Water Sector: Public Ownership

Martin Wrigley Excerpts

Monday 14th September 2026 Westminster Hall

[Martin Wrigley (Newton Abbot) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Barker. I am delighted to speak to this petition. It is about a really important issue, particularly in my constituency of Newton Abbot where we have Dawlish Warren, which is the place where “Dirty Business”, which showed the tragic death of Heather Preen, was filmed. I met Heather’s mother Julie when she came to this House, which was truly sobering.

I have the River Exe and the River Teign in my constituency. Both of them suffer. We are not dealing with water in the right way; I think that is plain to see. Quite how much hon. Members will say anything different in this debate I am not sure, but it is clear that we need to make a change. The experiment of 1989 failed. Heather died only 10 years after that, and we can see that investment was not being made. South West Water proudly says that it invests £13 billion in the system, but it pays out more than half of that in dividends. That is just wrong.

[Luke Murphy (Basingstoke) (Lab)]

On the hon. Member’s point about the failure to invest, in Basingstoke South East Water’s failure to invest in the Surrey hills pipeline has resulted in over-abstraction of the Greywell fen, which is destroying our chalk streams, holding up the local plan, which means that homes cannot be built, and risking water scarcity for existing residents. Does the hon. Member agree that investment is at the heart of the failure and that whatever model we choose must deliver investment to deliver change in all those aspects?

--- Later in debate ---

[Martin Wrigley]

I absolutely agree with the hon. Member for Basingstoke (Luke Murphy). There is only one place where money comes from to make those investments. The water companies cannot borrow more money. Their money does not come from the investors. The investors are sitting there; that is the original £5 billion that was made available to buy the companies in the first place. That money comes only from the customers’ bills or from Government—the customers’ tax. That is why water companies must move into public ownership and more particularly into mutual ownership so that the customers own the company. They would then be investing in their own future, not in somebody else’s profits.

[Luke Myer (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Martin Wrigley]

I will make progress.

I welcome the change to a single regulator, which was set out in the White Paper, but it has been clear for years that Ofwat has not had the teeth or the understanding to avoid the water companies turning into financial instruments dealing with very complex debt deals. That is where things have gone wrong, and we have to change it.

We should look differently at how we fine companies for their behaviour, prior to taking them into some form of public ownership. I strongly believe that when we find them funds, the money cannot simply come from customers’ bills. We see companies such as Thames Water putting off paying their bills for years, and that must not happen. Personally, I believe that we should look at other ways of fining the water companies, perhaps even through shares or something that hits shareholders, rather than customers. That is the only way we will have any control over these companies until we make the change.

In the meantime, we have had citizen science groups such as Friends of the River Teign and Friends of the River Exe testing water daily over the summer. It is rarely green; it is always polluted. This is a major problem. We have people swimming in the seas who rely on citizen science testing to see what is happening. I congratulate campaign groups on their efforts, but the fact that they have to do such testing is reprehensible, and it should not be happening in the 21st century. We have to take the water companies out. We have to put them under public ownership. I urge the Minister to do so quickly.