Independent Water Commission

Debate between Baroness Hayman of Ullock and Lord Kirkhope of Harrogate

Wednesday 23rd July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

The noble Lord makes an extremely good point. Part of the reason why we have got into this mess is the focus on keeping bills low. People do not want to pay high bills, but if you are constantly putting pressure on that and not investing in the infrastructure, that is when you end up with a lot of these problems. That is why in PR24 we gave the most investment ever—to try to turn around some of the problems. The noble Lord makes a good point about what we need to look at going forward, in order to ensure that we do not have these sorts of problems in the future. He is absolutely right that this needs to be part of what we look at following the White Paper. I would be very happy if he has any ideas to share with me following his experience with Ofgem. That would be very interesting.

[Lord Kirkhope of Harrogate (Con)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as a former water company director—one involved in clean water only, not wastewater. In the speech made on Monday by the Secretary of State, he made it clear as a priority that the customer would come first in all these considerations. The customer matters more than everybody else in terms of the environmental effects and, in particular, in the pricing of this utility. There is a price review going on. Can the Minister confirm that the role of the ombudsman, certainly in the pricing review, will give priority to pricing because of the incredible increases recently in water bills? In particular, will standing charges be looked at thoroughly because, in many cases of low consumption, the standing charge has become an enormous impediment in an awful lot of people’s water bills?

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

My right honourable friend said in his speech down the other end that the new regulator

“will stand firmly on the side of customers, investors and the environment and prevent the abuses of the past”.

That basically demonstrates that we need to look at the big picture about what went wrong in the past and what we need to do to rectify it in the future. I am sure that we can look at the noble Lord’s suggestions as we move forward to ensure that we have regulation and pricing that are fit for purpose.

Plastic Pollution

Debate between Baroness Hayman of Ullock and Lord Kirkhope of Harrogate

Tuesday 1st July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

That is a really important question. We are high ambition, but we are working closely with low-ambition countries—some are developed countries, and there are others such as the Gulf states. We made progress previously, and it is important that we continue to do so. We are doing a number of things, particularly Minister Hardy as the leader on this. She is working closely with others to develop a shared position on how we can finance the treaty and take the lead on engaging with the private sector, for example. We are doing some co-leading work with Chile to progress discussions on product design. We are co-leading work with Panama on releases and leakages of plastic. Minister Hardy co-hosted a ministerial event at the UN Ocean Conference to bring together Ministers from a range of countries with different positions and ambition levels to look at how we can move forward. She hosted an interesting round table last week attended by His Excellency Ambassador Vayas, who is the INC chair. There is a lot of work going on behind the scenes to ensure we get the best possible result out of next month’s conference.

[Lord Kirkhope of Harrogate (Con)]

My Lords, plastic pollution starts with packaging. Will the Minister therefore join me in commending the British retail sector, which has done so much, particularly recently, to produce packaging of a better environmental nature for recycling and to draw to the attention of all customers who visit retail outlets the benefits of these improvements?

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

I am very happy to commend any producer or retailer that wants to reduce the amount of damaging plastic that goes into our environment. The noble Lord is right: a lot of work has been done in recent years by some very forward-looking companies. However, there is still far too much plastic going into our environment. We have to do more to progress this. Others have to come on board, which is why I am really pleased that the UK has been absolutely clear that the treaty should address the full cycle of plastic, including sustainable production and consumption.