Water Bill

Mark Ferguson Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 28th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Clive Lewis]

I did hear the intervention, but I wanted to make some progress.

Take this one example. Under this Bill, if a water company breaches the terms of its licence with a major sewage discharge, it can forget shareholder payout and piling on more debt. If it does it twice, it is in the last chance saloon. After three strikes, it is out—licence terminated and on its bike—and those price-gouging, asset-stripping, river-killing vulture capitalist outfits will be rolled into the sunset without a penny in compensation. What about those water infrastructure assets that they have been sweating for private gain? They go back into the public realm, thank you very much. If they start whining about debts, do not worry: we will do a full audit of what they invested, what they racked up in debt, what they paid out in dividends and what they stuffed into bloated executive pay packets. I will tell you this, Madam Deputy Speaker: I am yet to see a single privatised English water company walk away with anything other than a well-earned spanking and a sharp haircut for its creditors. Those assets will belong to the public once again, and we will not pay a penny more than they are worth.

I can hear people thinking, “Where will the money come from? How will you invest in publicly owned water without the private sector?” I will tell them where it has not come from in these past 35 years—I am mind-reading again.

[Mark Ferguson (Gateshead Central and Whickham) (Lab)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Clive Lewis]

I will just make some progress, and then I will give way. I am on a roll. Let me tell the House where the money has not come from for these past 35 years. It has not come from private shareholders or long-term thinking, and it certainly has not come from some mythical well of benevolent capitalism. The private companies have put in less than nothing; in fact, they have racked up more than £60 billion in debt. Thames Water has paid more than £7.2 billion in dividends since privatisation, and is now £15.2 billion in debt and counting—work that out. Now, it is trying to plug the hole with a £3 billion emergency loan that will cost 10% in annual interest. That is more than half a billion pounds a year, just for interest payments, courtesy of our bills. That money will not build a reservoir, fix a pipe or clean a river, but it will keep a rotten system afloat for a little longer.

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[Mr Frith]

rose—

[Mark Ferguson]

rose—

[Clive Lewis]

I will make some progress. Let us recap, because I do not want to go on too long; I want to conclude, if I can. That money from Thames Water—that half a billion pounds in interest payments—will keep a rotten system afloat for just a little longer. The myth of privatisation is that the private sector will act in the long-term interests of the British public because it wants to turn a profit. That is preposterous, as is proven by the state of our water, and exhibit A is Thames Water.

We can now turn to the question of where the investment will come from. Under public ownership, it will come from the only place it ever should have—from us, the public—and every penny of it will go back into the system. It will go into the pipes, the rivers, the seas we swim in and the water we drink. There will be a direct relationship between what we pay and what we get, with no offshore dividends, no bloated bonuses and no debt-laden shell games—just clean, accountable, democratic water.

When I was in Afghanistan, every soldier had one critical duty: to stay hydrated. To dehydrate was considered a military offence, because it put the soldier and their team at risk. If someone ran out of water, we did not debate markets or metrics; we shared what we had. We had each other’s backs. As the desert-dwelling Fremen in James Herbert’s novel “Dune” believed:

“A man’s flesh is his own; the water belongs to the tribe”.

It is time our water returned to the tribe, to the people, to the public. We can do better; we must, and with this Bill, we will. I commend it to the House.

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[Dame Meg Hillier]

Well, in my experience of 20 years in the House, this system has been used once, and that was in 2019, by a selection of Select Committees, not by the Government of the day. I am aware that the first debates about citizens’ juries were 30 or so years ago, and there are many challenges to delivering them.

[Mark Ferguson]

Does my hon. Friend agree that one of the concerns with citizens’ assemblies is about gaining the confidence of the public? When some people see opinion polls, they say, “Well, I wasn’t interviewed, so I have no confidence in it.” Secondly, there would be no power to compel someone to be on a citizens’ assembly, so how could people have confidence in a body that contains only those who were willing to take part?

[Dame Meg Hillier]

Absolutely. I think we would all agree that we talk all the time to constituents, whether on doorsteps or at public meetings and other forums, because that is our job. I say to constituents every week when I am on their doorsteps, “I am here because I need your expertise. I can’t do my job without you.” But it is a cumbersome task to be on a citizens’ assembly as it requires people to devote a great deal of time, and only a certain subset of society has the time to do that. Many of my constituents are working three or four jobs and struggling to survive. They do not have the time to do that, but their voices need to be heard, too.

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[Dame Meg Hillier]

I urge the hon. Lady to listen to what I say. I did not say that I had people saying overwhelmingly that they wanted public ownership—certainly not. They are saying that there is a problem, and saying, “You lot are in government. You need to sort it out.” Over the last 20 years that I have been in this place, and particularly in the last Parliament, there has been endless discussion about how to resolve this situation, and stasis in the Government. We now have a Government who have acted to begin to tackle some of these huge challenges. I give real credit to the Minister, who has engaged massively with Members across the House on this. She is absolutely aware of the issues, partly because many of us across the House have lobbied her, because our constituents have lobbied us. I do not think there is doubt about the problem; the issue is about the solution.

We should absolutely have a big public consultation, but that is to inform the work of the citizens’ assembly. Clause 4(3) states that the citizens’ assembly must

“be composed of a randomly selected representative sample of users of water and sewerage services in England and Wales, and…consider any matters which the Commission refers to it in relation to water ownership.”

I want to be clear that that will be a randomly selected representative sample of users, and the Bill is silent on the model. I appreciate what the hon. Member for North Herefordshire (Ellie Chowns) highlighted—that there is a science to doing this—but the Bill is silent on how it would be done.

[Mark Ferguson]

To return to the construction of citizens’ assemblies, I take on board the point about the concept that is being used locally, but when one has to travel 10 minutes to a meeting on an evening after work, it is a very different order of magnitude—

[Carla Denyer]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mark Ferguson]

Members cannot intervene on an intervention.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

Are you nearing your point?

[Mark Ferguson]

I am on the cusp of it. There are cost implications of asking members of the public to travel to another part of the country, and these things are inevitably in London. As somebody whose constituency is 250 miles from London, I would be concerned about members of my community being left out of such a consultation.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

Order. Before the hon. Lady responds to that intervention, I know it is Friday but you do not intervene on an intervention, and interventions are short. They are not speeches.

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[Mark Ferguson]

I have not yet heard a response from anyone in this House to my legitimate concern about regional variation if there is no ability to compel. The right hon. Gentleman is a Member for Islington in London, where a lot of meetings like this one are held. I am a Member for Gateshead, 250 miles away. Attending an assembly would require a lot of travel. How does he suggest we deal with the lack of compulsion, and the regional variation in involvement in citizens’ assemblies?

[Jeremy Corbyn]

Since the hon. Member used to live in Islington, he is well aware of how great the connectivity to the area is. Obviously, we live in a country where the capital, London, is in the south-east. That is maybe not an ideal geographical location, but I do not think it is going to change any time soon. If we have a national commission, it has to meet somewhere—it does not have to be in London. Do we have to pay the cost of getting people to the meetings? Yes, of course, obviously we do. I envisage a more localised form of consultation in regional water areas, such as Severn Trent, Humber and so on. I think that would meet the concerns that the hon. Gentleman legitimately raises about the overly centric nature of our political structures in this country.

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[Mr James Frith (Bury North) (Lab)]

I first want to congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich South (Clive Lewis) on the Bill and on his passionate speech. No one can be in any doubt about his commitment to this cause. I was struck by the elegance of his comments in his wind-up, which drew on his time serving in Afghanistan. I thank him for his service in Afghanistan; such service is frequently overlooked in this House. It was a very powerful moment in his speech when he combined his service with the argument he was making, and I congratulate him on that.

I welcome the opportunity to speak in this important and timely debate. Yesterday, we learnt of the 3.6 million hours of pollutant discharged into our waterways. The conditions of our rivers and seas, and the system that governs them, demand our national attention. There has been conversation about a lack of imagination, but our record in government is that we have already begun to grasp the challenges we have all described and understand. We are all overwhelmed by the contact made by our constituents on this issue and on the quality of water. A distant, arm’s length system has left us knee deep in pollution and the water companies are up to their necks in it. We need to continue with the mandate given to us at the general election to tackle this issue.

The issue is not just about pollution either; it is symptomatic of the crisis-mode, emergency nature of our public services that even getting attention on to flooding or river dredging or even accessing basic expertise feels like a game of cat and mouse when it comes to these organisations. Whether it is the Environment Agency ducking meetings in Bury North, or United Utilities or different utilities branches in respective areas, it is eternally frustrating and disappointing how lacking in accountability some of the organisations prove to be. There is politics and power in being a good customer service organisation; it is not just about an accountable constituency MP turning up and the company taking on board concerns. Even when a local MP writes to these organisations, we can receive short shrift or the organisation can fail to respond to the issues at hand. We need to bear down on the organisations and get the best for our people.

The mentality of accountability is decidedly missing from so many of our public service providers. We need to re-instil a sense that they are accountable to us—that we determine the nature of their work and the outcomes that we expect from them. Of course they are stretched and under pressure—we have all rehearsed the inheritance that the Labour Government have received—but too often there is a culture of avoidance, of obfuscation and, frankly, of ducking responsibilities. Nowhere is that more apparent than in a sector charged with safeguarding the very essence of life itself: water.

The issue is not abstract but a lived experience in communities such as mine. In Bury North, we know all too well the consequences of failure. The River Irwell, which flows from Ramsbottom to Radcliffe, was the most dumped in river in England last year. In 2023 alone, United Utilities was responsible for a staggering 11,974 sewage spills into the Irwell—an average of 32 every single day. That is not just staggering but shameful. The state we are in is barely fathomable. The issue is also personal—it is environmental and affects our families.

I have walked those river banks in Ramsbottom, through Burrs, with my children. I have warned them not to go near the water for a variety of reasons, which now also includes the pollutant level. I have spent many a sunny afternoon warning them to stay away from the water or encouraging other people’s families to exercise due care because of what lies beneath. The pollution of that river is a blight on our community and a direct threat to our health and wellbeing. It is not just a statistic but a national scandal—another day, another national scandal. It is barely believable that the situation should have been allowed to get this far.

[Mark Ferguson]

Does my hon. Friend agree that one of the under-recognised aspects of sewage and pollution is their huge impact on the tourism industry and our ability to attract people to this country so that they spend their money here?

[Mr Frith]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right—that is an important observation. The town is doing its utmost to make Burrs, the country park I have been referring to, into a jewel, a place to visit and a destination to come to, but we have very little say in the quality of the water that runs through it.

I will engage with the proposals made by my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich South and the aim to clean our rivers, strengthen environmental protections and ensure better oversight, but I believe that the Government are well under way with that focus. I remain focused on communities such as mine and what they need now—urgent, decisive action. I look forward to the Minister’s comments on what comes next and what we have already achieved. That has included the banning of bosses’ bonuses and of mega-payouts after decades of under-investment.

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[Mark Ferguson]

Birmingham is, in fact, far more difficult than London to get to from my constituency. I do not believe it is about the specific geographic place; it is about how we get people together from all corners of the country, to make sure we have a regional spread.

[Ellie Chowns]

I warmly invite the hon. Member to read up about how citizens’ assemblies work, how the sampling works and how participation is facilitated for all people, and about the time commitment. The citizens’ assembly previously established by this House was over three weekends in Birmingham. These are not huge commitments, but they are a valuable mechanism for ensuring that the public have the time to consider an issue in depth.

I want to raise three points on this important Bill. First, I could not agree more with the hon. Member for Norwich South (Clive Lewis) that the privatisation of water has been an absolute disaster. We have seen soaring bills, soaring executive pay, soaring dividends and soaring siphoning of finance out of our country into the pockets of private interests, while at the same time our infrastructure has crumbled and our rivers have become increasingly polluted. It is long past time to resolve this national disgrace.

My Green colleagues and I believe that public ownership is a core part of the solution, but it is not the only solution. We have to ensure that the water system is adequately regulated, so that whoever is in charge sticks to the rules, does not make profits on the back of pollution and does not pump sewage into our rivers—that is fundamental and essential.

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[Mark Ferguson (Gateshead Central and Whickham) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Norwich South (Clive Lewis) on bringing forward the Bill. He addressed it with the passion for which he is well known. He is also a person of culture, so he will not mind if I begin briefly by quoting a little bit of Philip Larkin:

If I were called in

To construct a religion

I should make use of water.

Going to church

Would entail a fording

To dry, different clothes;

My litany would employ

Images of sousing,

A furious devout drench,

And I should raise in the east

A glass of water

Where any-angled light

Would congregate endlessly.

Water throughout history has been a crucial part of what it means to be human. As we are all painfully aware from primary school science lessons, we are majority water. But culturally, water is incredibly important as well.

In my constituency, people may be aware of “Fog on the Tyne” and “The Waters of Tyne”. “The Blaydon Races” does not mention the River Tyne directly, but it crosses the river between verses. Tourism, as I mentioned in an intervention, is critical, and water plays a huge part in that, with the Gateshead quays and the Newcastle quayside on the opposite side of the river. When people come to the north-east, the river tends to be a place where they get their photo taken. Obviously, the quality of the photo depends somewhat on the quality of the waterways. In the past, Tyneside was known predominantly for coal and our coal industry. That had a huge impact on industry and our economy, but also on the river itself. Subsequent years have seen significant improvement, but I do not think anybody wants to go back to the days when the water in the River Tyne could not be drunk—I dare say that given some of the sewage that has been poured in from other contributing rivers, we might want to give that some very serious thought today.

These are the challenges that Governments face when they inherit a water system that can be described as little more than a national shame. The Conservative party presided over millions upon millions of tonnes of sewage being dumped into our water system by unscrupulous and unregulated water companies. Our water system is not an abstract concept. As was mentioned earlier, it is the water that our children swim in, or that we wish them not to swim in. It is the water we drink. It leads to the bills that our constituents pay. As has been implied, people do not necessarily feel that they are getting value for money from the current system.

Frankly, it is incredibly important that the public trust that institutions such as Parliament will protect one of life’s most basic necessities, which is why I was proud to support the Government’s Water (Special Measures) Act earlier this year. However, I believe there is a lot in my hon. and gallant Friend’s Bill that is worthy of discussion. As I will come to later, I am not convinced by some aspects of it, but he has certainly done us and the public a service by bringing forward this Bill today.

As mentioned earlier, there will barely be a constituency that is not touched by a river or a significant body of water, or that is not part of a coastal area. My constituency is bordered by not just the famous River Tyne, but the River Team and the River Derwent, and FloodMapper UK reports sewage discharges into both the Team and the Tyne. There are people up and down this country who have suffered because of these failures. Surfers Against Sewage have already been mentioned. Some 75% of UK rivers now pose a serious risk to health due to dangerous levels of sewage and human waste being dumped into them. I have learned today that we can use the word “turd” as parliamentary language, and no one should have to deal with turds, whether in a stream, a river, a sea or elsewhere. Madam Deputy Speaker, I promise that I will not add “turd” to my regular parliamentary lexicon, but it is important to use it in the context of this debate.

Surfers Against Sewage have noted that nearly 1,800 reports of sickness after bathing are linked to sewage discharge. There are many ways I would not wish to become unwell, but doing so by consuming sewage while swimming is perhaps the most unpleasant that one could face. This is a public health crisis, and people are getting sick. Surfers and swimmers are falling ill after taking to the water. As has been mentioned, parents are warning their children to keep away from local rivers. In 2025, it is utterly shameful that we have to warn people not to touch the water in one of the wealthiest countries in the world.

I have already referred to tourism, and many of us who travel to other countries will be familiar with the regular question, “Should I drink tap water or bottled water?” The idea that tourists may begin to question the quality of our waterways is a real concern, and it is one of the untold economic impacts that have not really been touched on when we have thought about water pollution.

Our constituents are paying the price, because their water bills have risen and risen while standards have unfortunately dropped. Standards have dropped in my own constituency, and I am glad that the Government are tackling the untold consequences of the water industry’s failures. In my constituency, a school had to close for weeks on end because of flooding, which had a hugely detrimental impact on the students. No child should lose out on a moment’s education because of flooding.

One of my constituents—I will not name him, because I have not sought his permission to do so—met me recently to show me the flood damage that is regularly done to his house. Whenever there is significant flooding, water flows through his house and into the back garden. That would be bad enough if he was not in his 80s, had not broken a finger when trying to lift a storm drain, and did not have a loved one with serious health problems who is sleeping downstairs, and for whom he is trying to care. These are the lived realities of our water system’s failures. They are not exclusively the failures of the water companies, but all too often the reaction of the water companies has not helped to resolve them.

Although normal working people have lost out, water company bosses have regrettably remained quids in, as has been mentioned already. Yes, billions have been paid to shareholders, but £41 million in bonuses, benefits and incentives has been paid to water executives since 2020. They have paid themselves while allowing the infrastructure of our water system to crumble. The pipes that deliver water to our homes, schools, hospitals and businesses are hundreds of years old and leaking, which is why I will come to something that I am very pleased the Government recently committed to in the Water (Special Measures) Act.

Enough is enough. The BBC announced only yesterday that water companies released raw sewage into England’s rivers and seas for a record 3.61 million hours last year because the legislation passed on to us by the previous Government was, I am afraid, ineffective. That is why, within days of being elected last July, the Government announced plans for the Water (Special Measures) Act in the King’s Speech, and introduced the Bill to this House on 4 September.

We have talked about the pace of change in this country, and I think everyone on the Government Benches would like us to be able to deliver things as fast as possible. People in the Gallery today and elsewhere in the country are restless for change, but bringing a Bill to this place in September really showed the seriousness of this Government. Bringing a Bill to this place is no small effort, as I am sure my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Norwich South would agree, and therefore for the Government to introduce the Bill in what were the early weeks of this Parliament was, I think, very important.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Emma Hardy)]

The first week in September.

[Mark Ferguson]

The first week in September, as the Minister rightly notes. Despite the Conservatives voting against it at every stage, the Act passed.

[Jerome Mayhew]

I would like to give the hon. Gentleman the opportunity to correct the record: the official Opposition did not oppose that Act.

[Mark Ferguson]

I will happily correct the record. Let me say instead, then, that the Conservatives failed to give the Act their full support, which I am sure all our constituents would have liked to see. I am afraid I have seen similar carping recently—over whether the Opposition opposed the Planning and Infrastructure Bill only earlier this week, for instance. As we say in the north-east—I hope, Madam Deputy Speaker, that this is parliamentary language—if you sit on the fence, you tend to get spelks in your bottom. I would advise that abstaining can also have such spelky consequences.

The Water (Special Measures) Act—which, as the shadow Minister notes, the Conservatives did not entirely support or, perhaps, entirely oppose—introduces a number of important changes, including criminal liabilities for water executives and new, tougher penalties, including imprisonment when companies fail to co-operate or obstruct investigations, which used to result only in a fine. If companies fail to comply, the executives will end up in the dock and face up to two years of jail time—a meaningful disincentive. Further changes in the Act include a ban on bonuses for CEOs and those in senior leadership unless high standards are met on protecting the environment, their consumers and financial resilience. I am aware there has already been some discussion about star ratings, and I am sure the Minister will be coming back to that later.

Our plan for change to clean up our rivers, lakes and seas for good is supported by our Independent Water Commission. When it launched last October, it held a huge call for evidence, urging people to provide feedback on what needs to change to clean up our waterways and rebuild our broken water infrastructure. The call for evidence, by the way, closes at midnight on 23 April, so there is still time for people to make their submissions.

That is why the new Labour Government and the Environment Agency have announced these changes. In January, the water sector made record commitments to clean up the environment and invest in new infrastructure, representing a £22.1 billion investment in the environment. I am also particularly pleased at the changes in the Water (Special Measures) Act around the ringfencing of money for investment, so that there is a real focus on investment rather than money slipping away to other places.

I want briefly to come back to citizens’ assemblies, because I would hate for my position on this to be misrepresented. I do have concerns as to how national citizens’ assemblies can work with a geographically disparate nation. I am constantly concerned that the voices of the people of my region—and, within my region, the people of my constituency—are not always heard in the national conversation. If sometimes I am a little loud, it is because I am trying to make up for that.

It is a shame that the hon. Member for North Herefordshire (Ellie Chowns) is no longer in her place, because I would have said to her that there is no lack of reading on my part. In fact, Stephen Elstub has written very compellingly on citizens’ assemblies. While I do not agree with all his writing, and cannot claim to have read it all, I think he has certainly made some compelling points. I am not inherently opposed to citizens’ assemblies —I believe there are circumstances in which they could work—but I find the idea of having a national citizens’ assembly on something as specific as this challenging, and I would like more information on that as conversations in this area progress.

I sense that my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Norwich South is not as reassured as I am by the Water (Special Measures) Act, but having done a little reading over the past few days, I do feel that a lot of the calls made in this Bill have been addressed by the Government’s plan for change: ensuring cleaner rivers, lakes and coastal waters through pollution prevention and restoration; strengthening climate resilience by repairing leaks, reducing emissions and integrating renewable energy into water operations; making water more affordable and preventing companies from prioritising shareholder profits over public services; establishing a commission on water; and holding water companies accountable with stricter enforcement measures. This is a pragmatic, reasonable approach.

I thank my hon. and gallant Friend for bringing forward his Bill today. It is welcome that additional time has been given to this important discussion, and I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say in response.