Crime and Policing Bill

Debate between Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb and Lord Deben

Committee stage
Thursday 5th February 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

I love these amendments and wish I had tabled them myself. They are excellent. Water companies dumping sewage into rivers has been illegal for years: it is just this and the previous Government’s refusal to act that has let it continue without serious consequences.

The legislation allows Ministers to set a bar of what is acceptable behaviour and, so far, every politician in charge has refused to say what is and is not a major failure. The result of this political cowardice is that water companies continue to make a profit out of polluting our waterways and beaches, and the people in charge continue to collect their big pay cheques and bonuses.

Regulators such as Ofwat have been in bed with the water industry bosses, and the Environment Agency has lost staff and legitimacy. Labour are wedded to private ownership of water and refuse to consider public ownership, even though it would be the most popular legislation they could enact this Parliament. I keep making suggestions about how Labour can get some voters back, but it is not listening.

These companies are fleecing bill payers with the excuse that they need to carry out the investment they have failed to do for decades. They have taken the public’s money and given it directly to shareholders. They have run up debts to pay even higher dividends and the bill payers are now paying for those debts. What is going to stop them doing this all again?

These amendments take a direct route to stopping pollution by making this personal to the people at the top. If they do not spend the money to invest and reduce pollution, then that is a crime. They are taking the public’s money and failing to improve. My own preference would be to put them on long-term community service cleaning up the sewage from our beaches, waterways and riverbanks. I would probably put them in special uniforms so that everybody passing by would know exactly who they are. I would also put a complete ban on dividend and bonus payments.

I am happy—she says, through gritted teeth—to support this more moderate suggestion, as being something the Minister might accept. I would not give them three years to turn it around either, but setting some sort of firm deadline would be preferable to the inaction of this, and the last, Government.

Finally, the best way of stopping the crime of water companies dumping sewage in our rivers is to take them into public ownership. Reduce bills by reducing the money wasted on debt repayments and replace the current set of overpaid bosses with people who can do the job and care about our environment.

[Lord Deben (Con)]

My Lords, I declare a historic connection with the water industry in the sense that I was the chairman of a water-only company more than 10 years ago, but it means I know a bit about the water industry and perhaps that is helpful after the last intervention, because the truth of the matter is that this is not just a problem of the water companies.

First, it is the problem of those people who controlled the water companies. The way in which it was operated was a great mistake. There were two regulators and the Environment Agency was almost always overturned by Ofwat. Ofwat was leaned on by successive Governments to keep down the price of water. So I start by saying that we must have a system in which we are paying for the big changes that we know about—and, because I have been around for such a long time, I remember why privatisation took place. It was not anything to do with Mrs Thatcher wanting to privatise. It was because, when it had been public ownership, both municipal and national, there had never been investment. It is all right for the noble Baroness to say that that is what we want; if you look at the history, it is about the worst history of public investment that we ever had. We had Surfers Against Sewage and the filthiest water: the worst water in northern Europe. When we signed up to the water directive, as we did when were sensibly in the European Union, it was quite clear that we did not meet the standards. The Daily Telegraph used to say, “Oh well, of course our water is better than anywhere else because they drink bottled water in France”. The truth was that our water did not meet the standards of the whole of Europe.

The privatisation took place to get private money into the water industry, to make the changes that were necessary—and, for a bit, it worked. I was the Minister responsible after that had been done and it was murder to try to deal with it. As these companies brought new technology and the rest into it, they had to charge more and therefore we had all the arguments about keeping the water price down. Unfortunately, we have to recognise that water is not cheap and it is going to be more and more expensive. For example, Essex & Suffolk Water—which is about 200 to 300 yards outside Anglia, where I am affected, so I do not have a direct connection—has announced that it cannot provide new water for any new or extended industry until 2036. That is the effect of climate change and of not having the water we need.

We have to be frank about our problem: we are going to have to spend a lot more money on water, make it much more efficient, use new technology and do that through the privatised system that we have. There is no point in arguing about it; it is not going to be nationalised. The Government have made that quite clear and nobody else is going to nationalise it. So let us see how we can make this work. That is why I have come to be semi-supportive of this amendment: the reality is that we have not been able properly to regulate water and we need to do so. Directors of companies in these areas need to be personally responsible when, for a period, they have clearly not done the job which they are supposed to do.

The noble Baroness wanted us not to have three years. Frankly, you have got to have a period in which you can see whether this a persistent problem or a one-off. We are going to have lots of one-off problems. I know it bores the Committee for me constantly to talk about climate change, but the point about climate change is that it is really climate disruption. It means that we have very significant changes in weather which we cannot predict in advance and therefore we can have real problems, with so much water that we cannot deal with it or not enough water so we cannot provide for people. That does not mean to say that the people of Tunbridge Wells do not have a very considerable complaint about the fact that, yet again, they have not been able to have the water that they ought to have.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

It is very brave of the noble Lord to say categorically that this Government will not put the water companies into public hands, because they are famous for their U-turns, so who knows what is going to happen next week? Secondly, all these bonuses and huge payouts surely show a level of incompetence. They had the money to do the investment and they gave it instead to shareholders.

[Lord Deben (Con)]

I am sorry, the second part of the noble Baroness’s comments are ones she makes about everybody who is in the private sector. That is what she thinks about the private sector and I do not agree with her. The Polanski mechanisms of this world are devastating politically and economically and, really, I am not going to answer that because I just think it is not true and is nonsense.

However, the first part is actually quite important. The reason the Government do not want to nationalise the water companies is that it would cost a great deal of money that we ought to use for other things—and it does not necessarily end up with a better system. I am a historian: I always like to look at what happened before. When it was in the public sector and was run by municipalities, we did not spend the money. That was the problem. And we still would not do so, because there is always something better to spend the money on immediately. We are politicians; you do it for what the next moment is. The trouble with investment in water is that it is crucial, but it is long term.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

First, I do not want to get into a spat with the noble Lord but could he not mention people by name in this Chamber? That is quite rude. Secondly, I am an archaeologist and I know exactly how these things start. The fact is, it may be that public ownership did not help but private ownership has made it much worse—and it is not true that I condemn all private businesses.

Water (Special Measures) Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb and Lord Deben

Committee stage
Monday 28th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I will speak to my Amendment 100. The issues of water pollution and the supply of clean water to everybody are ones I clearly care a lot about. But this Bill is just papering over the cracks. If we are going to paper over cracks, we could at least try a radical departure; perhaps we could try to bring some democracy into the regime.

I take issue with the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington, and the noble Lord, Lord Remnant. I have chaired a board and it was extremely successful. Part of that was because I invited people who thought very differently on to the board. We had 20 members or so. It was called London Food and we were tasked with writing a report for the Mayor of London on a sustainable food strategy for the city. It was successful, I would argue, partly because of my charm—obviously —but also because we had extremely good reports from every single aspect of food and food supply for London. We had a member from the City who was obviously a Conservative, we had an organic farmer and so on. We had a huge range of people, but we agreed on the strategy and we came to some very useful conclusions. This is what we need: we need some democracy in the systems that try to keep us safe.

Honestly, given the scale of the challenge that the water industry faces at the moment, in trying to make a system work that has proved not to work, we need to ensure that there are some new voices that can represent other parts of society that use the water system and care very deeply about it. We should also involve the people who actually do the work. My amendment brings in people from the workforce.

At the moment, the CEOs and senior staff are more focused on delivering dividends than they are on delivering a quality service, so having worker representatives on the board would provide a constant voice for those whose job it is to provide a service. The regulators have been captured by the industry they are meant to be keeping an eye on, so they are almost useless. This system should not be a national scheme but one based on the geography of the water systems themselves.

I am a believer in democracy and this would be an extremely useful way of making sure that a crucial industry for our society has some resonance with people out there. I am sure that this would be welcomed by the majority of people, just as I am sure that the Minister is aware that polls suggest a majority of people would prefer public ownership. Failing that, however, let us get the public in there, talking and being listened to.

[Lord Deben (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to support the amendments, particularly those placed before us by the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington. To the last speaker I have to say that there is a fundamental difference between chairing a committee to produce a report and running a business, which is what the water company has to be. She is absolutely right, however, that this Bill does not properly address the fundamental problem that we have two regulators and they have failed to produce a co-ordinated programme for the water industry.

I speak as somebody who knows a bit about it because, until 10 or 11 years ago, I was chairman of a water-only water company—so do not blame me about sewage as I never had anything to do with that. However, I do therefore know a bit about water companies. It was always impossible to meet the requirements of both the Environment Agency and Ofwat. Ofwat was under pressure from the Government to keep bills down and the Environment Agency, perfectly rightly, was saying that we should do more for the environment. As chairman of a water-only company, I was interested in doing something about the pollution of the water sources right from the beginning instead of having to clean them up, which is a very stupid way of dealing with it. Ofwat, however, would never allow one to do those things, whereas the Environment Agency was much more sympathetic.

Criminal Justice Act 2003 (Requisite and Minimum Custodial Periods) Order 2024

Debate between Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb and Lord Deben

Monday 29th July 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, it was a pleasure to hear the categories that will not be up for release, because nobody wants sexual predators and misogynists out on the streets—so I am delighted to hear that. But when the issue of prisons comes up, we always have to ask ourselves: what are they for? They ought to be for keeping dangerous people off the streets, but that is not what we do at the moment; we throw into prison an awful lot of people who should not be there. Through the Minister, this Government could think about changing who we put in prison because, quite honestly, the number of people going to prison is ludicrous when you think about some of the crimes they have committed.

Drug law reform is an obvious area. It seems absolutely ridiculous to put people in prison because of drugs offences when they have access to even more drugs there than they do out on the streets. Prisons are failing in that way, and I would be interested to hear what the Minister had to say about drug use in prison. Unfortunately, our new Prime Minister has indicated that he wants to continue the ideological war on drugs. Can the Minister at least review the evidence from the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs and publish its advice? The Conservative Government kept it secret because it called for the decriminalisation of personal possession of drugs.

It is good to hear about restorative justice, which is something further that that this Government could talk about. It is a voluntary process whereby people who have been harmed can work with the people who have caused the harm and perhaps identify how both parties can resolve or move on from it. We had amendments on this to the Victims and Prisoners Bill, so it would be good to hear the Government’s thoughts on this area.

Of course, if we are going to let people out of prison, we have to remember the scandal of the IPP prisoners. I was sad that the Minister did not mention them today because that category has clearly suffered the most incredible injustice. The legislation was designed to keep serious offenders in prison, but instead we ended up with nearly 3,000 people, most of them non-violent, trapped in prison. IPP prisoners turn to suicide and hunger strike. This is a legacy of the last Labour Government that the new Labour Government need to fix, as I pointed out.

One report says that someone got, in effect, 16 years in prison for stealing a flowerpot at 17. A prison sentence of 18 months should not turn into 18 years, which has also happened. It is no wonder that our prisons are overcrowded if we keep throwing people in there to rot for minor crimes. So do the new Government have a plan to work at pace to safely release IPP prisoners where possible? Is there a proposal for new legislation on this? We need the new Minister to sort out a plan on this. We need a resentencing programme to get the majority of IPP prisoners out of prison. Apart from that, I can say only, “Good luck”.

[Lord Deben (Con)]

I wonder whether I may ask a very simple question. I very much support what is being put forward, but in my history no Government have ever answered the simple question: how come Britain locks up so many more people than comparable countries in the rest of Europe? It seems pretty barmy. I do not feel any less safe in Paris or Berlin than I do in London, and yet both those countries do not lock people up in the way we do. It is a fundamental and simple question. I hope very much that we will pass this, of course, but I hope it will be in the context of the Government being the first of any political party—the previous Labour Government refused to look at this as well—to look at this fundamental question and ask themselves, “Why?”

The answer must be that there are better ways of doing what we are trying to do. If it means ignoring pressure from the Daily Mail, then I am afraid that is what we have to do. Given the brave statement the Chancellor of the Exchequer made today about cuts, it might be a very good opportunity for this Government to take a new look at why we lock people up.