Independent Water Commission

Duke of Wellington Excerpts

Tuesday 29th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

The commission will focus on regulation, among other things, and I urge noble Lords to input into that part. Clearly, regulation is an area of particular concern. We need to look at how it was possible for water companies to have managed to get into such appalling debt; the commission will want to look at that very carefully.

[The Duke of Wellington (CB)]

My Lords, I said yesterday in Committee on the Water Bill that I very much welcome this review and congratulate the Government on having instituted it. Perhaps I could probe the Minister on a particular point about the structure of regulation. In the other place last week, the Secretary of State said:

“The Commission will conduct a root-and-branch review of the water sector’s regulatory system”.—[Official Report, Commons, 23/10/24; col. 280.]


However, in the press release, among the listed objectives of the commission are:

“Better regulation: rationalising and clarifying requirements for companies … Empowered regulators: ensuring regulators are effective in holding water companies accountable”.


I hope that within the scope of the commission is the question of whether the structure of regulation is correct, in that it is divided principally between Ofwat and the Environment Agency, and whether it would not be more appropriate to have a single regulator for such an important group of monopoly companies.