Water Bill

Nusrat Ghani Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 28th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Clive Lewis]

No, I am going to carry on and make some progress. You made your point. Let the public—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

Order. Mr Lewis, I do not believe I was making a point at all.

[Clive Lewis]

My apologies, Madam Deputy Speaker; I should have said that my hon. Friend made his point.

The clock is ticking. The climate crisis is no longer a distant warning. It is our lived reality. Rising droughts, creeping desertification, depleted aquifers, wildfires, systemic collapse—these are no longer projections; they are the forecast turned fact. Preparing for this future and adapting to what is now inevitable has never been more urgent.

The evidence is sobering. The UK’s water resources are under mounting pressure and not just from the climate emergency, but from rising demand and population growth. Experts now project that England could face significant water supply deficits as early as 2034 unless we act decisively. That is not a distant horizon; it is a little over a decade away.

But while the threat has grown, our resilience has shrunk, because while the climate crisis has intensified, our water infrastructure has stood still, or, worse, been sold off, hollowed out and left to rot. In the 35 years before privatisation almost 100 reservoirs were built; in the 35 years since privatisation, not one major English reservoir has been built. But it gets worse, because in that same period private water companies have sold off 25 reservoirs without replacing one. Instead of investing in resilience, they have extracted value: £72 billion paid out in dividends while pipes leak, rivers choke, and the public pays the price. My hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (Mr Frith) asks how we can afford it; how can we not afford it? That is not mismanagement; it is a betrayal. If scientists tell us the climate crisis is an existential threat to humanity and to this country—

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[Clive Lewis]

Those are the reasons why I have brought forward this Bill. The Government’s Act does none of those things, but my Bill does. Take just one example—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

Order. I believe Mr Lewis probably cannot hear interventions, because he is so loud himself. Members should intervene loudly if they wish to intervene.

[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.

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[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

Before I call the next Member, I trust that the microphones have been adjusted to their normal level.

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[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

The hon. Gentleman knows that it is entirely up to the Member who is speaking to decide whether they wish to take or reject an intervention, just as it is up to Members attempting to make an intervention to either persist in the attempt or not. We will let the debate continue, but the hon. Gentleman is right to say that there is plenty of time.

[Carla Denyer]

The provision of water—

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[Clive Lewis]

People talk about whether something can be taken out of public control and put back into privatisation. Of course, Parliament is sovereign and that can always happen, but there is a point about giving control to the public. Let us take the NHS, which is a public service. Any Government in the post-war period could have taken the NHS back into privatisation. Why did they not do so? They would not have dared, because it would have been so publicly damaging and politically destructive. That is what would happen with our water. Does the hon. Member agree? [Interruption.]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

Order. May I remind people in the Public Gallery to remain silent?

[Carla Denyer]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I thank the hon. Gentleman for that helpful reminder about the analogy with the national health service.

Public ownership is not just essential for social and environmental justice; it is also, in this situation, a pragmatic necessity. It just makes sense, which is why almost everyone else does things that way. With water back in public hands, the Government could invest in fixing the crumbling infrastructure and cleaning up our rivers, or preventing them from getting into such a state in the first place, without haemorrhaging money to shareholders and allowing it to spill over—sorry; I couldn’t resist—into fat cats’ salaries.

People are struggling to put food on the table and heat their homes. We cannot allow water companies to contribute to that situation by hiking up the bills that everyone has to pay. Without real change, we will not stop sewage flowing into our rivers and profits flowing into the pockets of shareholders. There is an obvious answer that makes both people and the environment the winners: if they so choose, the Government could bring water companies back into public hands, to end the profiteering, drive down bills, protect our rivers, waterways and coastline, and catch up with the public who, as the hon. Member for Norwich South pointed out, are way ahead of the Labour Government on this issue and much else.

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[Ellie Chowns]

rose—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

Order. I remind the hon. Member that interventions should be short.

[Ellie Chowns]

I remind the House briefly that all these issues are well investigated and understood, and the House has previously used this mechanism effectively.

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[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.

[Dame Meg Hillier]

I think my hon. Friend makes some important points. We have seen from citizens’ juries, including in Ireland, which has a well-worn route for using these for their referenda, that people do drop out and do not always attend, because life gets in the way. That is why we are elected: to make hard decisions and defend difficult issues. We cannot make the world like the land of milk and honey—certainly not after the inheritance we received from the last Government after 14 years of mismanagement.

We have very big challenges and we need to tackle them. It would put heavy pressure on citizens’ juries to do that. The key point here is that, whatever the best practice, the Bill does not go into the detail of it, so we cannot assume that the good practice that the hon. Member for North Herefordshire has highlighted from her constituency is necessarily what would apply—let alone the challenges that other hon. Members have raised.

Turning to the hon. Member for Bristol Central, I would be surprised that a member of her party is so willing to pass responsibility over, but then I look at what happened in Brighton when the Greens controlled Brighton council. I will put aside the rubbish collection issue and the infighting and look at the issue with the i360—the tower that is now a tourist attraction. The company behind it went bust with over £50 million of debt. It was the Green-run council that provided £36 million of public money to pay for that vanity project, and in the end taxpayers in Brighton and Hove were left £51 million out of pocket and Brighton and Hove council were left to pay £2 million a year for the foreseeable future.

I do not think we need to take any lectures from the Green party about how to manage public money, because when they have been in power, they cannot do it. No wonder they want to pass responsibility over to a citizens’ jury rather than take responsibility themselves.

I have been diverted, but I think it was useful. Before I move on to my next point, I will take one more diversion.

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[Clive Lewis]

May I make a more general point? If the Bill went into Committee, we would look at this in far more detail, but a big part of the Bill is about a mission and our direction of travel. It is about tackling the crisis in democracy, and trusting our fellow citizens to give a point of view, with guidance from experts, so that we can make a decision. When the founders of the renaissance or capitalism sat down, did they know that the renaissance would happen, or that capitalism would end up like this? No. This is about heading in a certain direction and having some imagination—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

Order. Interventions should be short.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I thank the hon. Member for Norwich South for that helpful reply to the hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Neil Coyle). I am just doing my best to facilitate debate here, and I hope that you, Madam Deputy Speaker, will appreciate the congenial atmosphere that I am trying to create. I do not know whether it is working; please let me know later.

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[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

A lot of Members want to contribute today. I call James Frith.