Water Sector: Public Ownership

Debate between Feryal Clark and Danny Beales

Monday 14th September 2026 Westminster Hall

[Feryal Clark (Enfield North) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Barker. I am grateful to the 208,000 people who signed the petition. For many of my constituents, this debate could hardly be more timely. Last month, a burst water main on Bramley Road left thousands of households across Enfield North without water, or experiencing low pressure for many days. Around 4,500 properties were affected. Thames Water’s own planning identified almost 3,000 priority services register customers in affected areas, and 24 tankers were deployed.

However, those figures alone cannot describe the complete misery caused for my constituents. One told me:

“I’ve been a resident in Lavender Hill for 27 years and I’ve never had to endure the incident that I am currently facing. I live in flats and have had NO water for over 3 days.”

Many others described the distressing impact on the most basic aspects of everyday life, including cooking, drinking, washing and sanitation. In response, I managed to persuade the local Morrisons store to make its industrial washing machines and dryers available free of charge, and I am really grateful to it for that.

Let us be clear: this was not just an inconvenience; for many, it was a crisis. The disruption even reached Chase Farm hospital, where operating theatres lost their water supply, forcing operations to be cancelled for two days while emergency tankers were brought in.

[Danny Beales (Uxbridge and South Ruislip) (Lab)]

Is the situation my hon. Friend describes—Thames Water not being there when crises happen, while at the same time hugely increasing customers’ bills and failing to invest in infrastructure—not exactly why we cannot have a sweetheart deal with its creditors and shareholders? They must be held to account; they cannot continue with their record of failure on the backs of hard-working Londoners.

[Feryal Clark]

I totally agree with my hon. Friend. When a failure in water infrastructure can disrupt NHS treatment, we are no longer talking simply about poor customer service; we are talking about critical national infrastructure.

What made this incident particularly unacceptable was not simply the fact that a pipe burst—we all know that infrastructure can fail—but what happened afterwards. My constituents faced conflicting information about whether their water would return, and they struggled to contact Thames Water. Bottled water stations were located in places that were extremely difficult for elderly and disabled residents to reach without a car. When I raised that issue with Thames Water, this was its extraordinary response:

“It’s not uncommon for us to set up bottled water stations in the London area without considering residents without a vehicle.”

Think about that: an essential utility provider responding to an emergency affecting thousands of people admits that it does not routinely consider whether vulnerable customers can actually reach the emergency water it provides. If an essential service fails, surely the absolute minimum people should expect is to be told what has happened, what they should do, where they can get help and when the service should be fixed.

This experience inevitably raises a much bigger question: who is our water industry ultimately being run for? I welcome the Government’s determination to strengthen regulation, but we should also ask whether regulation alone can solve the problem.