Water and Sewage Companies: Directors’ Remuneration

Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts

Thursday 22nd February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Sikka for securing this debate and for his powerful speech, the majority of which I support. Like him, I will make a suggestion, and will add to his contribution—although I suspect that it will not find any great favour with the government spokesperson.

The background to this is that about three weeks ago, our shadow Minister for Defra, Mr Steve Reed MP, came to speak at the Labour Peers group weekly meeting about his Defra brief. As your Lordships might have expected, he talked about the long-standing problems so fully catalogued by my noble friend Lord Sikka: the difficulties faced by not just the Labour Party or other individual parties but the country, due to the water industry’s performance failure. He described issues on which he felt that Labour will have to take firm action. Contrary to the view of the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, there is now a feeling within the country that we need to move away from such privatisations, which are not delivering in the way people thought they would.

I suggested to our shadow Minister that if he was looking to get better performance from the water companies—indeed, there has also been a failing on the part of the regulator—we might look to make changes. A novel way might be for the Labour Party to dust down the programme it ran when it first came to power: public/private partnerships. I speak with some experience in this area; I was appointed government director of the public/private partnership that was established for the National Air Traffic Services. As I saw it, the failing there was too much emphasis on the public side, with government representatives, and not enough involvement of the wider interests that constitute the public interest.

I suggested to the shadow Minister that we explore revamping the public/private partnership concept, and that we look in particular at the public side. Yes, the Government would have a part to play, but we should also involve local authorities and charities. Indeed, we might even contemplate floating shares, so that members of the public with a particular interest, especially those in rural areas, could buy into the public element. We would then end up with 51% owned by the public, constituted in the way I have just described, and a minority shareholding remaining with the existing private owners.

If a privatised company is not performing particularly well—there is certainly one such in this area—it should be told that unless it can improve, meet the legal requirements and act in a much more socially responsible way, it will be faced with a public/private partnership takeover. In this way, we would get better performance from that company, push up overall performance and, in turn, have an impact on the other privatised water companies. However, if they do not respond, we should, in turn, extend PPPs throughout the industry. Indeed, the concept could be applied way beyond just the water industry. Other industries have been privatised, and the performance of some of the companies is pretty abysmal and way below what the public would expect.

The Minister’s response will not, I expect, be of great favour. I am not sure what my Front Bench will say, but I have already run it by our shadow Treasury Minister. I hope that when we write our manifestos, there is a very firm view expressed by the prospective Labour Government about what we need to do within the water industry and that some of it is very much along the lines of what was said by the noble Lord, Lord Sikka.

Water Companies: Pollution

Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

The noble Baroness raises a very severe problem. We rightly hold water companies to account, but they are only part of the problem. Phosphates from the poultry industry have caused rivers such as the Wye—one of the great rivers of our country—to become, in part and at certain times of the year, practically ecologically dead. We have to recognise that there is a planning issue, alongside the way in which we support and incentivise farmers, and the way in which we enforce these issues, which all have to be brought together. We all want to see things such as food security, free-range eggs and broiler houses in this country, but not at the price that we are now paying in rivers such as the Wye.

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)]

My Lords, if we are bringing these all together, what are the Government going to do when they have brought them together?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I refer the noble Lord to the Environment Act as a first measure, probably the most significant piece of environmental legislation that any country has brought forward. That brings with it controls and sanctions, alongside a new statutory policy statement to Ofwat, to give it more powers, higher enforcement fines and many other things that I have already discussed this afternoon. I hope that he can see, on reflection, that there is a plan, and that we are determined to end the shameful situation of illegal outflows into rivers, whether it is from sewage or from illegal pollution coming from farmland.

National Food Strategy Independent Review

Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts

Tuesday 20th July 2021 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they will take in response to the recommendations of the National Food Strategy independent review, published on 15 July.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Benyon) (Con)]

My Lords, we should like to thank Henry Dimbleby and his team for their work on this independent review. We are committed to carefully considering the review and its recommendations and responding with a White Paper in the next six months setting out the Government’s ambition and priorities for the food system. That will support our exceptional British food and drink producers, protecting and enhancing the nation’s health and the natural environment for generations to come.

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for that reply. There was considerable dismay in many quarters last week at the Prime Minister’s public perfunctory dismissal of the National Food Strategy’s recommendations on the need for sugar and salt taxes. Can the Minister ensure that all levels of government understand that the sugar tax on soft drinks that this Government—or, I should say, Mrs May’s Government—introduced in 2018 was seen generally as a success? It did not raise prices but instead encouraged manufacturers to reformulate their products on a healthier basis. Why should the principle of that sugar tax not be extended to help ease the country’s obesity crisis and a salt tax be similarly explored, instead of being so summarily dismissed?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

The noble Lord is absolutely right to say that the soft drinks industry levy—it is not a tax—has been a great success. The sales-weighted average sugar content per 100 millilitres in fizzy drinks reduced by 43.7% between 2015 and 2019. It is worth looking at how Henry Dimbleby has nuanced his recommendations by proposing a look at wholesale sugar and salt used by the industry to make food items that are becoming a serious problem to the health of this country.

Food Supply and Security

Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts

Thursday 14th May 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, for such an all-embracing and spirited introduction to this debate. I greatly sympathise with the Minister’s having to endeavour to reply to all the contributions that have been made. I declare an interest as patron of Sugarwise, a charity committed to reducing sugar in food and drinks and encouraging manufacturers to produce healthy foods within the World Health Organization’s sugar guidelines.

The noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, raised obesity, diabetes and hypertension as issues that have been brought to the forefront as underlying causes of Covid-19 deaths. When we come out of this, we must return to the inadequacy of policies linked to obesity and diabetes and seek ways in which we can strengthen them and encourage our population to move away from what is causing those difficulties.

Much of it comes back to what we eat and drink. A major factor there, which only reluctantly have the Government moved towards addressing, is sugar. I am grateful that they eventually introduced the sugar tax, recognising that there was a significant problem, particularly as it affects children through fizzy drinks. But it affects the whole population, and we need a review to look in a wider way than we have ever done before and address the problems that arise from sugar consumption. My question is a simple one: will the Government review their attitude to sugar and recognise that it is a major factor causing significant problems? Many people would not have died had they not suffered from diabetes and obesity, which come from eating sugar over their lifetimes.