Ofwat: Strategic Priorities

Robert Jenrick Excerpts

Thursday 9th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Philip Dunne]

Very brief, Madam Deputy Speaker. Thank you for calling me and for chairing our debate. In essence, every contribution from across the House has been in agreement: we have broad consensus that now is the time to fix the water quality of our rivers, and Ofwat is the mechanism by which the process can begin. I am extremely grateful to the Minister in particular for her response to comments made from across the House. I hope that her officials will read the transcript and the commitments that she made. Hon. Members, and certainly I, as Chair of the Committee, will be happy to engage with her on some of the additional points on which she responded so positively. I also thank the Opposition spokesman, the hon. Member for Leeds North West (Alex Sobel), who approached the debate in characteristically constructive style.

I would gently say to the sole representative of the Liberal Democrats, the hon. Member for St Albans (Daisy Cooper), in a slightly discordant way, that calling for a sewage tax and to ban sewage discharges as a legal, overnight measure reflects the lack of credibility or realism in proposals that the Liberal Democrats often make on this matter. I must say that their intervention on the Animal Welfare (Sentience) Act 2022, which was to make it an offence for mammals to die from sewage exposure, was a typical example of a completely ludicrous proposal. There was no evidence that that was a problem; the Committee received no evidence on the subject whatsoever. It was political posturing ahead of local elections, and I am afraid that that needs to be called out.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the Government’s strategic priorities for Ofwat.

[Robert Jenrick (Newark) (Con)]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I wonder if I can take your advice on how I can raise an urgent matter with the Foreign Secretary and her colleagues. Earlier today, a constituent of mine in Newark, Aiden Aslin, along with another British citizen, Shaun Pinner, was sentenced to death in a show trial held at the auspices of Vladimir Putin and his Russian regime.

Both Aiden and Shaun are British citizens who happened to be fighting in the Ukrainian armed forces and were captured by the Russian army around Mariupol. Both are prisoners of war who deserve to be treated appropriately and in accordance with the Geneva convention. Instead, the Russian army put them through a Soviet-era show trial and, earlier today, sentenced them to death. That is completely unacceptable and the most egregious breach of international law. I hope that my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary will summon the Russian ambassador to the Foreign Office at her earliest convenience to convey a clear message that British citizens cannot be treated in that manner, and that both Aiden and Shaun should be freed and returned to their family and friends, either in Ukraine or home here to the United Kingdom, as soon as practicable.