Water Companies: Customer Bills Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
Baroness Blower
Main Page: Baroness Blower (Labour - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Baroness Blower's debates with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
Water Companies: Customer Bills
Baroness Blower Excerpts(1 year, 6 months ago)
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Lord Benyon (Con)
The noble Baroness makes a good point, because the activities within Parliament and outside it on this issue have really struck home, and people are, rightly, demanding that we take into account the impact of development and growing populations on the health of our rivers. It is not just water companies; it is agriculture and the connections we all make from our sewers and septic tanks that are causing problems for our rivers. So she is absolutely right: we need to ensure that we are tackling those things, and it is right that the water companies are recognising that. Those four companies should be applauded for doing it, but we want to see much more investment from them, and that is what the Government are driving.
Baroness Blower (Lab)
My Lords, water companies have borrowed £56 billion, even though investment has declined in real terms. Water bills include about £80 to cover interest payments. However, much of the debt is actually intra-group and is used to shift profits and dodge corporate tax. That much was acknowledged by Michael Gove in a speech on 1 March 2018. Can the Minister explain why the Government have failed to curb customer and tax abuses by water companies?
Lord Benyon (Con)
I am concerned about making sure that water companies spend money on infrastructure that is needed to clean up our rivers and environment. We have to ask ourselves what the best model is of doing that, and one that encourages investment into this country from sovereign wealth funds and other countries around the world as well as pension funds and investments based here is surely a good way of doing it. The model is right. The alternative would mean that the water companies would have to sit outside the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s office in a queue behind the health service, the police and the Armed Forces. Does the noble Baroness honestly believe that there would be more investment through a system of public sector borrowing, rather than getting this kind of investment flowing into our infrastructure?