Water Supplies: East Grinstead

Katie Lam Excerpts

Monday 12th January 2026 Commons Chamber

[Emma Hardy]

One of the reasons we introduced the Water (Special Measures) Act 2025 and the bonus ban was exactly to ensure that people who get a bonus have earned it and that people who have not earned one do not get one. That seems a pretty straightforward way of doing things in my mind. This goes back to the point made by colleagues across the House that water companies should be talking to Members of Parliament about where they need to put bottled water stations and what is the most effective place for that. Water companies have a statutory duty—it is not just that they can if they want to—to supply water to people in the event of supply outages. Two fundamental things the Drinking Water Inspectorate will look at are how well or otherwise the company has supplied water to people on the vulnerable register and how well or otherwise it has made bottled water available. Quite frankly, I am as outraged by this as the hon. Gentleman.

[Katie Lam (Weald of Kent) (Con)]

I was very sorry to hear about the Minister’s father.

Thousands of my constituents over the weekend in Headcorn, Staplehurst, Coxheath and the surrounding villages had no running water. It is vital in these situations that we are able to share accurate and timely information, but South East Water had no idea what was going on; there was supposed to be a bottled water station in Headcorn, and yet for the entirety of Saturday, nobody from South East Water could tell me if there was even any water there. We were given multiple conflicting pieces of information, most of which turned out to be inaccurate, and the only way my team and I could establish whether anything was provided was to go there ourselves. Does the Minister agree that this is unacceptable and that it makes a bad situation so much worse?

[Emma Hardy]

I completely agree. Poor communication is a theme that has run throughout this crisis; again, it is something that needs to be looked at seriously when the Drinking Water Inspectorate does its investigation, and something that I hope Ofwat will look at as well.