Thames Water: Bids

Baroness Grender Excerpts

Monday 28th April 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

Regarding the company choosing KKR as its preferred bidder in the ongoing equity raise process, clearly Thames Water is a commercial entity engaged in a public equity raise, and it would therefore be completely inappropriate for the Government to comment on that. However, I note that the company had a number of potential bidders to choose from, which indicates that a market-led solution to the financial resilience of the company is a possibility.

[Baroness Grender (LD)]

My Lords, does the Minister agree that the Government must protect future bill payers from past mismanagement and a debt that should clearly sit with the vulture funds and bond holders who have in effect asset-stripped Thames Water, leaving it without proper investment and vulnerable to repeated environmental hazards and therefore in strong danger of being in breach of its own statutory duties? Surely the only way to protect those bill payers is by putting it into special administration.

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

As I am sure the noble Baroness is aware, a special administration order is the mechanism to ensure that the company continues to operate and customers continue to receive their water and wastewater services. However, the bar for entering special administration is understandably high; the law states that it can be initiated only if the company becomes insolvent, can no longer fulfil its statutory duties or seriously breaches an enforcement order, and Thames Water does not fit those criteria, despite all its other problems. All I can say to the noble Baroness is that we are currently monitoring the situation closely.