Water Industry

Debate between Lord Benyon and Deidre Brock

Tuesday 22nd January 2019 Westminster Hall

[Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Gray. I do not have long, so I cannot dwell too much on some of the valuable contributions made by hon. Members, but I commend the hon. Member for Harrow West (Gareth Thomas) for securing this debate. He raised very important points, and I am delighted that they are being addressed in this forum. There was quite a contrast between some of his comments and those of the right hon. Member for Newbury (Richard Benyon), who painted a glowing picture of water privatisation that I find it difficult to recognise.

The right hon. Member for Newbury admitted that he knew little of what was happening in Scotland, which is a surprising admission for a former water Minister, who should surely be prepared to learn best practice from wherever it can be found. After all, we are only up the road, geographically speaking. I hope he will be interested to hear some details in my speech. He also spoke of water being a necessity of life, and I wholeheartedly agree. It is far too important to be subject to a privatised system that gives, as we have heard, a worse service, and that seems to be largely driven by right-wing ideology, rather than what is best for customers.

There has been a lot of enthusiastic talk in this place about taking back control. That sounds strange coming from people who are, by and large, wholehearted supporters of stripping democratically elected Governments of control over the delivery of public resources, instead preferring essential services to be fractured and put into the hands of the private sector. Taking back control of England’s water supplies is an argument that makes a lot of sense to me. People are rightly scunnered by a system that services debt and pays disproportionate dividends through increasing bills for customers. There should be an outcry over the findings of the recent Greenwich University research, which suggested that a staggering £56 billion in dividends was funded through £51 billion, or potentially more, in debts.

Supporters of the privatisation cannot even claim real competition benefits, with most of the water companies operating as regional monopolies. The leakiest pipe in England’s domestic water supply is seemingly one that drains money away to a private stream. A public company, run for the public good, is the best way to end that scandalous rip-off. I welcome the contribution of the campaign led by We Own It to make that happen.

Luckily, as has been mentioned, there is a model close to hand that is working very well—I appreciate the hon. Member for Harrow West mentioning it often—which the UK Government would be very welcome to emulate. As with so many other public services being delivered under devolved Government control, such as the running of prisons or the procurement of NHS contracts, Scotland has chosen a more sensible path wherever it has the powers to do so.

We did not privatise domestic supplies of water, and Scottish Water was established in 2002 as a publicly owned company answerable to Scottish Ministers. Under the Scottish Government’s watch, there has been a focus on driving up standards and keeping charges affordable. We are now reaping the benefits in drinking water quality, environmental performance and customer service.

[Richard Benyon]

One thing I know about Scottish Water is that its leakage level is way above that of the rest of the United Kingdom—I think just shy of 40% of water is lost, compared with about a fifth in England. I wonder whether the hon. Lady would like to comment on that.

[Deidre Brock]

It is interesting. We are, of course, spending considerable amounts of money on addressing that. As I understand it, and I will speak about this later, our service performance is now comparable to the leading UK water companies; on some measures, we outperform them. As we continue to invest, water loss will be driven down. English water companies are having to resort to debt; that is what their investment in infrastructure is largely based on.