Water Supplies: East Grinstead

Mike Martin Excerpts

Monday 12th January 2026 Commons Chamber

[Emma Hardy]

I thank the hon. Lady for her kind words.

I completely share the frustration; it would be nice not to be talking about South East Water in the House. I feel I have come to know the hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells (Mike Martin) very well for the sad reason that we seem to be meeting all too frequently about problems in that area. As I have said, the Drinking Water Inspectorate will be investigating the situation in Tunbridge Wells. One thing it will look at is bottled water and its supply to vulnerable people—has that been communicated well; has there been a sufficiency; is it in the right place?—because during a crisis it looks at whether people are getting the water they need, so that investigation will take place.

As I have mentioned, I have already met Ofwat to share some of my concerns about performance issues at the company. I will be asking it to look at whether it thinks this company has met its obligations in serving its customers, and I will be reflecting deeply and seriously on what it tells me.

[Mike Martin (Tunbridge Wells) (LD)]

I thank the Minister for all the help she has given me and my constituents over the past month. Tunbridge Wells is yet again without water. We seem to roll from outage to outage. As we stand here today, 6,500 houses are without supply. Schools are closed, and even more are closing as more areas go out of supply.

The Minister knows from personal experience that the leadership of South East Water suffers from an optimism bias, with appalling risk management. The leaders have no idea what is actually going on. During the call the Minister and I were on just an hour and a half ago, they said two things that were immediately proven to be false. That is not necessarily because they are lying, but because they do not know what they are doing. Plainly, the leadership of South East Water suffers from groupthink.

Last week, the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee showed the leadership to be negligent. The Committee Chair, the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael), accused the CEO of misleading Parliament and said his position was “untenable”. The Secretary of State in the Minister’s own Department has said that she is “shocked” by Hinton’s “lack of accountability”. Does the Minister have confidence in Dave Hinton, the CEO of South East Water?

[Emma Hardy]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question, and yes, we have been spending a long time talking to each other. I watched the EFRA Committee with great interest, particularly when Dave Hinton rated himself eight out of 10. It is really important that the Drinking Water Inspectorate has the space to do its investigation. It is also really important that Ofwat has the space to have a look at this company. My priority here and now is trying to get people’s water back on and the system up and running, and that is where I want to focus my time, but there are questions to be asked about why we are back in this situation again.