Water Sector: Public Ownership
Henry Tufnell Excerpts(1 week ago)
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Henry Tufnell (Mid and South Pembrokeshire) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Jeremy.
The Cleddau river flows through my constituency of Mid and South Pembrokeshire. It tells a proud history of Pembrokeshire, but more recently it has told a sadder story of the failures of our water sector. At Picton pumping station in Haverfordwest, the local campaigning organisation The Cleddau Project found that the equivalent of 17 tankers of sewage were being dumped into the Cleddau every day between July 2022 and February 2024. Between January and October 2025, there were nearly 4,000 hours of untreated sewage pollution at seven different sites in and around the Cleddau.
Given the history of Welsh Water, I caution Members advocating for a not-for-profit model of water ownership. As a member of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, I have spent many hours questioning water bosses, and it is clear to me that regulatory enforcement alone will not address the crisis that the sector is facing. The problems are symptoms of a structure and a culture within these companies. There is too much focus on financialisation, rather than prioritising environmental stewardship and customers, and executives have too often been insulated from the consequences of their poor performance.
As has been eloquently described by Members today, the water sector is fundamental to public health, environmental protection and, crucially, our national security. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Colne Valley (Paul Davies) on introducing this debate and on giving such an eloquent and passionate speech. It is vital that we seriously consider different forms of ownership; indeed, it is somewhat sad to me that this conversation has been so stifled in recent years. Nationalisation must form part of the conversation, and it must flow as a consequence of the continued failure of water companies. Does the Minister agree that if water companies cannot deliver for customers, the state must be prepared to step in and ensure that an essential service is run in the public interest?