Water Scarcity

Tim Farron Excerpts

Tuesday 9th December 2025 Westminster Hall

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

It is a joy to serve under your guidance this afternoon, Mr Stuart. I plan to be here for the next two debates, so we will have a lovely afternoon together as we have apparently just rejoined the EU on a tied vote. The tie means that we win on the away-goals rule, which is good to hear. All legislation should be settled like that in future.

I give massive thanks and congratulations to my hon. Friend the Member for Horsham (John Milne), who not only secured the debate but led it superbly. All contributions from parties present have been excellent, focused on their communities and on trying to solve the issue. It was great to hear the affinity between the DUP and the Liberal Democrats; after all, we are both very fond of the colour orange. It is great to get a perspective from one of the devolved nations.

The amount of water available at any time depends not only on natural supply—rainfall, rivers, aquifers—but on the capacity of the infrastructure maintained since privatisation by the water companies. Demands from households, industry and agriculture also play a significant part. In Cumbria, we have 20 million visitors a year. Those people are very welcome but that is a lot of drinking water, showers and flushed lavatories, and we need the infrastructure to provide that. On top of that, we provide fresh drinking water for millions of people in the north-west of England. Again, we are proud to do so but we are under pressure.

The Environment Agency has projected national and regional deficits in water supply. Deficits will only worsen over the next 25 years as matters are scheduled. By 2050, the shortfall could reach nearly 5 million litres per day—equivalent to more than a third of the water that we currently rely on for public consumption. Outrageous water shortages have been experienced by South East Water customers, who have been referenced by hon. Friends and championed by our hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells (Mike Martin). Those water shortages could become the experience of people across the country, not just in the south-east region, if we do not radically reform our water industry urgently to ensure that we stop the leaking of billions of pounds of billpayers’ money into the pockets of shareholders and senior executives, when that money should be reinvested in a water infrastructure fit for the British people.

[Anna Dixon]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman—

[Tim Farron]

Not yet.

[Anna Dixon]

The hon. Gentleman—sorry. As he said, Yorkshire has also experienced water shortages. From July this year, we have had a hosepipe ban and reservoirs remain at critically low levels, given what we should expect this season. It was at about 31% of capacity in September. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that Yorkshire Water, like some of the others he mentioned, has failed to invest in the necessary infrastructure to deal with the impact of climate change, as well as rising demand?

[Tim Farron]

The hon. Member makes an excellent point. All this afternoon’s interventions have been good and on the money. Talking about money, this is money leaking out of the industry and not being invested in it. Bonuses and dividends should reward success; clearly, Yorkshire Water and others have failed in their basic task, which is to provide clean water for their communities.

To focus on the scale of the problem, since privatisation the water companies have amassed £70 billion of debt. Adjusted for inflation, they have paid out £83 billion in dividends. That means that on average 30p out of every pound that people pay on their water bills is to service the debt of the water companies, which was racked up to pay dividends. That is a moral outrage.

The main drivers of this impending crisis are clear: climate change; population growth; increased housing demand; business expansion; the demands, which have been mentioned, for huge additional energy and water usage given the growth in AI; pressures on the natural environment; and the growing need to prepare for drought. Those drivers are compounded by historical underinvestment in infrastructure and insufficient demand management.

Successive Governments have comprehensively failed to take climate adaptation measures seriously, guaranteeing misery for communities affected by flooding, wildfires and heat stress. If we are to build new infrastructure, including new homes and data centres—and we must—we must also ensure that water infrastructure keeps pace. That means sustainable drainage, new supply capacity and integration of water resilience into planning from the start. For instance, we should ensure that data centres are built predominantly at coastal locations and that desalination plants are an integral part of their design and key to their gaining of planning consent. Otherwise, we simply will not have the capacity to both provide clean water for our people and be the AI superpower that we desire to be.

The Liberal Democrats have long backed an infrastructure-first approach to development. We cannot allow water infrastructure to remain an afterthought. It is not right that water companies that have failed to invest in adequate sewerage, drainage and water supply infrastructure are able to get away with telling the local planning authority that there is no need for further investment and, at the same time, gain the financial benefit of the extra water bills from new households, while not laying out the extra investment needed to provide for them.

[Jess Brown-Fuller]

My hon. Friend raises an important point about the infrastructure necessary at waste water treatment works. In Bosham in my constituency, a new development is coming online, which has hundreds of homes. Currently, Southern Water says that it does not have any more capacity at the waste water treatment works. Yet because it has the statutory duty to connect, people will potentially be moving into the homes without any of the water infrastructure.

Meanwhile Chichester harbour, which is a protected landscape, is having more and more sewage dumped into it because the water infrastructure has not kept pace. Does my hon. Friend agree that water companies should play an important role in the planning decisions before the houses are brought online, so that those houses are built where the infrastructure is?

[Graham Stuart (in the Chair)]

Order. Interventions should be short.

[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.

[Tim Farron]

I have only a little left, but thank you, Mr Stuart. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend, who is a strong advocate for her communities and is echoing their anger at being overlooked for funding. It is worth recognising that, although it may be no fault of the Minister’s, DEFRA is one of the few Departments that got an actual cut in the Budget. Does that affect farming or flood investment? It is deeply concerning for all of us who live in habitually wet communities.

I want to press the Minster on whether the White Paper that is coming will set out a single, powerful regulator that the water companies actually fear, rather than what we have at present: a whole range of weak regulators that the water companies play off against one another. Meanwhile, the companies continue to take people’s money and not provide adequate water infrastructure. Water scarcity is a real and growing challenge. The causes are in part natural, but in part they are political. We have a water industry that is structured to make a small number of people incredibly wealthy, not to meet the needs of our country. Will the White Paper address the outrageous and outdated ownership model to ensure that we tackle the problem?

We will not deal with the issue by tinkering around the edges. It will only change when we have the kind of regulation that the industry cannot shimmy its way around, and when we have an ownership model that puts water supply and water users ahead of an amoral dash for profit. If we do not act now with joined-up planning, proper investment, accountability, strong regulation and a better ownership model, then the shortfall of water forecast by 2050 will hit communities across our country, and Governments both past and present will rightly get the blame.