Water Bill
Debate between Clive Lewis and James FrithFriday 28th March 2025
(1 week, 4 days ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Water Bill 2024-26 View all Water Bill 2024-26 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Clive Lewis
On the issue of water, yes, I would say they are, because whether I like it or not, Reform has a policy for water to be owned 50% by pension companies and 50% by the public. As much as it grieves me to say it, that is a policy of public ownership. They are populist; they are listening to a popular voice.
Clive Lewis
I will make some progress and then give way, and I will also try to keep the volume down a little bit.
This is about the maintenance of a political and economic model that was never built to serve the public—a model designed to shield the wealth of asset holders, landlords, shareholders, corporations and, yes, privatised water companies. But here is the great irony: the very greed, recklessness and contempt of the water industry—its excesses—have cracked open the door, and through that crack, we glimpse an opportunity. It is an opportunity to shatter the myth of privatisation’s inevitability, to break free from the narrow, self-imposed rules that have caged our Government’s economic choices, to expose its failures, to challenge its dominance and, above all, to show this country that there is an alternative—an alternative that is democratic, sustainable and run in the interests of the many, not the few. We can do it better.
Mr Frith
My hon. Friend is making a typically impassioned speech. He says the general public are ahead of us. Where might that same public be when faced with the bill for bringing in the nationalisation he is clearly wedded to? Furthermore, in the event that we do not have to buy the water industry but seize it, the implications of that seizure will cause an economic collapse. At what point will he take responsibility for either of those scenarios when confronting a public who are, he says, ahead of us on this issue?
Clive Lewis
I will obviously come to many of those points later in my speech, but let me make this point now: I do not believe in nationalisation, and this Bill has nothing to do with nationalisation. This is about giving the public a say over their water. It is about governance, standards and democracy.
Clive Lewis
No, I am going to carry on and make some progress. You made your point. Let the public—
Clive Lewis
The cheapest borrowing in the country, without a doubt, is public sector borrowing. The private water industry, which has had 35 years to sort this mess out, is not going to find investment. It is up to its eyeballs in debt. It is relying on a 50% increase in our bills by 2030, if we include inflation, and that is in the middle of a cost of living crisis. How can we justify that? The answer is that we cannot.
Mr Frith
The day after the seizure of public assets that my hon. Friend is describing, billions and billions of pounds of debt will come with it. What does he propose to do with that debt, other than refinancing, which is exactly where we are at now with the industry requirement to refinance the debt to try to keep bills down? Instead, he is advocating that the public purse take on that private debt.
Clive Lewis
At the beginning of my now seemingly rather long speech, I think I referred to a failure of imagination. Ask what Margaret Thatcher would have done when she was faced with similar problems. She would have fought her way through it. She changed the very fabric of our economy, our democracy and our politics, and she made it work. We can do the same, because the public are behind us. They want this to work.
