Oral Answers to Questions

Gideon Amos Excerpts

Thursday 19th December 2024 Commons Chamber

[Mary Creagh]

I thank my hon. Friend for that question. My own city council in Coventry has introduced small electrical item take-back points in its libraries, which is an example of an excellent council innovating. I recently visited the Currys recycling plant in Newark, which shows the importance of recycling electricals to ensure that the gifts of Christmas past can be conserved and used for many Christmases to come. More importantly, last-minute Christmas shoppers will get £5 off a new product—I hear that air fryers are very popular.

[Gideon Amos (Taunton and Wellington) (LD)]

Mr Speaker, I wish you and all a merry Christmas.

We know that electronic and similar goods in landfill can leach into our waterways and affect water quality. Will Ministers reintroduce water restoration funding, as part of the package of measures they were talking about earlier, so that the River Tone and bathing stations elsewhere across the country can benefit from cleaner water?

[Mary Creagh]

Our policy is certainly intended to tackle fly-tipping and stop persistent organic pollutants entering the environment, but I will have to consult the Minister for water, my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Haltemprice (Emma Hardy), before answering on that detailed point.

Water (Special Measures) Bill [Lords]

Gideon Amos Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 16th December 2024 Commons Chamber

[Tim Farron]

Unless, to my absolute surprise, the Liberal Democrats were in power in the 1980s and early 1990s, I do not think that could have been the case. I was at university with the hon. Member for Carlisle (Ms Minns) when it happened, and neither of us was in government at the time.

The British people rightly believe that they voted for a far more ambitious plan than the one in the Bill, and they believe that they voted for it to be delivered urgently. The biggest mistake that Labour Governments tend to make is not being ambitious enough, presumably under the impression that they will be in power for longer than they perhaps might be, so my friendly advice to the Government is to seize the day and seize the moment. The millions who voted Liberal Democrat at the election absolutely did vote for ambitious and urgent change.

[Gideon Amos (Taunton and Wellington) (LD)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the water companies need to be regulated, to protect not profits but the environment? Does he also believe that bathing waters, like the wonderful Tone bathing water in which I was swimming the day before yesterday, should not automatically be de-designated?

[Tim Farron]

I commend my hon. Friend for his swimming activities, and I agree with him. The regulatory framework should be used to improve our waterways, not to strip them of their vital designations. We take the view that it is our job to campaign with energy and passion for a radical clean-up. We are determined to keep our word to the voters by fighting for that action.

I will take a quick moment to say something that I feel is most important. The people who work on the frontline in our water industry, and those who work for the Environment Agency and Ofwat, deserve our thanks and admiration—yet, because of the failings of the system, they end up taking the blame that ought to land here in this place. The legions of people running our water system do a vital job, so I want us to get the tone of this debate right. We can be rightly outraged about how our water industry is allowed to operate, and at the same time be hugely grateful to those who, despite the system, do outstanding work to serve our communities. I want those people to know, and to hear, that we really value them. They are a blessing to us. They are not the problem; the system is. We are determined to fight for a better system for all those people to work in.

--- Later in debate ---

[Gideon Amos (Taunton and Wellington) (LD)]

Few of the natural features of the Taunton and Wellington constituency in Somerset are as valued as the River Tone, which goes through the constituency. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron), I welcome this Bill but wish it would go further. In particular, we need a much stronger regulator. As long as Ofwat has a duty to protect profits and returns for shareholders but not to protect the environment, it will be more of a tame kitten than a watchdog. When it comes to managing the quality of our water and our waterways, profiteering surely has no place in the equation, which is why we want to see privatised water companies replaced with not-for-profit companies, which work very effectively in Denmark. Water companies also need to be held to account for longer when it comes to investing in the infrastructure that is needed.

From preparing and submitting its bathing water status application—with a lot of support from the hard-working volunteers of the Friends of French Weir Park—I know how much goes into designating a bathing water such as the Tone in Taunton. I therefore urge the Minister, in the context of the ongoing parallel bathing water consultation—to completely end automatic de-designation after five years. Wessex Water and the Environment Agency have made it clear that we can get improvements in water quality in the Tone in five years—and who would disagree with improving the tone, Madam Deputy Speaker?—but they are unlikely to be enough to protect its designation unless more time is available.

We in Taunton also strongly disagree with making new designations dependent on already having sufficiently clean bathing water quality. The whole reason that communities are seeking to get their designations is to stimulate that improvement. As Surfers Against Sewage has pointed out, making quality a prerequisite rather than the goal to be established would have prevented almost all the current inland bathing waters from being designated. Also, we would oppose allowing bathing seasons to be curtailed. I hope the Minister will also say something about bringing in water restoration grants, which would have the dual advantages of supporting the drive to eliminate phosphates from the Somerset levels and moors and improving river and bathing water quality.

Having canvassed the views of my fellow swimmers the other day, I know how much people want to see the river improved. We therefore need to give rural communities the support they need for water restoration. We need to establish a tough regulator bound by legal duties to protect the environment, not just profits, and give bathing waters enough time to be brought up to standard without the threat of de-designation and being pushed into the “too difficult” pile. Our rivers and our environment—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)]

Order. I call Julie Minns.

Water Companies: Regulation and Financial Stability

Gideon Amos Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd October 2024 Westminster Hall

[Tim Farron]

I agree. Although I also think an urgency is needed that many people who own water companies do not demonstrate, and that is why the Government need to lead—but I do think it is right that we get people together to make things significantly better.

Over the past 33 years, for every pound that water companies have spent on infrastructure and doing their job, 80p has drained away to finance debt and pay dividends. That is an appalling waste of billpayers’ money and water company assets. The separation of operating companies from parent companies, where the regulated operating company racks up huge debts to allow the unregulated parent company to pay huge dividends, has been a disgraceful scam. I am sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Charlie Maynard) will say more about how that model has done such damage to the customers of Thames Water; suffice it for me to say that that model of ownership must cease. For the regulator to have stood idly by while that has happened is unacceptable, and for it not to step in as similar asset-stripping begins in other water companies is an abysmal dereliction of duty by it and the Government.

What is to be done? I just want our waterways to work and to be clean and safe. I am not convinced that renationalisation would be a good use of public money. It could mean putting taxpayers’ money into the pockets of those who have already made so much money out of them without a single extra penny going to improving infrastructure. We propose a radical move away from the current model: water companies should be community benefit corporations, ensuring that all revenue goes into keeping environmental standards higher and solving the long-term problems of our network. Given that 45% of all water company expenditure has gone on debt financing and dividends, that kind of ownership and governance reform should mean that there is more money available for infrastructure renewal.

[Mr Gideon Amos (Taunton and Wellington) (LD)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Tim Farron]

I will give way one final time, because I am running out of time.

[Mr Amos]

Will my hon. Friend congratulate the Friends of French Weir Park in Taunton for helping to get bathing water status for the River Tone? Is it not a scandal that after £4.25 billion was paid by Wessex Water in dividends, the situation may arise whereby that status is removed because the Environment Agency and the water company will not have enough money to invest in improving river quality over the next few years?

[Tim Farron]

I absolutely endorse the work of the campaigners in my hon. Friend’s community. Those on the banks of Coniston Water have done the same in our area, raising the bar and the standards under the current regulatory framework, inadequate though that is.

It is clear that Thames Water has more than met the threshold to be taken into special administration, and I suspect that we will hear more about that later. As for the other water companies, the current regulatory framework seems to leave them immune, despite their repeated failure to meet basic obligations to prevent sewage from being dumped in our lakes, rivers and coastal areas, and even on the streets of many of the villages in my communities.

Under the current rules, to remove the licences to operate of the other companies, the regulator would need to serve a 25-year notice. I am grateful to my noble Friend the Earl Russell for proposing a Liberal Democrat amendment in the Lords that would take that ludicrous notice period down to just six months for an environmental failure. I hope the Government will accept that amendment; if they do not, I will table it in the Commons. Our vision is that the new, more powerful clean water authority would have the power to strip all water companies of their licence to operate within six months and then migrate them to the community benefit model. We believe that it is time for the British people to get a clean water system under which they get what they paid for, their hard-earned money is not siphoned off by overseas merchant banks, and their precious waterways are not infected, outrageously, with untreated sewage.

I represent what I would argue is the most beautiful part of England. One of the reasons it is beautiful is that it is also the wettest bit of England. The failure of Governments of different kinds, and the regulators and water companies, to tackle storm overflows was always going to hit hardest in the places with the most storms. That is why we are frustrated that the Conservative Government, who denied that the problem existed, seem to have been replaced by a Government who have acknowledged the problem but have announced that they are going to ponder it very hard for a bit. It seems to me that the problem is very obvious, and therefore so are the solutions. I call on the Government to act ambitiously and comprehensively, and to do so now, without delay.