South West Water: Brixham Contamination

Debate between Lord Whitty and Lord Douglas-Miller

Wednesday 22nd May 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Douglas-Miller (Con)]

I completely concur with my noble friend that it is critical that we get to the bottom of what has happened to have generated this outbreak of cryptosporidium. It is currently far too early to know the exact cause of the outbreak. South West Water is continuing its investigations to confirm the source of the contamination. The Drinking Water Inspectorate has initiated its investigation into the cause, extent and actions of the company and begun collecting evidence on site. I should point out that it is the Drinking Water Inspectorate which is taking the lead on this investigation.

[Lord Whitty (Lab)]

My Lords, is not this instance a failure of the central role of the water companies to deliver clean and healthy water to every household? In the days before privatisation, we used to pride ourselves on our water and decry foreign water. Whether that was true or not, this is a central failure of regulation. There are three regulators of the water industry. We need to have a new start on regulation of water, with a single regulator for it, if we are not to have renationalisation. On the point of renationalisation, I know that my Front Bench, as well as the Government, are not in favour of it, but I note that the largest shareholder in Thames Water wrote down its shareholding to nil. If the rest of the shareholders, which are very guilty in this, did the same then the cost of nationalisation would be pretty small.

[Lord Douglas-Miller (Con)]

The noble Lord is quite right that the Canadian pension fund’s owners wrote down the value of its shareholding in Thames Water to zero, but that of course does not mean that it is zero. I am not sure that would help him in terms of its privatisation.