Water Companies: Financial Resilience

Baroness Blower Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd July 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

Currently, the regulator is working with the company to look at the best way forward, and the company is looking for further investment.

[Baroness Blower (Lab)]

My Lords, speaking as a Thames Water customer who is not very confident or happy, I was pleased to hear that I might at least have drinking water going forward. All water companies are using financial engineering to overstate their investment and capacity to pay dividends. They all capitalise part of their interest payments, which is, frankly, a highly imprudent policy and was a major reason for the collapse of Carillion. Are the Government content with that?

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

There are clearly serious problems in the water industry that have been building up for a number of years. We are looking at all options and ways forward to improve the situation, and, clearly, modelling of how companies operate will be part of those discussions.

Right to Roam

Baroness Blower Excerpts

Wednesday 21st February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Douglas-Miller (Con)]

The noble Lord is quite right that local authorities have that responsibility. I can certainly take away his suggestion that we provide additional funding for that, but it is not part of the programme at the moment.

[Baroness Blower (Lab)]

My Lords, given what we know about the parlous state of the mental health of children and young people, and what we know about the restorative properties of spending time in green space and open countryside, does the Minister agree that getting on with this should be done expeditiously and urgently?

[Lord Douglas-Miller (Con)]

I completely agree with the noble Baroness on the restorative qualities of access to nature, for not just young people but people of any age. The Government have spent considerable amounts of money on improving access for the public to not just our urban spaces but wider spaces, with the creation of new national parks and other areas. I completely agree with the noble Baroness on her point.

Water Companies: Customer Bills

Baroness Blower Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd May 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

The noble Baroness makes a good point, because the activities within Parliament and outside it on this issue have really struck home, and people are, rightly, demanding that we take into account the impact of development and growing populations on the health of our rivers. It is not just water companies; it is agriculture and the connections we all make from our sewers and septic tanks that are causing problems for our rivers. So she is absolutely right: we need to ensure that we are tackling those things, and it is right that the water companies are recognising that. Those four companies should be applauded for doing it, but we want to see much more investment from them, and that is what the Government are driving.

[Baroness Blower (Lab)]

My Lords, water companies have borrowed £56 billion, even though investment has declined in real terms. Water bills include about £80 to cover interest payments. However, much of the debt is actually intra-group and is used to shift profits and dodge corporate tax. That much was acknowledged by Michael Gove in a speech on 1 March 2018. Can the Minister explain why the Government have failed to curb customer and tax abuses by water companies?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I am concerned about making sure that water companies spend money on infrastructure that is needed to clean up our rivers and environment. We have to ask ourselves what the best model is of doing that, and one that encourages investment into this country from sovereign wealth funds and other countries around the world as well as pension funds and investments based here is surely a good way of doing it. The model is right. The alternative would mean that the water companies would have to sit outside the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s office in a queue behind the health service, the police and the Armed Forces. Does the noble Baroness honestly believe that there would be more investment through a system of public sector borrowing, rather than getting this kind of investment flowing into our infrastructure?

Clean Air (Human Rights) Bill [HL]

Baroness Blower Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 8th July 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Blower (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Worthington, and I fulsomely congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, on bringing forward this Bill, which I wholeheartedly support.

Asthma, as we have heard from other noble Lords, is a significant cause of school absence. Asthma caused by air pollution causes absence among both children and teachers and, although I cannot give the numbers, I know this anecdotally from having worked in many London schools. The noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, made reference to the hospital stays to which children are often subject because of their asthma. We all know that there are hospital education services that try to ensure that education continues while children are hospitalised, but of course we do not want children in hospital because of clearly avoidable issues. Making our air clean would avoid these issues.

I am a member of Education International, the global union federation for education workers. We always assert that education is a human and civil right, and indeed a public good. If that is true—as I believe it is—then children and all those who work with them in education need to be able to breathe clean air so that they can access that absolute right to education. It is within our grasp to move further on this Bill to ensure that no future generations of children suffer with asthma in the way that Ella did—I congratulate her mother on the work she has done—and to ensure that our children grow up breathing clean air. I urge the Government to support and adopt the Bill and bring it to fruition as soon as possible.