Future of Thames Water

Debate between Charlie Maynard and Mike Martin

Tuesday 14th July 2026 Commons Chamber

[Charlie Maynard]

I completely agree, and Thames Water’s full-year accounts are out at 7 am tomorrow morning. We will see just what they tell us. It is going to be ugly, not least because the company’s equity is worthless. The largest equity shareholders wrote down their shareholding to zero value and withdrew their board members more than two years ago. When Thames Water’s creditors sought to take on another £3 billion of debt last year, I was given permission to intervene in the High Court and speak for the interests of Thames Water’s 16 million customers, who are paying all these outrageous costs and interest expenses, but would otherwise have had no voice in court.

This Labour Government have slow-peddled for the last two years, and have refused to draw a line under decades of Tory bad behaviour by putting Thames Water into special administration. This approach is costing customers an absolute fortune. Thames Water paid £338 million just in interest expenses in the six months to September 2025. That is £133 million more, just in interest expenses, than it paid in the same period the previous year.

Labour is taking this hands-off approach despite the company’s multiple breaches of its operating licence. Let me illustrate some of those breaches. As I have stated, the company has carried out more than 1,000 illegal spills over four years. It must hold two investment-grade credit ratings as a condition of its operating licence, but it last held any investment-grade credit rating two years ago, in July 2024, and it has undergone a change of ultimate controller; yet the Minister, the Secretary of State and Ofwat have repeatedly refused to answer on that point.

[Mike Martin (Tunbridge Wells) (LD)]

We have a similar problem with South East Water, which is probably the second-worst water company in the United Kingdom after Thames Water. With South East Water, too, this Labour Government have been too timid. Does my hon. Friend agree that the Government, by acting, or not acting, in the way that they are, they are privileging shareholders over consumers?

[Charlie Maynard]

Absolutely. The consumers are getting the raw deal, and there is no end in sight.

To qualify as an ultimate controller—it is a defined term—a party need only have material influence over Thames Water. The creditor consortium right now is negotiating bilaterally with the company, and has put in £3 billion, but somehow that does not make it meet the criterion. It is ridiculous, and frankly, seeing this failure play out was probably the single moment when I most despaired of government and the rule of law. I repeatedly ask the same question, and repeatedly do not get an answer. I find it really, really bad.