Mains Water Connections: Cost for Rural Communities

Debate between Simon Clarke and Rushanara Ali

Tuesday 5th September 2023 Westminster Hall

[Rushanara Ali (in the Chair)]

I will call Sir Simon Clarke to move the motion. I will then call the Minister to respond. There will not be an opportunity for the Member in charge to wind up, as this is only a 30-minute debate.

[Sir Simon Clarke (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the cost of mains water connections for rural communities.

It is a real pleasure to have the chance to talk about this important issue in the House this afternoon, Ms Ali.

Water is life. That is a statement of fact as ancient as civilisation itself, but today I am here to talk about the lack of clean water affecting Aysdalegate, which is a row of cottages that forms part of my Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland constituency. Aysdalegate sits about two miles from Guisborough, the main market town in East Cleveland, just along the A171 road over the moors to Whitby. It is somewhat isolated, but it is not so remote that the problems I am about to relate can reasonably be anticipated. I find it astonishing, living as we do in an age of unparalleled technological advances, that there remain corners of England where something as simple as access to safe running drinking water should even have to be the subject of debate, but here we are.

For the residents of Aysdalegate, their days are marred by an issue that most of us would have thought resolved in the previous century, if not the century before that: their homes are not linked to the mains water network. Instead, they grapple daily with inadequate water quality from a private water supply, and they are told that the cost of connection, a figure that will almost certainly amount to hundreds of thousands of pounds, will fall upon them, should they seek to remedy the situation. This is not some multimillion new build vanity project that we are talking about, or some millionaire seeking to pull a fast one by getting public funds for improvements to a remote sporting lodge or a holiday home. This is a small hamlet in which very normal people are trying to live everyday lives. Aysdalegate represents hard-working families, the elderly and, in some cases, the disabled and the vulnerable.

We should be clear about the conditions my constituents are living in. Over the last decade, Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council has performed drinking water checks nine times at Aysdalegate. On each and every occasion, supplies have been judged unsatisfactory owing to bacterial contamination, including E. coli and enterococci. I am sure everybody is aware of the dangers posed by these organisms. E. coli, which is a bacteria that predominantly resides in the intestines of humans and animals, is a strong indication of recent faecal contamination. It can lead to severe gastrointestinal illness, kidney failure and, in severe cases, death.

Delivery of Public Services

Debate between Simon Clarke and Rushanara Ali

Tuesday 28th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Rushanara Ali]

The Chief Secretary mentions ways of putting money into people’s pockets. Will he explain how he will recover the £26.8 billion that the Treasury has lost to fraudsters and error, and the £11 billion lost by failing to insure against interest rate rises? If the Government could recover that money, or if they had not wasted it through fraud and mismanagement, there would be billions of pounds in the public purse to support our constituents right now. Instead, it has been lost through incompetence.

[Mr Clarke]

I respect the hon. Lady from our days of old on the Treasury Committee, and I completely share her commitment to managing public money responsibly, but I gently disagree with those numbers. Clearly some fraud has been perpetrated during the pandemic, and we are managing it actively; indeed, in July, the new public sector fraud authority will go live, backed by some £25 million of additional funding, which is a welcome step. However, sometimes the figures cited in fraud debates capture items such as the write-down in value of the personal protective equipment that was purchased at an absolute premium at the height of the pandemic and that subsequently became worth much less in an era of much greater supply. We should be careful to take the issue seriously, but should not convey the impression that things are as bleak as the hon. Lady makes out.

[Rushanara Ali]

Will the Minister give way again?

[Mr Clarke]

I am going to make some progress at this point.

The Chancellor has also announced his intention to cut the basic rate of income tax from 20p to 19p in the pound from 2024. This will be the first income tax cut for 16 years, and it will be a £5 billion tax cut for 30 million people. The Chancellor has also said that he will set out his support for businesses in more detail in the autumn Budget.

Crucially, everything that we have done has been done responsibly, reflecting our continued commitment to strong and sustainable public finances. In direct contrast, the Labour leadership has so far promised £99.5 billion of day-to-day spending commitments—

--- Later in debate ---

[Rushanara Ali]

It is rather rich for the Minister to lecture the Opposition about funding when he has not even been able to tell us how much will be lost in fraud on his watch. His own counter-fraud Minister, after he resigned, said that it had been

“happy days if you were a crook”.

That is what his Government are doing—dishing out money to crooks. Perhaps the Minister could answer my earlier question: how much money has been lost to fraud and incompetence, and how will he recover that money?

[Mr Clarke]

We have set out a very clear plan to recover that money, and we have provided regular periodic updates on the progress that we are making against fraud, but we do not accept Lord Agnew’s characterisation of the situation. We continue to pursue this, and obviously the authorities reserve the right to pursue individuals and companies wherever it is clear that wrongdoing has occurred.

As a Minister, I am proud to be part of a Government who support people through difficult times, but that needs to go hand in hand with fiscal responsibility. The support that we are providing is timely, temporary, and targeted at those who need it most to avoid pushing up prices and interest rates further.

The motion lists a number of other issues, including passports, driving licences, GP and hospital appointments, court dates, and airports. Let me take each of those in turn.

Owing to covid-19, more than 5 million people delayed applying for British passports. Following the return of unrestricted international travel, there has been unprecedented demand for new passports, with 9.5 million applications forecast for this year. That compares with 4 million applications in 2020 and 5 million in 2021. Since April 2021, 650 additional staff have been brought in, with a further 550 arriving over the summer, and those numbers are starting to tell: more passport applications are being processed than ever before. In fact, between March and May alone, the Passport Office completed the processing of some 3 million applications. Since April 2021, people have been advised to allow up to 10 weeks to receive their passports, and 98.5% of applications have hit that target. For the small percentage of customers whose applications take longer than 10 weeks, and who are due to travel within a fortnight, there is an expedited service, at no additional cost, to ensure that they obtain their passports in time.

I am encouraged by the hard work of employees at the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency to clear the backlog in the processing of driving licence applications and waiting times for driving tests which built up throughout the pandemic and last year’s industrial action. I am confident that the DVLA remains on track to reduce waiting times further over the course of this year.

On NHS waiting lists, I want to take this chance to thank the NHS for the commitment with which it is tackling the backlog that built up during the pandemic. This Government are already instituting one of the largest catch-up programmes in the history of the NHS, spending more than £8 billion between this financial year and 2024-25 to tackle the backlog so that the NHS in England can deliver some 30% more activity in 2024-25 compared with pre-pandemic levels.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Simon Clarke and Rushanara Ali

Wednesday 13th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Rushanara Ali]

I rise to support Lords amendment 51 and amendment (a) to it, tabled by Labour Front Benchers, and the amendments on the customs union. The EU referendum has undoubtedly changed our country completely, and there will be ramifications for our economy and society. The enormous job of leaving the EU represents a huge challenge for any Government, but we must remind this Government that whether people voted to leave or remain, they did not vote to become poorer. Yet the uncertainty and the shambolic way in which the negotiations have taken place are already having an effect on our economy: investment is down and, as the Governor of the Bank of England has stated, already 2% has been knocked off growth in the economy and we are losing £10 billion a year. Household income is down by £900 a year, which is money out of people’s pockets. There are major ramifications for all our constituents and their livelihoods.

My constituency is sandwiched between the City of London and Canary Wharf, and although I am no stranger to giving them a hard time for not doing more to create inclusive growth and ensure that the benefits reach everybody, I certainly do not want to see our country’s financial centres, which power our economy, contribute 12% of the taxation that funds our public services and create 2 million jobs, damaged by negotiations that keep us out of the customs union and the single market. If we are serious about dealing with the issues that affect our country, we must recognise the concerns not only about immigration, but about the jobs and livelihoods of the people we have to stand up for.

As other Members have said, the consequences of not being in a customs union and a single market are profound. That is why I will be supporting Lords amendment 51, but with a heavy heart, because I do not want to be in a different position from those on our Front Bench. But I believe that it would be wrong for me not to support it, because that would damage the interests of my constituents and the interests of millions of jobs and livelihoods across our country.

[Mr Simon Clarke]

I rise in support of amendments (c) and (d) in lieu of Lords amendment 3, which address environmental standards and to which I have put my name. In addition, I want to express my pleasure that there has been progress today on the Dubs amendment, for which I thank the Solicitor General.