit recently, our river would be destined for the unmanageable decline that turns waterways into open sewers, like something straight out of a Dickens novel. Humans can choose not to go in the water, but flora and fauna have no such luxury. We are advised not to let our dogs swim in the river, because they may die from the pollution. Rare chalk stream habitats are being decimated by floods of untreated waste. These precious ecosystems are dying. They have no choice but to endure the toxic chemicals from Thames Water’s outflow pipes.

Thames Water’s sewage problems stem from a systemic failure to update its outdated, mostly Victorian infrastructure. High-risk infrastructure is given ad hoc fixes, with zero communication to customers. The company’s approach to fixing water facilities in Southwark, in London, is a prime example of this reckless approach. Last year, the chief executive had the audacity to blame excess storm overflows on climate change. Yes, climate change is real, and it is causing more intense rainfall and more regular storms, but let me ask Thames Water this question: how long have we known about this, and why did Thames Water not invest annually in its crumbling infrastructure to handle this well-known challenge?

Instead of prioritising the environment and local communities, Thames Water chose to line the pockets of its executives, its shareholders and the vulture funds that owned it. In 2023, the company paid £196 million in dividends, and over the past four years £62 million has been paid out to company executives in bonuses. This has been done at a time when the company is drowning in debt, which currently stands at a whopping £19 billion. Startlingly, more than 25% of customer water bill payments are spent on paying interest on the company’s debt. That is our money paying for the company’s mistakes.

Now, we are told not to worry; everything is in hand because US private equity group KKR—Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co.—has been selected as the preferred bidder to take control of Thames Water. This is not a British company, and it has no stake in British communities. We have no reason to believe that a private equity group based in the United States will act as though it has any obligation other than to itself. Northumbrian Water, in which KKR has a significant stake, was responsible for more than 40,000 sewage spills in 2024. What will change if it takes over Thames Water? Enough is enough. The Government must step up.

[Mr Dhesi]

The hon. Member is making a hard-hitting speech. The scale of the water bill increases has left many of my more vulnerable Slough constituents very anxious about how they will pay their bills. As he rightly points out, in recent years, while customers struggle, water companies including Thames Water have pumped record amounts of sewage into our rivers, paid their bosses millions in bonuses and failed to invest adequately in vital infrastructure. Does the hon. Member agree that the Government must take firm steps to stop this exploitation of the environment and of our people, and that water companies must now step up to the plate to protect their most vulnerable customers?

[Luke Taylor]

I absolutely agree, but I fear Thames Water’s lack of ability to do that, simply due to the debt pile and the situation in which the company finds itself. The hon. Member’s words on behalf of his vulnerable residents clearly come from a deep wish to serve them.

The Government must step up. They must not support Thames Water—the motion is somewhat misleading—but they must support customers throughout the south by finally doing what has long been necessary. Indeed, the first draft of the debate title I submitted to the Backbench Business Committee was, “10 things I hate about Thames Water”—my researcher will appreciate me getting that in—but alas, we were not able to bring it forward.

The Government must place Thames Water under special administration. I do not lay all the blame at the feet of the current Government. We all know that for far too long the Conservative Government stood idly by while Thames Water poisoned our waterways. But with each passing day this Government must surely recognise the growing urgency of action; if they do not, it will become their fault.

Under special administration the state can temporarily take control of this collapsing company. The day-to-day operations would carry on as normal, but the board that has bled the business dry would be gone—restructured and replaced. The greedy executives who have pocketed millions in bonuses while running the company into the ground would be stripped of their bonuses. There can be no more fat pay cheques while they fail customers. Taxpayers would no longer be forced to watch helplessly as their bills rise like the water level, slowly drowning them just to cover the company’s massive and foolish debt.

With new leadership there is a chance for a new direction. Under special administration the company could finally implement a meaningful plan to tackle the sewage crisis that has plagued our waterways for far too long. No longer would our streams, rivers and lakes be seen as expendable. The £3 billion debt lifeline that Thames Water has just secured will not last forever. All it serves to do is to preserve a broken status quo. The company has proven time and again that it is not fit for purpose. If this Government do not act now, how much more of our constituents’ money will be flushed down the drain? I am begging the Government—literally begging —to listen to our anger, save us from Thames Water’s incompetence, and take steps to ensure that the next iteration of Thames Water, and other water companies across the UK, cannot get away with this kind of behaviour.

It all starts with setting up a proper water company regulator that actually does its job. Ofwat is an utter disgrace. It is asleep at the wheel and complicit in the chaos caused by the company. The regulator has sleepwalked through the mess that is Thames Water, now greenlighting a 35% hike in bills over the next five years. It has turned a blind eye to the outrageous profits and bonuses pocketed by Thames Water shareholders. It has sat leisurely by as the water companies refused to properly update their crumbling infrastructure. It has repeatedly refused to set meaningful environmental targets for water companies to improve the quality of our water. The regulator is, through its inaction, helping Thames Water to fleece the taxpayer and carry out its dirty work.

It is time to scrap Ofwat and replace it with a new regulator, one with real teeth that, in the great tradition of anti-trust and community-first capitalism, is not afraid of a fight and will square up firmly to those who benefit most from a broken system. We need a regulator that is not afraid to be bold and ambitious in fighting for the best for the British people. We expect nothing less from the Government, so why should we shrink from demanding it from the regulatory arms of the state? Indeed, if the Government hold themselves to that standard, why should they hold their agencies to anything less?

The fact is that our constituents are being utterly let down. We cannot go on like this. Across the board, the water industry needs wholesale reform, but right at the heart of the scandal, wallowing in a stinking mess of its own making, is Thames Water—a company that was set up to serve the public but has instead become a paragon of failure, debt and daylight robbery. The Government do not have long. They must act swiftly to rescue the idea at the heart of the company—the idea, which I hope has not been fully eroded or caked in sludge, that a utility company, working in collaboration with Government, can be a force for good governance.

[John Lamont (Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk) (Con)]

I am sure the hon. Member is wondering why a Scottish MP is speaking in a debate about Thames Water. I absolutely agree with his concerns about Thames Water, but the model he seems to be proposing is very close to what we have with Scottish Water, which I am sure he has done a lot of research on. He will know that sewage was dumped into Scotland’s rivers and lochs for over 600 hours a day in 2023, and we do not monitor our water discharges anywhere near as closely as England. I therefore urge caution. The model he is proposing does not work in Scotland. The Scottish Environment Protection Agency, despite having the powers, does not use them in the way he might want.

[Luke Taylor]

I genuinely thank the hon. Member for his intervention. It highlights that there is no silver bullet. The solutions that we propose are complex and difficult; they require monitoring and oversight of infrastructure plans, and properly phased, long-term planning and investment to prevent the discharges that we see under the current system. Only through the proper process—upgrading holding tanks, for example, or upgrading the technologies used to filter and clean the water before the effluence is put back into the river—can we see improvement. His challenge is fair and welcome; the solution not a silver bullet.

To conclude, a utility company, working in collaboration with Government, can be a force for good governance and good management of our environment, and give good value to bill payers. Imagine looking at a water bill and thinking, “This is good value!” I promise that there is a future like that, but that is what is at stake. The Government must act now to sort out the mess and establish that in this country, utility companies can thrive only when they take seriously their responsibilities to the environment and to us, rather than solely the pursuit of profit.

15:17

[Bell Ribeiro-Addy (Clapham and Brixton Hill) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Ms Lewell. I thank the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Luke Taylor) for securing the debate and for not supporting Thames Water; I am very pleased to hear that.

I do not think anyone has been deluded into thinking that Thames Water is doing a good job—certainly not me or my constituents. Since I was elected to this House, hardly a year has passed without another major water infrastructure issue that leaves hundreds of my constituents without water for days on end. That is not to mention the years that I have lived in my constituency and been a victim of Thames Water’s extremely shoddy service. Apart from three years in Yorkshire, I have had to endure Thames Water for the entirety of my life, and it has shown very little concern for the impact that it has.

In 2023, a burst water pipe on Brixton Hill left residents without water for three days. Last July, on one of the hottest days of the year, residents of Clarence Avenue had their water shut off without any prior notice. As recently as December, faulty valve pumps in Brixton left homes without water for more than four days. Those are just the most recent incidents—as I said, there have been a number of them since I was elected.

The residents of Clapham and Brixton Hill are not the only ones who will have experienced those disruptions in service, so Members can imagine my constituents’ outrage when, in the wake of poor service and increased bills, they see Thames Water’s shareholders and directors receive millions of pounds in dividends. In October 2023, Thames Water made interim dividend payments totalling £37.5 million to its holding company, Thames Water Utilities Holdings Ltd, while the pipes were literally rotting under our feet. In March 2024, the company made further dividend payments amounting to £158.3 million, from which shareholders received non-cash benefits, all while the quality of water has continued to decline every single year.

Thames Water chairman Sir Adrian Montague was accused of a conflict of interest over the £37 million in dividend payments that were made to shareholders in February 2025. Under his tenure, Thames Water paid £195.8 million in dividends, breaching Ofwat rules. Ofwat fined it just £18 million, but Thames Water paid zero pounds of that £18 million fine. I agree with the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam that Ofwat is also unfit for purpose.

Others may have a better understanding of how such things work, but I do not understand how a company that is in debt and failing, and that has damaged infrastructure, has the money to pay dividends to its shareholders. While my constituents’ taps run dry, the fat cats of Thames Water are literally turning theirs on—but not to drink the water of course, because they know better.

The cherry on the sewage-filled cake? On Tuesday, my constituents and millions of Thames Water customers woke up to what would have been the world’s worst April fool’s day joke—the grim reality of a 31% bill increase. One constituent wrote to me because they are experiencing a 45.8% increase in their monthly bill, from £36.55 to £53.30 a month. The service will remain shoddy, but the price that customers are made to pay will rise. Thames Water is rinsing my constituents, pouring sewage into our waterways and siphoning off money to shareholders, and hiking up bills to pay for it.

It is fair to say that Thames Water’s management are comparable with what the company is dumping in the Thames—crap. They are just crap. They are running the company’s finances into the ground and relying on the Government to bail them out, all the while leaving my constituents in the vulnerable position of having no running water at times. If they are relying on the Government to bail them out, we taxpayers are literally paying them twice. Clearly, they cannot be trusted to operate such a vital service legitimately, and they certainly should not be allowed to pocket thousands of pounds in the process.

I do believe that the Government should be supporting Thames Water—supporting it back into public ownership. That is the only support that they should give it. Rather than a US private equity firm being allowed to take it over, it should be taken over by the Government and made accountable to its service users, the British public. Those who are against nationalisation on an ideological basis will say that competition is needed to ensure innovation and the best service, but there is no competition for Thames Water. Which other water company can my constituents switch to when the service is poor?

It makes no sense to me that a new private company should be allowed to take over and reap the profits with little incentive to provide a better service. My constituents deserve a better service, and the continued private ownership of Thames Water will not bring that. Public ownership will not solve every single issue with Thames Water, but it will certainly solve more than allowing an American company to take it over and profit off the backs of my constituents.

15:22

[Sarah Olney (Richmond Park) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Lewell. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam (Luke Taylor) for securing this debate and for his stirring opening remarks.

The Government have repeatedly referenced the £22 billion black hole that they inherited, but there has been far less reference to the debt accrued by Thames Water, which is comparable with that figure. Company executives have received hefty bonuses, and shareholders have taken billions of pounds in dividends out of the company, but Thames Water customers are seeing their bills rise by an average of 35% over the next five years. During a cost of living crisis, and on top of other mounting bills, this rise is extremely concerning for many of my constituents. What is even more alarming is that Thames Water does not believe that the bill hike is sufficient to meet the targets set by Ofwat, and it has since referred the final determination to the Competition and Markets Authority.

The Liberal Democrats have been calling for Thames Water to be placed into special administration, as it has shown that it cannot be trusted to provide a service that does not degrade our environment or line the pockets of its shareholders. In response to those calls, the Government have implied that Thames Water is not breaching its statutory duties, and therefore that intervention is not under immediate consideration.

Thames Water has repeatedly shown an inability to undertake its basic duties. In my Richmond Park constituency, Kingston Vale residents have had to endure almost constant traffic chaos in their neighbourhood, as Thames Water has repeatedly had to attend to a burst sewage pipe. A constituent reported to my office that sewage spills over the road following a leak. Thames Water recently agreed to replace the pipe, having resisted it for years. I am sure that the Government would agree that people should not have to put up with unfiltered sludge spilling on to their pavements.

Senior managers at Thames Water acknowledge that many departments are understaffed and, by their own admission, do not have the funds to invest in critical infrastructure to prevent leaks and sewage-dumping into our rivers. In a recent BBC documentary, some staff members even admitted to presenting favourable statistics when measuring the concentration of E. coli in the Thames. The cleanliness of our rivers should not be a public relations exercise. It is extremely important that Thames Water is held to account for polluting our rivers.

In 2024, Thames Water was responsible for 298,081 hours-worth of sewage spills. A freedom of information request by the Liberal Democrats discovered that Ofwat has collected not a penny of fines for that disregard of our environment. By not replacing Ofwat with a regulator with teeth, the Government are not installing a sufficient deterrent to ensure that Thames Water takes action to prevent such environmental incidents.

Given Thames Water’s current financial situation and operational capacity, as well as recent reports that KKR—which boasts a similarly poor environmental record with Northumbrian Water—plans to buy the company, does the Minister believe that Thames Water has the capabilities to prevent serious environmental hazards from repeatedly occurring?

15:26

[Will Stone (Swindon North) (Lab)]

I thank the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Luke Taylor) for bringing forward this debate. I am a little surprised that there are only 10 things he hates about Thames Water; my list is significantly longer. It is a really important debate. I wanted to come into it with a balanced view, and not just slate Thames Water, but it is incredibly hard. I feel that Thames Water is systematically failing the public on pretty much every level. We have seen a lack of investment in infrastructure, which has resulted in mass pollution, the needless deaths of thousands of animals and fish and destruction to our natural habitat, which is completely unacceptable. At the same time as not investing, Thames Water has been paying out astronomical fees to its chief executive, and to its shareholders in dividends—that is completely ridiculous, and it is being passed on to my residents. We need to look at changing that.

Let me flip the page to other Thames Water failures and look at its customer service: it was attempting to charge a resident in Swindon North over £11,000, saying he was using an Olympic-sized swimming pool of water weekly. He battled for over a year, getting nowhere. It took one email from me to get Thames Water to come out and look at it—shock horror, he was not using an Olympic-sized swimming pool. Thames Water actually owed him money. It should not take a Member of Parliament emailing to intervene—that is completely wrong and unacceptable. Thames Water needs to be more accountable to the public.

In Swindon we also have flooding, like in every constituency. We have it from Priory Vale to Stratton St Margaret. Thames Water has agreed that it is at fault and that this is its problem, yet has done nothing about it. That is unacceptable. Residents cannot remortgage their house or move on, and are trapped in a situation where they have to accept that every year their house will flood while, once again, Thames Water makes more profit. That is completely shoddy and unacceptable.

We have also heard today about the increase in prices. I urge Ofwat to reject Thames Water’s new claim to increase prices. As we have said, Thames Water is not delivering and not accountable. What metric is it actually succeeding on? This is unacceptable. I am sure that everybody in this room would say that Thames Water should not increase its prices. I am pleased that the Government are planning to introduce more regulation, to monitor the sewage systems more and to give Ofwat more power. I just want to see it use that power.

I again thank the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam. I thought that the debate would be a bit busier so I did not plan a long speech, but this issue is vitally important, and I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say.

15:29

[Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)]

It is an absolute pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Lewell. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam (Luke Taylor) on securing this important debate. It is being held only a short time after we found out that Thames Water pumped an incredible 298,081 hours-worth of sewage into our waterways in 2024, attacking our natural environment and undermining public trust. All this was at the same time as continuing to pay significant bonuses to its bosses and dividends to its shareholders, while demanding that taxpayers foot the bill. It beggars belief.

The slew of scandals, the lack of trust and concerns about water quality, not to mention the parlous state of Thames Water finances that my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam so eloquently outlined, are exactly why I and local campaigners are fighting Thames Water’s controversial proposals to pump treated sewage into the river at Teddington in my constituency. The Government have the power to take that scheme off the table, as the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Keighley and Ilkley (Robbie Moore), knows from when my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Sarah Olney) and I lobbied him before the last election. The new Minister, the Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Haltemprice (Emma Hardy), also has the power to take the scheme off the table. I will outline why the scheme should not go ahead, which links to the subject of the state of Thames Water’s finances.

The river is at the very heart of the community in my constituency, with paddle boarders, rowers and wild water swimmers from not only our local community but from further afield coming to use the river, and residents are extremely worried about the environmental impact of the proposals, including on human health, biodiversity, wildlife, and of course water quality.

[Sarah Olney]

My constituents in Ham and north Kingston on the opposite bank of the river from my hon. Friend’s constituency in Twickenham are particularly concerned about how the construction impacts will affect the Ham Lands nature reserve. We have not heard enough from Thames Water about exactly what its plans are for that. Does she agree that Thames Water needs to be much more up front about what exactly it plans to do?

[Munira Wilson]

Absolutely. A lot of those environmental and social impacts have yet to be set out in detail. My hon. Friend and I are both eagerly awaiting, as are thousands of our constituents, the environmental impact assessments and the statutory consultation, which I believe will start later this year.

Thames Water keeps telling us that water quality will not be compromised, yet it has failed to assure us that dangerous compounds and chemicals, including PFAS— perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or so-called “forever chemicals”—which I have talked at length to the Minister about, will be filtered out. Its environmental track record tells a different story and residents are understandably sceptical. Thames Water insists that the proposals represent the best value option, yet it has failed to show to the community and elected representatives its workings on how it has got to that best value definition.

The company has a proven history of failing to invest in infrastructure and in the essentials, while pouring millions of pounds of bill payers’ money into short-term fixes that do nothing but produce new assets for the company to borrow against. Indeed, that is what many residents are suspicious the scheme is about: trying to load up its balance sheet to be able to leverage yet more debt.

Just as Thames Water declared itself to be on the verge of collapse, the Government approved a £300 million infrastructure project that, by the company’s own admission, will be used only once every two years and save only one tenth of the hundreds of millions of litres of water that Thames Water loses every day through leaks. This is after Thames Water spent some £250 million on the Beckton desalination plant back in 2012, which was meant to improve water resilience in London, but has barely been used. When I questioned Thames Water’s chief executive officer about it, he told me that it did not work as well as it was meant to—I kid you not. This leaves Thames Water customers in my constituency rightly asking why they should pay the price for its mismanagement. If the Teddington direct river abstraction does get the green light from Government, will it deliver the benefits that Thames Water claims it will to warrant the environmental impact, both on our river and indeed on its shores?

It is the issue of trust that is so important to public confidence in our water companies and our water infrastructure. The public ought to have confidence that the companies responsible for our most basic human need, clean water, are acting in their best interests, not in the interests of shareholders and executives. Time and again Thames Water has eroded that trust and proven itself unworthy of the public’s confidence, and throughout it has been our constituents who have been asked to pay up for the failures and the mismanagement of the company. Over a quarter of bill payers’ money is spent simply on servicing water company debt. Worse still, while Thames Water pleads poverty, its executives slip out the back door with eye-watering bonuses.

Where is the accountability? Where is the justice for those who suffer the consequences of their negligence? As my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam has set out, the Liberal Democrats have a strong record on this issue. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Charlie Maynard) and his attempts to hold Thames Water to account in the courts and challenge it for its horrendous behaviour. He has been absolutely outstanding. I thank him for everything he has done with his tremendous campaign.

We must put an end to the cycle of environmental negligence and financial mismanagement. Thames Water is on the brink, and placing it into special administration is the only way to prevent a full-scale collapse. Meanwhile, Ofwat lacks the authority to hold failing water companies to account, and unless the Government take decisive action, they risk the same weakness. It is time, as my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam has already said, to replace Ofwat with a regulator that has real enforcement powers and the full backing of the Government behind it.

The bottom line is that we need to crack down on failing water companies, not prop them up. With customers paying ever higher bills and our precious environment at risk, the Government must go much further, much faster, in reining in these companies.

15:36

[Daniel Francis (Bexleyheath and Crayford) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Lewell. I thank the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Luke Taylor) for securing this important debate. Like all of us here today, I have been contacted by dozens of constituents who have been affected by problems with Thames Water’s service and, of course, the recent increase in their Thames Water bills. A family of four in my constituency have been in touch to say that their water bill alone has increased by almost £300 a year because of the recent increases. That increase for working families is unsustainable and causes more financial instability for families across my constituency of Bexleyheath and Crayford.

Alongside that increase, as we have heard, the service that has been provided to constituents continues to not be good enough and is affecting residents on a daily basis. Years of under-investment, particularly in infrastructure, due to the previous Government’s weak regulations have created an unreliable system for which the public are now expected to foot the growing bill. It is not unusual for Crayford High Street, in the second main town centre in my constituency, to be closed for a month or two due to water leaks, as has happened on several occasions in recent years, diverting hundreds of residents who use that road for the school pick-up, commuting to work, visiting the shops in the town centre and getting on with their lives.

Many constituents, while finding the closure of the road inconvenient, would support the occasional closure if it improved services—but the problems continue. In my 20 years as a local councillor until last year, I saw the situation get worse as that infrastructure got worse year on year. Leaks due to poorly maintained infrastructure are common across roads in each part of my constituency —in Barnehurst, Bexleyheath, Crayford, Northumberland Heath and Slade Green. As a result, we see constant road closures and great inconvenience to residents across the constituency.

I was pleased to support the Government’s Water (Special Measures) Act 2025, which became law earlier this year, and the announcement of an independent commissioner for the water sector and its regulation will be welcomed by many constituents across Bexleyheath and Crayford. However, I look forward, after the stories we have heard, to hearing the Minister’s feedback on what further action can be taken to ensure that Thames Water delivers valuable upgrades to both its infrastructure and its work to stabilise prices, which continue to cause great concern for my constituents across Bexleyheath and Crayford.

15:38

[Charlie Maynard (Witney) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Lewell. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam (Luke Taylor) for securing this debate on Government support for Thames Water. What does Government support for Thames Water look like? Our current Government support Thames Water by letting it breach the terms of its operating licence, letting Ofwat ignore its own rules, letting consumers take the pain of higher bills for no gain, letting financiers make out like bandits and letting our rivers continue to be filled with sewage. What is shocking about that is that a Labour Government are doing it. This Government are turning out to be every bit as bad as the Conservatives were at protecting our rivers. They are completely ducking their responsibilities. It is within the Minister’s powers to take action: she is the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Water and Flooding at DEFRA, DEFRA oversees Ofwat, and Ofwat issues operating licences to water companies.

Here are some of the key requirements that Thames Water needs to comply with, per its Ofwat-issued operating licence. First, there is an operational requirement to comply with environmental and health standards. Thames Water is failing that requirement. As per Environment Agency data, and as my hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham (Munira Wilson) said, in 2024 Thames Water discharged nearly 300,000 hours of sewage, which is 50% up on 2023. It is illegal to dump sewage in dry conditions, but it is happening repeatedly. Professor Peter Hammond, who lives in my constituency, monitored the Stanton Harcourt sewage treatment works in my constituency, and found that there had been 266 illegal spills in just a single sewage treatment works in a four- year period. That is a complete failure of that operating requirement.

Secondly, Thames Water is failing the financial viability requirement, under which it is required to have two licences of investment-grade credit ratings. Currently, it has no credit ratings that are investment grade. Standard & Poor’s has the company’s debt 12 notches below investment grade, and Moody’s has it nine notches below. That is as far deep into junk bond territory as one can get. In the last financial year to March 2024, Thames Water had £19 billion of debt but only £1.2 billion of cash in. Everybody knows that that is not a sensible way to run a company.

By allowing Thames Water to breach that rule, we introduce moral hazard into the water sector and all other regulated sectors. Other water companies take note that there has been no material sanction of Thames Water and realise that they can also likely get away with it. Of the nearly £1.4 billion of funding due to come into the company, £900 million is going straight out in interest expenses, sweet financial goodies for hedge funds, and advisory fees. That is not fair on our bill payers. Customers are being royally stuffed, and Ofwat and the Minister’s DEFRA team are standing by.

Thirdly, there is a requirement to demonstrate fairness, transparency and affordability to customers—the fair pricing requirement—and Thames Water is failing at that too. Bills have gone up by a headline of 31%. Many Witney constituents have written to me with increases of 50% and 70%—in one case, it was even 93%. On top of that, to add insult to injury, Thames Water has an application to the Competition and Markets Authority to increase bills even higher, by 59%.

Fourthly, there is the ownership requirement. This one really gets my goat. Thames Water must inform Ofwat of any change to control. Ultimate controllers are defined in Ofwat’s papers as being

“in a position to control or in a position to materially influence the company”.

Thames Water’s own advisers have publicly stated that the company is de facto controlled by its creditors. Ofwat is ignoring this. Extraordinarily, Ofwat, wrote to me in the last month to say that, despite it being publicly stated in the press that Omers, a shareholder in Thames Water, had written its stake down to zero and pulled its board representation off last May, it is still actually controlling the company. Why is this going on? What could be going on here? It smells—

[Luke Taylor]

It smells like—

[Charlie Maynard]

Yes, it does. I think Ofwat is doing exactly what the company’s creditors want it to do, and I wonder why that is happening, because it should not be.

Finally, there is a failure to innovate. There are a host of technologies out there, and far too often we hear the same old lines about Victorian sewers, cameras and how impossible it all is. There is a huge range of leak detection, pipeline monitoring, protective maintenance, trenchless pipe repair and pressure management technologies. I hear from Oxfordshire firms that it is easier to sell sewer technology solutions into the US and Europe than into the UK, so something is going seriously wrong. We could start by looking at whether the incentives are effectively aligned; I do not believe they are.

What are the consequences of this failure to act? It is easy to lay a lot of the blame at the last Government, but the Water (Special Measures) Act 2025 was more window dressing than action. I am new to Parliament, but I was particularly dismayed that not a single word of a single proposed amendment from any party was accepted by the Minister. I wish that in Parliament we all had enough confidence to accept good ideas where we found them—I live in hope.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Emma Hardy)]

On that point, the hon. Gentleman is incorrect. Actually, compromise amendments were reached on a few occasions, so I want to gently push back on what he says. Cross-party amendments in the other place, where the Bill began, were discussed and accepted, so it is factually incorrect to say that no amendments were accepted.

[Charlie Maynard]

None of the 60 amendments in the Commons, or however many there were, was accepted. The rejected proposals included putting flow meters on the outflows of sewage treatment works, which is sort of logical; establishing targets to reduce pollution over time, using existing benchmarks of hours of spilled sewage; making sewage treatment works’ calculations more transparent; and bringing environmental experts and consumer representatives on to water boards.

The Labour Government are now allowing a public utility company to line the pockets of bankers and hedge funds at the expense of bill payers. As someone said in the Financial Times this week,

“with water, it’s a total monopoly and a total shambles. A shambopoly if you will”.

The Government’s support for Thames Water essentially amounts to unconditional support for the company’s creditors, at a direct and massive cost to its customers.

What do we need to do instead? First, we need to put the company out of its financial misery and put it into special administration. We should allow its debt to be massively written down to something like three times the cash flow or thereabouts. If the debt is reduced, the company will have a sufficiently strong balance sheet to allow it to invest in the infrastructure we desperately need and to spend our bill payments on fixing treatment works and pipe networks, rather than paying interest. We should allow water companies coming out of special administration to be mutually owned by their customers and professionally managed. We should set pollution baselines and pollution reduction targets and get serious about putting transparency targets and technology to work to clean up our rivers.

Special administration is clearly the most logical option at the moment, but I believe that the Government are shying away from it because of threats of legal action against them, phantasmagorical scenarios of financial Armageddon, or both. Please do not let Thames Water’s lobbyists, including Ruth Kelly, the ex-Labour Minister who is now chair of Water UK, to scaremonger you out of taking the action that 16 million consumers—your electorate—need. Those scenarios are patently not true, and it is best to ask Thames Water about that. As per page 92 of the independent expert report from Thames Water’s adviser, Teneo, the net cost to the Treasury of taking the company into special administration, even in the worst-case scenario, is zero—please look it up.

Instead, we now have this bizarre situation whereby a Labour Government are cheerleading the American hedge funds and private equity funds taking over our largest water company and making a massive profit out of its customers. What goes for Thames Water will very likely go for the rest of the sector, so the signal that you and your Government are sending the sector—

[Emma Lewell (in the Chair)]

Order. I do not wish to spoil the hon. Gentleman’s flow, but we use the same conventions in Westminster Hall as in the main Chamber. You should not use the words “you” or “your” unless you are referring to me.

[Charlie Maynard]

Many apologies to you, Ms Lewell, and to the Minister.

The signal that the Minister and the Government are sending to this and other regulated sectors is simply terrible. All that customers in my Witney constituency and across the whole catchment really want at this point is reliable, affordable, clean water to our homes. We want local rivers and lakes not to have sewage poured into them on a near-daily basis. We want a Government who are serious about putting the interests of customers and our rivers before the interests of hedge funds and private equity funds. Please stop letting us down.

15:49

[Robbie Moore (Keighley and Ilkley) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Lewell. I thank the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Luke Taylor) for securing this really important debate. It was good to listen to all the contributions. As we all know, water is vital and we use it every single day, so it is deeply concerning that we have such great challenges in our water industry, particularly those that have been highlighted with Thames Water.

Under the last Government, we uncovered the true extent of the issues with our water system by increasing the monitoring of storm overflows, which no political party or Administration had previously attempted. Back in 2010, just 7% of storm overflows were monitored, but when we left office, 100% were monitored. That gave the Government and our regulators a proper and true understanding of the way in which those storm overflows were being used by our water companies.

[John Lamont]

I pay tribute to all the work that my hon. Friend did as a Minister. He has highlighted the percentage of overflows that are now being monitored in England. I am sure he is aware of research by Surfers Against Sewage confirming that 100% of storm overflows in England are now being monitored. In Scotland, the figure is only 4%. Does that not show the huge difference between what is happening here in England, which is not ideal by any stretch of the imagination, and what is happening in Scotland, which is far, far worse?

[Robbie Moore]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. Yes, that is the point: for any Government, regardless of political colour or make-up, to deal with the challenge, they need to understand the true extent of what they are dealing with.

It is frustrating that north of the border only 4% of storm overflows are being monitored. In reference to what is happening with Scottish Water, and to what the devolved Administration north of the border are doing in the Scottish Parliament to tackle challenges of pollution, how can any proper strategy be put in place with no reference point? That is why it is important to get to the 100% level of monitoring that we now have in England, which resulted in the last Administration being able to roll out the plan for water, which was about stronger regulation, tougher enforcement and more investment.

The hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam mentioned the Thames tideway, which has 25 km of underground capacity that has now been extended from Acton to Abbey Mills. A £5 billion investment has been put into the project, which is now fully operational, having opened in February; I was lucky enough to visit and to go down into it before it was opened. The great thing about the project is that it is now draining about 34 of the most polluting combined sewer overflows in the Thames area, which will help to improve the quality of the water in the Thames.

The hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam rightly raised the concerns about increasing water bills, the lack of trust in Thames Water and the poor level of service that his constituents are experiencing. The hon. Member for Twickenham (Munira Wilson) picked up on the same issues and referred to the meeting that I had with her and with the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Sarah Olney), in the short period for which I was lucky enough to be a Minister in the Department, about the challenges with the Teddington project. I urge the Minister to address those concerns, because challenges arise when there is no proper environmental impact assessment. Concern about the project is rightly being raised—it was certainly a concern that I had—so I urge the Minister to continue to put pressure on Thames Water.

The hon. Member for Clapham and Brixton Hill (Bell Ribeiro-Addy) rightly raised the concerns of constituents on Clarence Avenue and in Brixton, relating to water shortages resulting from Thames Water not carrying out its duty to the level of quality that her constituents expect. She also raised concerns about the bill increases of approximately 30% or 31% for some of her constituents.

The hon. Member for Richmond Park mentioned the statutory duties that a water company is bound to meet and referred to the poor satisfaction levels that Thames Water is delivering. The hon. Member for Swindon North (Will Stone) rightly raised the challenges that his constituents are experiencing with flooding, and Thames Water’s refusal to take responsibility. Finally, the hon. Member for Bexleyheath and Crayford (Daniel Francis) mentioned challenges relating to Thames Water’s bill increases and the poor service that his constituents experience.

Thames Water is probably the most distressing example of our water system going wrong. Bills are rising by about 33% this year, but unfortunately the Government have failed to take serious action and consumers are paying for it. That comes in addition to the pressures of the cost of living, council tax rises and so on. Rightly, there is huge frustration that Thames Water shareholders have simply wrung the business dry of capital, failed to invest to expand its supply, and failed to invest to clean up sewage spills. Thames Water’s exceptionally poor level of service deliverability has already been mentioned.

The last Administration took steps to address the challenges that constituents and residents face not only in the Thames Water area, but across England. We blocked bosses’ bonuses for water company executives, we ensured that dividends had to be linked specifically to environmental performance and we introduced unlimited civil fines by removing the £250,000 cap. More power was awarded to Ofwat so that it could impose levies on water companies in the circumstances. In August last year, Thames Water was fined £104 million for its failure to avoid sewage overflows. In other instances Thames Water was put under a cash lock-up, which prevents any dividends from being paid out without Ofwat’s approval.

[Bell Ribeiro-Addy]

How much of the fine that the hon. Gentleman mentioned has Thames Water actually paid? How was it allowed to pay out all these dividends in previous years, given the measures that he is setting out? I genuinely cannot understand how that was allowed to continue for so long.

[Robbie Moore]

That brings me nicely to my next point, which is the strength of the regulator. Ofwat has the powers to link dividends to environmental performance —a measure that was awarded to Ofwat—and to ban bosses’ bonuses for executives, but those powers are there should Ofwat wish to use them. What is the Minister doing to ensure that Ofwat is using the powers that it has been awarded, and to ensure that it is being robust in its actions as the regulator? Many hon. Members have rightly raised concerns that Ofwat has not been robust enough.

Much has been said in this debate about nationalising our water industry and particularly Thames Water, but it is false to assume that a struggling private company will cease to struggle purely because it changes hands. Indebtedness does not go away because a company is nationalised—not without a taxpayer-funded bailout, which would mean redress for the failures of Thames Water executives coming out of the pockets of working people. I mention again the example of Scottish Water, north of the border. There have been myriad mistakes at Thames Water, but it is the responsibility of the independent regulator, Ofwat, to right those wrongs and use the powers that have been awarded to it.

[Bell Ribeiro-Addy]

I have to ask the hon. Member why he is so against the idea of nationalising water. I am sure he agrees that the whole idea of privatisation is that there is some sort of competition, but there cannot be competition with water, and therefore we cannot guarantee a good service. We are seeing that at the moment, and we saw it under the Conservative Government for a number of years. Does he understand why privatisation cannot really work in this instance?

[Robbie Moore]

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention, but I simply refer to the fact that since privatisation about £250 billion of private investment has been put into our water companies, not only to improve infrastructure but to help with service delivery—£250 billion that would otherwise have had to come from the taxpayer.

My second point is that the system should work if the regulator is being robust enough. The point that I come back to is that there is a clear argument that the regulator, Ofwat, has not been sufficiently utilising the powers awarded to it by the Government, and therefore it is right that the Government hold it to account to make it as robust as possible. North of the border in Scotland, with Scottish Water, only 4% of storm overflows are even being monitored, and the service and delivery that Scottish residents are facing is in some cases far worse than what we are experiencing from Thames Water. Simply having a nationalisation strategy does not demonstrate better roll-out and service delivery for customers.

There have been myriad mistakes at Thames Water, but it is the responsibility of the independent regulator, Ofwat, to right those wrongs.

[Charlie Maynard]

Could the hon. Member elaborate a little bit on that £250 billion number and where it comes from?

[Robbie Moore]

It is a figure that has been referenced since nationalisation initially took place, and has been well recognised as the amount of money that has been invested into our water companies by the private sector, for the benefit not only of Thames Water but of all the water companies across England.

What is the Minister doing to ensure that Ofwat is utilising the powers awarded to it, and does she have confidence in Ofwat being able to exercise its function? If not, what is the Minister doing about it? Furthermore, the Government need to take action to further protect consumers from the Thames Water fallout. The court settlement that Thames Water secured in February is designed to give everyone involved time to come to a sustainable plan, but I hope that the Minister will be able to reassure us today that her efforts are firmly going towards ensuring that the plan protects consumers.

Finally, I would like to talk about the broader reforms and support that we can offer our water industry. As I and others have rightly said throughout this debate, our water industry is crying out for further investment. We need to think further about how to utilise the opportunities for the water sector across the country. To that end, what consideration is the Minister giving to providing more opportunities for individuals and organisations outside of major water companies to influence improving the water sector, and has she considered the untapped potential to increase water supply and capacity to the thousands of people who are utilising water, and the hundreds of landowners out there who, with the right financial and planning incentives, may choose to further invest in the water industry? That may be an avenue that the Minister may wish to explore.

I again thank the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam for securing this important debate.

16:03

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Emma Hardy)]

It is a real pleasure to see you in the Chair, Ms Lewell. I wish you, and anybody celebrating, a very happy Easter—I hope that it is a peaceful and enjoyable day. I thank the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Luke Taylor) for securing this debate and giving us space and time to discuss this important issue.

I hope that I can use this debate as an opportunity to address some of the concerns being voiced around Thames Water and the water industry. Since I am feeling rather positive and getting ready for Easter, instead of “10 things I hate about”, I would rather come up with 10 things that might give us reason for hope and renewal in the water industry. To give 10 reasons for hope, since we have been elected we have: one, introduced the Water (Special Measures) Act 2025 to ban bonuses; two, with the Water (Special Measures) Act, introduced criminal liability; three, introduced automatic penalties; four, set up the independent commission; five, changed the articles of association; six, ringfenced money for investment; seven, doubled the compensation for burst pipes, which has come up through the guaranteed standards scheme; eight, created customer panels for water companies; nine, passed bathing water reforms; 10, published storm overflow guidance just last week. And this new Labour Government have not even been in office for a year.

Thinking of fairness and justice, I generally have an aversion to criticising people who cannot be here to defend themselves, so I want to reflect on the comment made about Ruth Kelly. She works for Water UK; she does not work for Thames Water, so characterising her as a defender of Thames Water is not entirely correct.

[Charlie Maynard]

Will the Minister give way?

[Emma Hardy]

I am happy to, if the hon. Member wishes to retract his comment.

[Charlie Maynard]

To be clear, I said that Ruth Kelly is the chair of Water UK—I said exactly that.

[Emma Hardy]

Perhaps I misunderstood the hon. Member as also saying that she is a defender of, or a spokesperson for, Thames Water. I am happy for him to retract his comment.

[Charlie Maynard]

I said that she is the chair of Water UK, which is the trade body for water companies, so I think that follows.

[Emma Hardy]

I am pleased by what I believe I have heard: that no reference was made to Ruth Kelly with regard to Thames Water; instead, the comment was solely about her representing Water UK.

Further to my point about people who are not here and unable to defend themselves, as a trade unionist I want to talk about the people who work for water companies, including those who work for Thames Water and go out to fix the broken pipes, clean up sewage and deal with the sewage overspills. I have had reports from some unions that those people often face abuse for doing so. They are often on the frontline facing people angry with the company. I would like to say—and I hope we have unity on this point—that the people going out, cleaning up the mess and dealing with the difficulties are not responsible. They are not Thames Water; they are people who work for it. I thank them for the work that they do in incredibly difficult circumstances.

[Luke Taylor]

I think we would all agree on that. It was interesting to see, in the BBC documentary, that the people who work at Thames Water clearly wanted to do a good job. They wanted to improve things for residents—their neighbours, family and friends—but just did not have the chance to do so because of the structure of the company and the difficulties that it is in. This debate is about the need to help not only the customers—our residents—but the workers who want to be doing so much better and find it so dispiriting to be part of that failing organisation.

[Emma Hardy]

I completely agree. They are trying to do a good job. I add that it is a good industry to work in; the people in it have long careers and, I might add, excellent trade union representation. I am not sure that I will have complete support from everyone in the room on that point—just when I was doing so well—but I want to echo that it is not those people’s responsibility.

My hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Mr Dhesi), who is no longer in his place, was right to say that customers and the environment should be at the heart of reforms. As I mentioned, we changed the articles of association to put customers on to the boards. My hon. Friend is always incredibly caring about his residents, so I wanted to mention to him and to all the other hon. Members that we are holding the water companies to account to end water poverty by 2030. We are just about to consult—we have to wait for purdah—on changing the rules around WaterSure to extend eligibility for it.

I am pleased that my hon. Friend the Member for Clapham and Brixton Hill (Bell Ribeiro-Addy) enjoyed her three years in Yorkshire. It is a fine and wonderful part of the country, and she is always welcome to come back. She is an incredible champion for her community. I am sure that she will never need my assistance in standing up for that community, but I am always happy to give it if she does.

My hon. Friend the Member for Swindon North (Will Stone) highlighted the role that MPs can play. He showed what a good choice was made in the last election to send him here as a representative for his community. I thank him for his support for the Water (Special Measures) Act and for the further work that we are doing on regulators.

The hon. Members for Twickenham (Munira Wilson) and for Richmond Park (Sarah Olney) talked about the Teddington abstraction scheme. Without going into loads of detail, there will be a consultation, and they will be able to feed in the concerns of their residents and environmental concerns. But if either of the hon. Members feel that their concerns, or those of their residents, are not being listened to, I am happy to make arrangements for us to sit and have a longer conversation about that.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bexleyheath and Crayford (Daniel Francis) mentioned a family of four struggling with their water bill. I again highlight WaterSure. We are looking to expand eligibility for it, but at the moment, if a family has three or more children under the age of 18 living at the property and they claim child benefit, they will be eligible for WaterSure, so I urge my hon. Friend to pass that information on to his constituents. I thank him for his support for the Water (Special Measures) Act, the commission and our desire to introduce change.

Before turning to Thames Water, I want to emphasise that as a Government we recognise that the water sector is facing many challenges, and we have set out ambitious plans to tackle those challenges head-on, but it is important also to emphasise that resolving them will require long-term and transformative change. One thing mentioned here—I think by the loyal Opposition—is that there is no silver bullet or quick fix for some of the problems that we face.

We recently took the Water (Special Measures) Act through Parliament; it was amended in the other place. It will drive meaningful improvements in the performance and culture of the water industry and act as a first step in enabling wider and transformative change across the water sector. The Act delivers on the Government’s manifesto commitments by blocking bonuses for executives who pollute our waterways, enabling the bringing of criminal charges against persistent lawbreakers, enabling automatic and severe fines for wrongdoing, and ensuring monitoring of every sewage outlet.

In October we launched, in collaboration with the Welsh Government, an independent commission on the water sector regulatory system. This is the largest review of the water industry since privatisation. The commission will report in the middle of this year and make recommendations on how to tackle systemic issues in the water sector to help restore our rivers, lakes and seas to good health, meet the challenges of the future and contribute to economic growth. Those recommendations will form the basis of further legislation to attract long-term investment and clean up our waters for good.

I now turn to Thames Water specifically before moving on to the sector as a whole. I will say as much as I am able to about Thames Water, bearing in mind that it is going through a confidential process. I completely understand what has been said. Let me say at the beginning that I am not here as the hon. Member for Thames Water, and I am not here to defend the actions of Thames Water. I want to reassure and, I hope, send a message to the general public that we are monitoring the situation and the company remains stable. In the event of special administration, the taps will still function and the sewage will still be taken—I want that message to be heard by the general public—so there is no need for alarm. The people working for the company will continue to be paid in the event of special administration. As a responsible Government, we are preparing for every eventuality. However, at the moment the company remains stable.

I think it is incorrect to say that we are “resisting” special administration. That would be a total mischaracterisation of what special administration is and the process of entering the special administration regime. It is not that we are resisting anything. A special administration order is a well-established mechanism to ensure that the company continues to operate and that customers continue to receive their water and wastewater services, so customers need not be concerned about any disruption to their water supply or wastewater services because of the financial position of their water company. The provision of water and wastewater services will continue.

Special administration is the ultimate enforcement tool in the regulatory toolkit, and as such, the bar is set high. The law is clear—this obviously links to insolvency legislation—and states that special administration can be initiated only if the company becomes insolvent, can no longer fulfil its statutory duties or seriously breaches an enforcement order. Only in that scenario does the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs or Ofwat—crucially, with the consent of the Secretary of State—have the power to request the court to place a company in a special administration regime. If that situation arises, the court must be satisfied that there is sufficient evidence to demonstrate that the water company in question is insolvent, can no longer seriously fulfil its primary statutory duties, or has seriously breached an enforcement order. It will then make a special administration order, appointing a special administrator.

That is a hypothetical situation. It is not, I stress, the situation that we are talking about now, but let us say that somebody said, “We want to put this company into special administration”; the decision then would be made by the court, and the court would need to be satisfied that there is the evidence to put that company into special administration.

[Bell Ribeiro-Addy]

I thank the Minister for her attention to this situation, but I have to ask on behalf of my constituents, how much more does Thames Water have to fail before we decide that it is no longer fit to operate? The level of failure is so high that, although I appreciate what the Minister says about following the letter of the law, people simply will not understand.

[Emma Hardy]

I want to stress that although that is the legal process for entering special administration, that does not mean for one second that we are satisfied with the performance of the company as a whole. But there is a wealth of difference between the court-sanctioned process of going into special administration and the Government taking action. There are many things on which we want to take action. In fact, the whole purpose of the commission is to look at the way in which companies are set up and how we got into this position in the first place. It might interest the Opposition that some of the rules and regulations around Ofwat were relaxed in 2014—under the coalition Government.

It is not as though we are completely satisfied with everything, and that is why we are not doing SA. What I am saying is that SA is an ultimate enforcement tool; it is a serious step to take and it is sanctioned by the courts, but that does not mean that we are not doing anything else in between. We are taking a lot of other actions, but I wanted to address the specific point around why we are not pushing the company into special administration.

[Charlie Maynard]

I want to play back what the Minster just said. It is up to either Ofwat or the Secretary of State to apply to the court to put the company into special administration. As the Minister wrote to me last July or September, one of those conditions is whether the company is unable, or likely to be unable, to pay its debts. Given that the company has come out and said that it has only £39 million, with £19.5 billion of debt, and it is going to run out of money by 24 March, I think that we have passed that benchmark pretty clearly. The idea that we have not is simply not true. It is therefore up to Ofwat or the Secretary of State, who continues to decline—maybe that is a better word than resist—to ask the court to consider.

[Emma Hardy]

With respect, I think that we have different interpretations of the truth. We are saying that the company can enter SA if it is insolvent. Thames Water is not at the point of insolvency. My message to the public and to people working in the company is that the company remains stable at the moment; however, as a responsible Government, we are preparing for every eventuality.

I want to talk about broader commitments to financial stability and the independent commission. For me, this debate highlights how important it is to address the financial resilience of the water sector. We are talking specifically about Thames Water, but that does not mean that everything else is a bed of roses. Some historical decisions made by companies on debt levels have left them badly financially exposed. Those decisions often coincided with moves towards more complex ownership structures and the involvement of firms with shorter-term horizons.

We recognise that the Government have an important role to play in setting a regulatory framework that encourages a stable water sector. In hindsight, many might question the 2014 changes to make Ofwat a lighter-touch regulator. The Independent Water Commission is exploring how the Government could provide the regulatory structure that most people in the Chamber recognise that we need. The call for evidence is currently live, seeking views from stakeholders on improvements that could be made to economic regulation across a number of areas. As always, we welcome contributions from everybody across the House. The call for evidence closes on 23 April, and I encourage all interested parties to respond to the commission’s questions on these topics via DEFRA’s online consultation tool, Citizen Space.

I conclude by reiterating that both the Government and Ofwat are carefully monitoring the situation with Thames Water.

[John Lamont]

I want to pick up on my point about Scotland. Some Members have been advocating for nationalisation. Does the Minister have any thoughts on that, and have the current Government looked at what is happening in Scotland? Scottish Water, by many standards, is performing even less well than Thames Water. But Scottish Water is state-owned. Its chief executive is paid £290,000. The model in Scotland is not something that I would encourage the Minister to look at—I am not saying that she is—but I would be keen to have her reflections.

[Emma Hardy]

Water is devolved, and I completely respect the autonomy of the Scottish Parliament to make those decisions. The Government have been clear that we are not looking at nationalisation, simply because of the cost, the time it would take and the legal complications. My focus is quite simply on what I can do to improve the situation that we currently face. There is a lot of consensus around looking at regulation and how effective, or not, it is at the moment, and what can be changed. That is where I have put all my focus. Nationalisation was ruled out of the Independent Water Commission; however, all other forms of ownership are allowed within the terms of reference.

It is for the companies to resolve their financial resilience issues within the context of their licence and broader statutory obligations. However, I must be clear: the Government are prepared for all scenarios across our regulated industries, as any responsible Government would be. This new Government are committed to turning around the water sector—I refer back to my 10 reasons for hope before Easter—which will be achieved through practical measures to clean up illegal sewage dumping and attracting major private sector investment to upgrade infrastructure while prioritising the interests, as we have mentioned, of customers and our beautiful environment.

16:21

[Luke Taylor]

At a Sutton council meeting before the 2024 election, I made it clear that if two Liberal Democrat MPs were elected in Sutton, we would hold Thames Water to account for its mockery of our residents. I am proud to stand here today to start delivering on that promise.

I thank all hon. Members around the Chamber for their contributions. The hon. Member for Slough (Mr Dhesi) is not in his place, but his interventions about the worries of his constituents show how hard he is working for them. I thank the hon. Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (John Lamont); he invites me to make a suggestion about the Administration in Scotland, and how nationalising and giving a toy to the SNP might not be the best idea in any circumstances—a change of Administration might be beneficial for all of us. I thank the hon. Member for Clapham and Brixton Hill (Bell Ribeiro-Addy) for her reports on the regular leaks and disruptions, and share her anger at the shareholders and financial chicanery used to extract money from our most important utility—although I will try to scrub my mind of the image of the cherry on the sewage cake.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Sarah Olney) and agree that special administration is needed, as Thames Water is understaffed and utterly demoralised. I also thank the hon. Member for Swindon North (Will Stone) and agree that the company is failing on every level. That highlights the area that Thames Water covers, all the way from my constituency in south-west London to Swindon North. The destruction of natural habitats under Thames Water is heartbreaking, and the story of his intervention for his constituents shows how comprehensive the failures are.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham (Munira Wilson), who mentioned how public trust has been undermined as residents see an increase in bills. I note her comments about the Teddington direct river abstraction site, and am also glad to learn that the Ham Lands are safely under Liberal Democrat control once again. I also note her frustration and worry about the failed infrastructure projects under Thames Water, and I worry about any investment in infrastructure plans that are not doing what they are supposed to.

I thank the hon. Member for Bexleyheath and Crayford (Daniel Francis) and share his frustration at his town centre being blocked and closed for months due to the water leaks; I can only imagine the incredible disruption to his residents and his frustration on their behalf. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Charlie Maynard) and agree that further support would be breaching Ofwat guidance and rules, and that Thames Water is failing on all accounts. I thank him for his hard work on holding Thames Water to account and revealing its astonishing financial situation—it is truly terrifying. I am heartbroken that I am only the second person to get into Hansard a “shambopoly”, which I hope will become a new byword for the situation that Thames Water enjoys.

I thank my old friend, the hon. Member for Keighley and Ilkley (Robbie Moore), for his contribution, and acknowledge the efforts of the last Government to monitor sewage outflows. Understanding and quantifying the problem is the first step to resolving it. Once again, I note the discrepancy with the Administration north of the border. I also thank the hon. Member for his welcome words on the Teddington direct river abstraction project.

I welcome the Minister, and thank her for coming to this place and taking part in the discussion. I admire her ability to find 10 things that the Labour Government have achieved with the water industry, but a common refrain on this side of the House will be “We need to do more, and we need to do it faster.” It is good to hear about the consultation on the Teddington project, which will reassure many of my colleagues. I also welcome her reassurance for residents that, whatever happens, their water will continue to flow, as will their sewage.

However, none of the measures implemented fundamentally changes the status quo with Thames Water or puts a permanent fix in place. I recognise that the Government and the Minister are limited in what they can do, but special administration is surely the last throw of the dice to save Thames Water. I repeat the query from around the Chamber: if not now, when?

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered Government support for Thames Water.

16:26

Sitting adjourned.