Water Companies: Duties and Accountability

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Monday 4th April 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

The noble Lord will no doubt be pleased by the recent statutory policy statement by Ofwat. It is through the regulator that we ensure that companies perform well, that we do not reward bad behaviour, that we reflect proper accountability for such things as remuneration, and that where bad behaviour is found out, companies receive fines. Those fines do not hit the customer but hit those who would otherwise have received bonuses, and shareholders.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, there are so many ways to ask these questions of the Government, but I turn to an expert in this field, Feargal Sharkey. He tells me that there has not been a single reservoir built since 2010 and, as far as he can tell, not since privatisation. Around London, the last one built was the Queen Mother reservoir back in 1976. The National Audit Office is calculating that by 2050 England will have a shortfall of some 4 billion litres of water per day. How will Defra fix that?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

One of the measures that we seek to take through the five-year AMP process is to get water companies to look 25 years ahead at their water demands. There is a need for new reservoirs. One could well be built in the upper reaches of the Thames, and I recently visited an existing reservoir in East Anglia that had been increased in size. This all has to be taken into account, particularly in determining how we encourage water companies to move water from one area to another to reflect demand.