Water Companies: Customer Bills

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd May 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I thank the noble Duke for his continued interest in this issue. Undoubtedly, we could resolve the situation by spending somewhere between £120 billion and £600 billion separating clean water from dirty water, retrofitting an entirely new sewerage system and creating additional storage equivalent to 40,000 Olympic swimming pools, but that would add between £271 and £817 per annum to bills. It is important that we are honest with customers—with the people who get water into, and have sewage taken out of, their homes every day—that this comes at a price. Some of the promises being made that this is a simple solution are entirely fallacious. We have to be honest with the people who pay these bills.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, for the past 30 years, we customers have paid the water companies all the money they needed to do their job properly. Their statutory duty was to build, operate and maintain sewerage systems capable of effectively dealing with the contents of sewers. We have paid the money for them to do that; the fact that they are not doing it means that we are surely owed a refund, rather than paying more bills.

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

First, the noble Baroness suggests that there was no sewage going into rivers before water companies came along. Underinvestment when they were nationalised businesses was at historic levels, and our bathing waters were much worse than they are today. I am not saying for a moment that there are not serious problems. This Government are—if I can steal a soundbite—tough on sewage in rivers and tough on the causes of sewage in rivers. We want to be absolutely clear that everything that happens comes at a price. We want companies to be able to pay out dividends, because that is what encourages investment in our water sector. It is about getting that balance right.