Water (Special Measures) Bill [Lords]

Amanda Hack Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 16th December 2024 Commons Chamber

[Amanda Hack (North West Leicestershire) (Lab)]

I welcome the Bill as a first step towards broader change across the water sector to ensure that it works for people. The number of complaints about water and the management of our waterways has been a key concern for people in North West Leicestershire for some time, but residents feel that water companies have not acted while bills have predictably continued to rise.

When I was a member of Leicestershire county council’s environment and climate change scrutiny committee, I pushed for the water companies in Leicestershire to attend our committee, which they did—eventually—in November 2022. They gave a great presentation with some glossy pictures, but their suggestions, which looked nice on paper, simply have not materialised. My impression was that there was a severe lack of transparency and accountability among those companies about the damage that they were doing to our water system, which followed the previous Conservative Government’s unwillingness to act and push them to clear up their mess. The long-term priorities for the water companies have been shareholder and executive pay. They have been taking bonuses while polluting our waterways, and increasing debt without increasing investment.

There are signs of recovery, however. The Bill has not yet become law, but there has been a shift in Severn Trent Water’s willingness to clear up its mess in North West Leicestershire, and its hard-working employees have appeared to start engaging with us. That must continue if we are to challenge the constant impact that poor water quality is having on our communities and our environment. Water issues are a constant in my casework files, as they are for so many hon. Members, and local people have been in touch to report dry weather outflows. They are asking, quite rightly, about the legitimacy of outflows in dry weather and of large-volume releases during wet conditions. What is clear is that those releases have been seriously damaging for our communities.

Let me bring home an example of the importance of this Bill. I have been working with a group of residents in Whitwick in my constituency who have a shared garden space next to the Grace Dieu brook, where they have a storm drain. That storm drain regularly releases effluent, and when I visited recently, despite having had a crew to clear up, it was clear that there was still debris. While the water in the brook had been tested immediately after the spill and found to be within a normal range, the residual smell remained—it just clung—meaning that those residents were unable to use their personal space.

There is another site in Donington le Heath, which is home to the most-used sewer outflow in my constituency. I was invited to see a resident who has a smallholding close by. They have a storm drain on their land alongside the River Sence, a particularly beautiful watercourse. When I visited earlier in the year, they had just had an effluent release, and despite 10 bags of rubbish having been cleared from the area, there was still a clear path of debris from the spill. This keeps happening, and it has to stop. Those are just two cases in which our local communities have borne the impact of poor decision making and a lack of investment in infrastructure. They should not have to manage untreated waste while the execs get their bonuses—communities should not have to continue to deal with this.

This Bill puts failing water companies under special measures and sends a clear message that this Government are ready to take the action necessary to fix our foundations. It is the start we need to deliver the transformational change that our water system desperately needs.