Water and Sewage Companies: Directors’ Remuneration

Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe Excerpts

Thursday 22nd February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe (Lab)]

My Lords, I am glad to be able to make a brief contribution in the gap. All the contributions have confirmed the relevance and timeliness of my noble friend’s debate, and I congratulate him. I want to reiterate the urgent need for action. Our sewage crisis has become a scandal: negligence, complacency and paying dividends to shareholders, rather than investing in infrastructure, have allowed our rivers, lakes and the seas around our coastal areas to become open sewers. My party is determined that evidence of continued sewage pollution should lead to a criminal offence.

Tuesday’s Channel 4 documentary on the subject alerted the whole country to the repugnant truth that deliberate discharging of raw sewage has been allowed to continue, and has even been encouraged, while 10 water bosses last year received bonuses totalling £2.5 million. I welcome the recent announcement in the other place that water bosses are set to be banned from receiving bonuses if the company has committed serious criminal breaches. As my party has said, it is high time that we made the polluter, not the public, pay.

Instead of asking customers to pay more for their water during a cost of living crisis, we should compel water bosses to count the cost. Senior executives should face personal criminal liability for extreme and persistent law-breaking. Furthermore, my party wants to introduce automatic fines for illegal discharges of a size that water bosses cannot ignore. I would like to see Ofwat have the power to force all companies to monitor every single water outlet.

After years of appalling spills—although I take issue with the word, as it somehow implies accidental leakages—firmer action is desperately overdue. Ofwat announced measures to ban future bonuses for bosses of companies that were found to have harmed the environment last year. Given that Ofwat is still to consult on whether the plan would actually go ahead, can the Minister assure us that the Government’s recently announced proposals will be enough to clean up our polluted waters? What steps will they be taking to reduce reliance on water companies’ self-monitoring?