Thames Water: Oxfordshire

Debate between Robbie Moore and Layla Moran

Wednesday 7th February 2024 Westminster Hall

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

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Bardell. I thank the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran) for bringing this incredibly important debate on the performance of Thames Water before the House.

Let me be clear: Thames Water’s performance is completely unacceptable, and it must take urgent steps to turn this around. Its customers deserve better, and I want to begin by assuring this House that improving the performance of all water companies, including Thames Water, and ensuring that they deliver for customers and the environment, are top priorities for this Government.

As has been raised in this debate, the performance data for Thames Water is stark. According to Ofwat, Thames Water is failing to meet its commitments to customers on eight of the 12 common performance metrics, particularly on ensuring a consistent supply of water and on its pollution instances, as the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon laid out for all to see. The Environment Agency’s findings tell a similar story, with Thames Water’s environmental performance at the worst levels since 2013, with 17 serious pollution instances in 2022.

The Government and regulators do not take underperformance lightly. As a result of failing to meet its performance commitments, Ofwat has directed Thames Water to return over £73 million to customers during the financial year of 2024-25, which is in addition to £51 million returned to customers during 2022-23. There are also ongoing investigations into compliance at sewage treatment works under way by both Ofwat and the Environment Agency. While it would inappropriate for me to comment further on the specifics of those proceedings, as they are currently under way, they are a clear example of robust regulatory action to hold water companies to account by not only Ofwat but the Environment Agency.

Ofwat has directed Thames Water to produce a service commitment plan. That will require Thames Water to publicly commit to a plan for how it will start to turn its performance around. Please be assured that regulators and the Government will scrutinise those plans in detail to ensure that everything possible is being done to get the company back on track with its service delivery, environmental performance, and ensuring that customers rightly get the good supply they deserve.

[Layla Moran]

I have been meeting with Thames Water on this issue for years now, and every time we meet, it has a plan. Every time we meet, there is a new bit to the plan or the plan has progressed a little bit. I hear now that there is a new plan: what will be different about it? It is everyone’s interest in this House to get this to work. Can the Minister assure us that this plan will actually deliver what people want?

[Robbie Moore]

I want to reassure not only the hon. Lady but every Member who has customers of Thames Water that the Government will hold the water company to account through the use of the regulators—the Environment Agency and Ofwat. I will shortly meet again with the new chief executive of Thames Water, which follows a meeting that the Secretary of State and I had with the CEOs of Thames Water and other water companies very recently. It also follows on from a meeting that the previous water Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton Deane (Rebecca Pow), had back in November. We want to take all these concerns seriously and deal with surge discharges, supply interruptions and internal sewer flooding, which was also mentioned by the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon.

I know that Thames Water is under no illusions as to the scale of the challenge. It has recently published its revised three-year turnaround plan to address some of the concerns raised today, and while we all understand that it will take time to turn performance around, I want to be clear that I expect to see clear and measurable progress being made by the company as swiftly as possible.

Storm Henk

Debate between Robbie Moore and Layla Moran

Monday 8th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Robbie Moore]

It was fantastic to visit my hon. Friend’s constituency at the weekend. I want to put on record my thanks to Jane Froggatt, who represents some of the internal drainage boards, and I commend the work that the boards do. In certain circumstances, they go above and beyond. It is clear, and noted at my end, that a different approach needs to be taken to Lincolnshire—which I know very well—and, as I said during my visit, I am more than happy to review what needs to be done in terms of dredging and removing vegetation from Environment Agency assets and the Delph, which we looked at. It is important that we are not only protecting urban environments, but looking after our farming community and ensuring that the land on which they rely to produce the crops that enable us all to eat the food we want to eat is protected as well as possible.

[Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)]

Barely any part of my constituency was unaffected by the floods. It is not just about the sobbing residents; it is also about the chaos caused across the roads. The A34 was shut, the Abingdon Road was shut, and children could not get to Larkmead School in Abingdon. The Environment Agency has been promising a comprehensive plan since we were flooded devastatingly in 2007, and the Oxford flood alleviation scheme is in train but there is nothing for Abingdon. Would the Minister consider meeting me to discuss why the Environment Agency’s own plan for Abingdon has recently been axed?

[Robbie Moore]

My Environment Agency colleagues are working incredibly hard across Oxfordshire. The Oxford flood alleviation scheme is in place, but I am more than happy to meet the hon. Member to discuss what further action she would like to be taken. I want to reassure her that we are working around the clock to make sure that all households, businesses and farmers are protected from the implications of Storm Henk.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Robbie Moore and Layla Moran

Thursday 7th December 2023 Commons Chamber

[Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)]

T7. Oxford was proud when Port Meadow was given bathing water status, yet just last week the water quality was again rated poor. With the Secretary of State meet me to discuss how we can hold Thames Water to account for its continual failure over dumping raw sewage in Oxfordshire?

[Robbie Moore]

I am happy, as the Minister responsible for water quality, to meet with the hon. Lady, but I will also say that, from the bathing water classifications we saw this week, 95.7% of bathing waters in England are rated good or excellent. That is up from 2010, when just 76% across England were rated good. This Government are taking water quality seriously, and I will endeavour to make sure that we go even further.

Thames in Oxford: Bathing Water Status

Debate between Robbie Moore and Layla Moran

Tuesday 2nd November 2021 Westminster Hall

[Layla Moran]

I could not agree more. No doubt many other places in the country would want the same thing.

It is worth noting that our application has the support of Thames Water. In fact, it paid for a staff member to help to put in the application, so it is determined to do something about the issue. However, on the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) made, we also need an effective Environment Agency, because it is the regulator and it needs the resources and the teeth to hold the water companies to their promises. Therefore, I urge the Minister to assess its ability to do that important work and to ensure that it is well funded to do it. The will is there, and things are moving in the right direction, but we now need as much action from the Government as possible to keep up the momentum and keep water safe.

I am sure that I cannot have been the only one who, during the pandemic, contemplated the natural beauty around me. Indeed, I even bought a wetsuit, hoping that I would get into the river. I did not quite make it, but a lot of people did. In a survey of residents in Oxford, 21% said that this was the first year that they had ever dared to go in the river. They reported that it helped their mental health and wellbeing. There is a truly national movement for wild swimming, and it is wonderful.

Last month, I had the opportunity to meet activists at a bathing site in Wolvercote, just on the edge of Port Meadow. They told me how important it was for them that the designation was made. It would mean that the river that they loved would be subjected to a strict testing regime based on public health requirements. The number of people swimming or picnicking there peaked at an impressive 2,000 a day. It is a very popular spot and there are many like it across the country, as we have already heard. Shockingly, however, there is only one other river in the whole of England that has been granted bathing water status: the River Wharfe in Ilkley, Yorkshire.

[Robbie Moore (Keighley) (Con)]

The hon. Lady mentioned the River Wharfe in Ilkley, which she rightly says is the first river in the whole of the UK to be awarded bathing water status. I want to congratulate the Government on granting that status on the back of a very successful campaign run by the Ilkley Clean River Group. I wholeheartedly support that, because this is a great mechanism for putting more pressure on our utility companies, such as Yorkshire Water, which is discharging storm overflow sewage into the Wharfe.

[Layla Moran]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman’s group on bringing that forward, because we want to double the number of rivers with that status—indeed, to triple or quadruple it in this room alone.