Water Scarcity

Sarah Gibson Excerpts

Tuesday 9th December 2025 Westminster Hall

[Jess Brown-Fuller]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stuart, as much as it was 15 minutes ago. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Horsham for securing this important debate.

The south-east, where my constituency is, has been designated as water stressed since 2021. As reflected in many of the contributions, that sometimes feels quite hard to believe in such a wet country. Much of my constituency is a low-lying coastal plain, and weather volatility is causing severe conditions on both ends of the scale. Droughts and floods are a commonplace occurrence, whereas before they were less likely.

I would like briefly to talk about chalk streams. I am very lucky to represent two of England’s 200 chalk streams, and over-abstraction on the River Ems over many years means that the point of constant flow has moved two kilometres downstream since the 1960s. That means that a large proportion of the river is drying up every summer when it never used to. Constituents have told me harrowing accounts of trying to rescue the salmon that migrate down the River Ems, and it feels like a total catastrophe when people are trying to save those fish. The Test and the Itchen, just outside my constituency, are also rare habitats and important chalk streams. They, too, are really impacted by over-abstraction.

To address that, Portsmouth Water is building the first new reservoir in more than 30 years, the Havant Thicket reservoir, just on the border of my constituency. That was largely favoured by the local community, because it would create a new space and an exciting environment for people to visit and walk around. Then Southern Water got involved. It saw this brilliant idea that was popular among the population, and it put forward a proposal to invest in Havant Thicket with Portsmouth Water by introducing an effluent recycling scheme, the first of its kind in this country to supplement our drinking water supply. By investing in that technology, Southern Water can use clever accounting tricks to maintain its bottom line by describing the technology as an asset rather than investing in fixing its existing infrastructure, which is much less appealing to its shareholders.

The cost of the scheme to introduce effluent recycling into the drinking water supply at the Havant Thicket reservoir is estimated to be £1.2 billion, but the costs are spiralling every year. There is also no lasting legacy to this project. The plant will become redundant in 60 years, but customers will be paying for it in their bills for far longer. It is also hugely energy intensive. At the same time, as many hon. Members have mentioned, Southern Water wastes 100 million litres of water every day from leaky pipes that it has failed to maintain.

[Sarah Gibson (Chippenham) (LD)]

My constituency is in Wiltshire, and the northern part is served by Thames Water. In Lyneham we seem to see outages almost every week. Thames Water is wasting water and pouring it down the streets of Royal Wootton Bassett, but cannot supply tap water to Lyneham or to parts of Bassett. On top of that, the company gives residents no information about when supply will be reinstated. Would my hon. Friend agree that water companies should be making better use of their assets, but also giving residents information when they fail?

[Jess Brown-Fuller]

I thank my hon. Friend for making a valid point. I am sure that for that reason, she agrees that the best way to address our failing water system is to make water companies into public benefit interest companies, so they are beholden to their customers and the environment before the needs of their shareholders. Although these companies may profess to care about the public, they are always looking far more closely at the bottom line and how shareholders feel.

With confidence in water companies at an all-time low, Southern Water being one of the worst offenders, it is hard to believe that the Secretary of State will sign off on the Havant Thicket project without encouraging the company to prove that all other options have been exhausted. I would appreciate it if the Minister provided an update on whether the Government are in favour of the scheme. I understand that the decision has been deferred until spring 2026. That provides an opportunity for the Minister to meet local campaigners from my constituency and the neighbouring one who would love to share their thoughts on the project, which could end up providing a blueprint for the rest of the UK.

Water scarcity is not just about supply. It is also about demand, which is rising exponentially with a projected deficit of billions of litres of water a day, as many hon. Members have mentioned. That is why I tabled an amendment to the Planning and Infrastructure Bill calling for all new developments to introduce dual piping at the build stage so that households could introduce grey water recycling into their homes without a huge cost. The cost to the developer would have been very small—we are talking in the single hundreds of pounds—and yet if households had decided to start using grey water in their washing machines, for example, or to flush their toilets, they could have made huge savings in the long run.

Although the Government chose not to accept my amendment, there does need to be a serious conversation about the use of grey water to reduce demand on drinking water. We also need urgently to implement schedule 3 to the Flood and Water Management Act 2010, which is long overdue. Although local authorities can choose to make SUDS mandatory for all new developments—I know the Minister is passionate about SUDS, as she has told me in many a Westminster Hall debate—as my local authority, Chichester district council, has done, it is still not mandatory across the country, so I would appreciate an update from the Minister on the review of schedule 3.

Portsmouth Water is undertaking a project in my constituency of Chichester to install meters on every property for which it provides water, which should mean that those that use more water pay more, and those who are conscious of their water use see a saving on their bills. With water bills going up exponentially across the country, I am sure that would be a welcome saving to lots of my constituents in Chichester.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tim Farron]

I agree with my hon. Friend. We made those points during the passage of the Water (Special Measures) Bill, now the 2025 Act, and we will of course try them again in the near future. Water scarcity and limited water storage capacity put acute pressure on farming and food production. There must be more support for farmers to manage water well and for the development of local resource options to secure and store water.

Flooding and drought both threaten our agriculture sector and therefore threaten Britain’s food security. In the last few days we have been commemorating with great sadness and dark memories the 10th anniversary of Storm Desmond in Cumbria and elsewhere in the country. We see water levels rising today and recognise that it is so important that we invest in protecting our communities—in particular those who provide the food for our tables: our farmers.

Water companies must be held to account. That means requiring them to reduce leakages, deliver on efficiency targets, expand uptake of water meters and embrace water-saving technologies. In my constituency, we do indeed have an awful lot of lakes, and they need topping up, so it rains rather a lot. We are the most beautiful part of England, I would argue, but we are also the wettest. Yet despite the fact that we get three and a half times more rainfall per year than even Manchester, we end up facing droughts and potential water rationing over the summer months. That can only be the consequence of appalling levels of investment in our water network as we see good water leaking out of the system. The wettest place in England last summer had a hosepipe ban—that is barmy and outrageous.

At the same time, we recognise that augmenting supply may become unavoidable. Options must include new reservoirs, especially in regions that suffer from lower rainfall, as well as greater water recycling, desalination where ecologically feasible and transfers of water between regions. It is vital that we support farmers and land managers as they struggle with extreme weather. The Liberal Democrats stand alone as the only party in England calling for food security and resilience of food supply to be counted as public goods and therefore supported through the environmental land management schemes, which we would boost with an additional £1 billion per year. The lack of water through periods of drought is a fundamental threat to our food security, so we would ensure that farmers are actively supported to ensure that they remain able to put food on our tables no matter the weather.

Before I close, we ask the Minister: will there be a comprehensive cross-departmental UK adaptation strategy that embeds climate resilience, including water resilience, across all Government policies and agencies? Will that be set out in the water White Paper that we are expecting very soon following the Independent Water Commission report just before summer? Will the White Paper introduce resilience standards for water and support homeowners in installing adaptation measures against flooding and overheating?

Will the White Paper restore agricultural permitted development rights, as set out by my hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire (Pippa Heylings), to allow farmers to build on-farm reservoirs with the support of the local community? Will the White Paper bring in a new clean water authority to replace the failed Ofwat and merge it into an authority with other regulators too?

[Sarah Gibson]

On the subject of flooding, which is slightly off the point, I have just received information from the Environment Agency to say that Chippenham is flooding again this year. The Minister will remember that she and I spent some time mopping out in wellies, and we are at that point of flooding again. Does my hon. Friend agree that funding for flood resilience is vital? The fact is that areas not within mayoral authorities seem to be unable to secure any funding for anything.

[Graham Stuart (in the Chair)]

Order. Shortly after the hon. Member responds to that intervention, he should bring his remarks to a close.