Debate on the Address

Debate between Jeremy Corbyn and Anna Dixon

Wednesday 13th May 2026 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I absolutely welcome the Erasmus scheme—indeed, I wanted to retain the scheme during the endless debates on the withdrawal agreement, because I can absolutely see the value of it. I also see the value of overseas students coming to this country; we should be encouraging them, but they are put off by the very high student fees. Something has to be done about that.

Many colleagues have brought up issues with the services within our society. The water industry has come up many times. I am a London MP and therefore fall within the purview of Thames Water, whose record is appalling and atrocious at every conceivable level. The water industry as a whole has had more than £70 billion taken out of it in profits and dividends since privatisation. We have had statements by every Secretary of State that I can remember for the past 35 years, saying that they will look at the regulation model to make sure there is proper control of what the water companies do. Yet every year the sewage pouring into our rivers and streams gets worse. The chalk streams are destroyed; the fish on our coastline are polluted and killed. It just gets worse and worse.

It is surely pretty obvious that the private ownership model, where the motive is profit, not service, has absolutely failed. We should take the whole water industry back into public ownership. It was public ownership that cleaned it up, it was public ownership that constructed the reservoirs and all the infrastructure, and it is public ownership that will deliver clean water in the future. However, it also needs to be democratic. We should not just have the appointment of a national water company or regional water companies, where the Secretary of State decides who the directors are. We should include the workforce, the local trade unions, the local business community, the local authority—we should make it a matter of community pride to be part of the water industry and the water company.

[Anna Dixon]

Does the right hon. Gentleman recognise the need to strengthen the regional water authorities, and to have a greater focus there on the consumer voice? Would he also agree that the special administration regime for Thames Water might offer an opportunity to explore alternative public ownership, such as mutuals, where we could have workers sitting on a board alongside consumers?

[Jeremy Corbyn]

Yes, the water authority obviously needs to be strengthened and we need to explore all the options. The hon. Lady has probably got the gist of where I am going on this issue: wanting a more democratic form of ownership. Involving local government in that would be the obvious thing to do. After all, the London County Council had a big say post the Metropolitan Water Board and so on. We need to think about how we improve local involvement, because local people are the best guardians of the water service, making sure that we do not pollute our rivers and streams and that we do provide good-quality, safe water for everybody.

There are other areas of public ownership. I welcome the development of Great British Railways and the public ownership of the rail companies, particularly the train operating companies and the infrastructure. However, there is no public ownership of freight, and the retention of the principle of open access to our service is, to me, a sort of Trojan horse to bring the private sector back on to the railway network. Surely we need to look at that—and when the Government look at it, I would be grateful if they would also look at the ludicrous railway fares in Britain compared with any other railway anywhere in Europe, which are far cheaper and far more efficient to run.

I have a couple of other things I want to say before I sit down. Last year the world spent $2.4 trillion on warfare and weapons. This year it will be more than $3 trillion. Pretty well every country in the world is spending more and more on defence. I have heard the Prime Minister say that he wants Britain to go up immediately to 3%, and ultimately to 5%. The same kind of language is used across Europe, and in other countries as well, including Russia, China and so on. Everyone is massively increasing defence expenditure, and that defence expenditure ends up in the wars and in massive profits for the arms companies around the world.

It is a bit sad that the King’s Speech said nothing about funding the United Nations properly, or about peace initiatives to try to promote a ceasefire, difficult as that would be—I understand all that, but it has to happen—in the ghastly war between Russia and Ukraine, or the crazy war in Iran that President Trump has got us involved with. Despite the British Government telling us that they are not part of this war, in reality the bombing takes place from RAF Fairford and other bases in Britain. Surely we need an agenda for peace, not an agenda for war.

Israel’s bombardment of the Palestinian people in Gaza is an act of genocide against the Palestinian people. It is abominable and appalling, and we as a country have maintained the arms supplies to Israel throughout that conflict. We have allowed the use of RAF Akrotiri. We have had the overflying of Gaza, so the RAF know exactly what happened in Gaza, because they took all the pictures of it. Would it not have been good if the Government instead had said they would join with the Hague group of nations in the UN, who are determined to adhere to the International Court of Justice and International Criminal Court decisions?

We need to look to the real issues facing this world—climate change, environmental destruction, global inequality and poverty, or the 70 million people worldwide who are refugees—rather than just the language of more and more money on arms and more and more preparedness for war. Can we not have an agenda for peace? If we cannot talk about peace when a war is going on, what is the point of ever talking about peace? I would hope that something could happen with that.

This was supposed to be, the Prime Minister said, a speech for hope for young people. Well, fine—I want hope for young people. I admire the young people of my community and others for what they do, for the efforts they put into so much, and for the joy and music and everything that they bring. But those who have been to university all tell me they are saddled with massive university debts. They cannot get anywhere to live; they are sharing flats into their 40s or beyond because they cannot afford to pay off a student debt and buy anywhere, and they cannot get council housing because they are not eligible. Others are working in the gig economy, being ripped off by delivery companies that do not pay them properly. Many of them are in school but not achieving everything they could, because we are over-competitive in the way we run our schools, and we are not inclusive enough.

Let us give some hope to young people; let us listen to young people, including young people with special needs and disabilities. They want to be part of our society too, not to be told that we are spending too much money on personal independence payments or on benefits. They want that support. Give hope to people. We cannot achieve everything that we want to achieve—at least, I guess most of us do—if we persist with the economic inequality within our society and the social injustices that follow from it.

This King’s Speech is such a missed opportunity. It could have been so good. It could have put so much hope in so many people’s minds. The lesson of last Thursday is that if we do not give people hope, they can go off in all kinds of directions. We can end up in a very nasty and a very dark place if we take away any opportunity for hope within our society.

Independent Water Commission: Final Report

Debate between Jeremy Corbyn and Anna Dixon

Tuesday 10th February 2026 Westminster Hall

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Ind)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for West Dorset (Edward Morello) on securing this debate, which is timely and very important. The Cunliffe report is seriously flawed, in that it did not consider public ownership of the industry or agriculture, which is a major polluter, as other colleagues have already pointed out.

Privatisation of water has been an absolute disaster from the very beginning, when many of us at the time warned against it. It has resulted in £72 billion being taken out of the industry in dividends and profits, and fantastic levels of executive pay. It has left behind pollution and flooding, with the cost of the pollution, flooding and foul water being borne by the public—our constituents—who are increasingly angry about it.

By any standard, river quality is appalling right across the country and is one of the worst anywhere in Europe. That is caused by the mixing of rainwater with sewage waste, and by agricultural run-offs that have a devastating effect. The River Wye is just one example of how awful the rivers can become, because of agricultural waste run-offs—hon. Members who drew attention to that are absolutely right. The waste of water from leaks is a huge problem, and I think I am right that the totality of leaks across the whole country would fill the whole of Loch Ness every year.

Therefore, instead of calling for new reservoirs to be built, should we not look at much better water management, rainwater retention and water distribution across the country? In England, the biggest water consumers are in London and the south-east, which is, broadly speaking, the driest part of the country. The wettest part of the country is the midlands and the north-west. Clearly, moving water from one part to the other makes a lot of sense. Can we not have some sense surrounding the organisation of water distribution?

[Anna Dixon]

Does the right hon. Gentleman recognise that under the previous Government, light-touch regulation left our infrastructure crumbling? It is right that there will be asset mapping under the new proposals, so that we can finally know the state of the infrastructure and whether these investments are actually fixing the leaks.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

Absolutely. The state of the infrastructure does need to be examined. Like many Members, my constituents have endless complaints about that. Thames Water is one of the most frequent visitors to my constituency; it digs up the roads frequently. With the resulting road closures—which are absurd—Thames Water is much better at traffic management than Transport for London, actually.

I would also ask that we look much more seriously at river basin management. I remember visiting York with the hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) during the flooding at that time. We had a long discussion with the Environment Agency about planning for flooding, which would involve restoring peatlands, upland planting, reintroducing beavers and others into rivers—that has an effect on a small scale, with lots of rivers and streams—and restoring floodplains. Those sorts of things are some of the most important things we can do.

Water should be taken back into public ownership—not old-style public ownership, with a board of governors or directors appointed by the Government, but a popular form of public ownership that would involve the brilliant workforce in all those companies, and their knowledge. The directors would come from them, and from local communities, businesses, local authorities and unions, so we would have a locally and popular-based water industry in our society. We could do it. Why don’t we try that?