Independent Water Commission

Lord Lennie Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

Any new board must have the right expertise if it is to deliver what we want for the industry. The noble Lord makes a very important point that whatever that expertise is, we must ensure that any future regulatory systems are set up to do the job they are supposed to do and that they have the knowledge, ability and skills to do that effectively. Otherwise, we will end up with a regulator that is, again, ineffective, which is not how we want to move forward.

The noble Lord makes a good point—this will take a long time. I hope the general public recognise that this is a long-term rebuilding programme. We are rebuilding a lot of a very old system, and we must get it right. This is also why will be bringing out the White Paper in the autumn, as quickly as we can, following the publication by the committee. From that, we will do the consultation, which must inform the public of what we are looking to achieve and what the timescales will be.

We want to bring in new legislation as swiftly as practically possible following that White Paper. That will also be part of the discussion on how we bring people with us, because people want to see the water industry cleaned up.

[Lord Lennie (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords—

[Lord in Waiting/Government Whip (Lord Katz) (Lab)]

My Lords, we have 16 minutes, and I am sure that we can all get in. Let us hear from these Benches and then the Opposition Benches.

[Lord Lennie (Lab)]

My Lords, one of the things we discussed in the Climate Change Committee was the performance of the regulator. An issue raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, in her instructive comments, was the revolving door between the water companies and the regulator, in both directions. What action will the Government take to make sure that the door is slammed shut?

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

As I have already said, we must get the regulator right, we must get the boards right, and we must move forward with this. There is no point in making the same mistakes that have been made over a number of years, and in not learning from what went wrong before. Getting the regulator and the boards right will be critical to achieving that.