Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Steve Reed and Alistair Carmichael

Thursday 14th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

I congratulate the Secretary of State, and indeed the Chancellor of the Exchequer, on the achievement of the Budget: in 23 years in this House, I have never seen such a degree of unity among farming organisations in their response to it. One point on which there seems to be no disagreement is that the removal of the ringfence around agricultural payments to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland is a bad move. Nobody asked for it. Why did the Government do it, and what do they expect to achieve with it?

[Steve Reed]

The right hon. Gentleman will be aware that we have announced the biggest Budget for sustainable farming—£5 billion over the next two years—in the history of our country, and that is to be welcomed by everybody in the sector and everybody who cares about it. This is a Government who believe in devolution. We believe that devolved Administrations should have the right to take decisions about their own countries. The consequentials mean that the appropriate level of funding will continue to go to those devolved Administrations, and our support for devolution means that the devolved Administrations will take their own decisions about the best way to spend it.

Independent Water Commission

Debate between Steve Reed and Alistair Carmichael

Wednesday 23rd October 2024 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

We come to the Chair of the Select Committee.

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

The Secretary of State is quite right to point to the role of the payment of bonuses and dividends in bringing us to this point, but he must surely acknowledge that that is far from being the whole story. There are a number of business and accounting practices in companies such as Thames Water that have brought us to the stage we are at today. If he is serious about having a water system that is fit for the future, he has to understand properly what has gone on before. Will he therefore confirm that the commission will be properly resourced with the necessary forensic accounting resource, so that those who have been responsible for the most egregious practices in the past and who now seem to be appearing in other water companies around the country will not be allowed to do the same thing there?

[Steve Reed]

I thank the Chair of the Select Committee for the points that he makes. Of course, he is right. The Water (Special Measures) Bill, with its ban on bonuses, will not be sufficient to reset the sector, although it is an ask that the public are rightly making because of the unfairness of people who are overseeing failure being richly rewarded for that failure. That should not have been allowed to go on under the previous Government, and it will not go on under this new Government.

The reason we have set up the commission is to address the very points the right hon. Gentleman makes about financial and environmental sustainability and viability. I look forward to working with him and his Committee as the commission carries out its work, as we review its findings in the summer of next year, and as we then shape what will be significant new legislation to reset the sector—a reformed sector—in a new partnership with Government to bring in the investment that will finally clean up our waterways.