Thames Water: Government Support

Debate between Emma Lewell and Charlie Maynard

Thursday 3rd April 2025 Westminster Hall

[Charlie Maynard]

None of the 60 amendments in the Commons, or however many there were, was accepted. The rejected proposals included putting flow meters on the outflows of sewage treatment works, which is sort of logical; establishing targets to reduce pollution over time, using existing benchmarks of hours of spilled sewage; making sewage treatment works’ calculations more transparent; and bringing environmental experts and consumer representatives on to water boards.

The Labour Government are now allowing a public utility company to line the pockets of bankers and hedge funds at the expense of bill payers. As someone said in the Financial Times this week,

“with water, it’s a total monopoly and a total shambles. A shambopoly if you will”.

The Government’s support for Thames Water essentially amounts to unconditional support for the company’s creditors, at a direct and massive cost to its customers.

What do we need to do instead? First, we need to put the company out of its financial misery and put it into special administration. We should allow its debt to be massively written down to something like three times the cash flow or thereabouts. If the debt is reduced, the company will have a sufficiently strong balance sheet to allow it to invest in the infrastructure we desperately need and to spend our bill payments on fixing treatment works and pipe networks, rather than paying interest. We should allow water companies coming out of special administration to be mutually owned by their customers and professionally managed. We should set pollution baselines and pollution reduction targets and get serious about putting transparency targets and technology to work to clean up our rivers.

Special administration is clearly the most logical option at the moment, but I believe that the Government are shying away from it because of threats of legal action against them, phantasmagorical scenarios of financial Armageddon, or both. Please do not let Thames Water’s lobbyists, including Ruth Kelly, the ex-Labour Minister who is now chair of Water UK, to scaremonger you out of taking the action that 16 million consumers—your electorate—need. Those scenarios are patently not true, and it is best to ask Thames Water about that. As per page 92 of the independent expert report from Thames Water’s adviser, Teneo, the net cost to the Treasury of taking the company into special administration, even in the worst-case scenario, is zero—please look it up.

Instead, we now have this bizarre situation whereby a Labour Government are cheerleading the American hedge funds and private equity funds taking over our largest water company and making a massive profit out of its customers. What goes for Thames Water will very likely go for the rest of the sector, so the signal that you and your Government are sending the sector—

[Emma Lewell (in the Chair)]

Order. I do not wish to spoil the hon. Gentleman’s flow, but we use the same conventions in Westminster Hall as in the main Chamber. You should not use the words “you” or “your” unless you are referring to me.

[Charlie Maynard]

Many apologies to you, Ms Lewell, and to the Minister.

The signal that the Minister and the Government are sending to this and other regulated sectors is simply terrible. All that customers in my Witney constituency and across the whole catchment really want at this point is reliable, affordable, clean water to our homes. We want local rivers and lakes not to have sewage poured into them on a near-daily basis. We want a Government who are serious about putting the interests of customers and our rivers before the interests of hedge funds and private equity funds. Please stop letting us down.