South East Water: Disruption of Supply Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
Sarah Bool
Main Page: Sarah Bool (Conservative - South Northamptonshire)Department Debates - View all Sarah Bool's debates with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
South East Water: Disruption of Supply
Sarah Bool Excerpts(1 month, 3 weeks ago)
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Emma Hardy
I thank my hon. Friend and all members of the EFRA Committee for their excellent report, which was forensic in looking into the failures of South East Water. It was a brilliant, useful document. He is right that tough consequences are needed if concerns are raised and ignored; that cannot be allowed to continue to happen. That is exactly why we want to create a new regulator with strong powers and teeth to be able to take action. It is also why we are looking at introducing this performance improvement regime for water companies so that, if we identify failure in a water company, the regulator has proper oversight to turn that company around and make it improve, with consequences if it does not.
Sarah Bool (South Northamptonshire) (Con)
I thank the Minister for her praise of the EFRA Committee’s report. I speak as a member of that Committee; we are doing extensive work on the water industry and we are following this matter carefully. As has been said, the key issue with the South East Water disruption was the lack of communication, something that applied equally to Anglian Water with the outage that occurred at exactly the same time in South Northamptonshire. I was not told about the outage, and residents report not knowing what was going on for 12 or 24 hours, and the water delivery was inconsistent. What more can the Government do to send a clear message to the water companies that this lack of communication is not acceptable?
Emma Hardy
I thank the hon. Lady for her work on the EFRA Committee. She is entirely right: it is unacceptable. I feel that I am a fair-minded person. I know that water companies cannot control the weather, and I know that they cannot build a reservoir overnight. However, they certainly can contact their Members of Parliament, contact their councils, get in touch with their local resilience forums and make sure that they communicate with their customers, as an absolute bare minimum, and that is exactly the conversation that I will be having with each and every one of them.