Water (Special Measures) Bill [Lords]

Debate between Tim Farron and Dave Robertson

2nd reading
Monday 16th December 2024 Commons Chamber

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

It is a great privilege to speak on this Bill on behalf of my party, and a still greater privilege, I dare say, to speak as the Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale, which includes Windermere, Ullswater, Coniston Water, Haweswater, Rydal Water, Grasmere, Elterwater, Esthwaitewater, Brotherswater, the River Kent, the River Eden and much of Morecambe bay. We are a stunningly beautiful part of the country, and also one of the wettest. For us, water is unavoidable and precious. It is precious to our biodiversity, our heritage and our tourism economy.

As the House may have noticed, the Liberal Democrats chose to make water the centrepiece of our election campaign. So much so that my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Ed Davey) spent much of the campaign in the stuff. We continue to champion a radical restructuring of our water industry, because water is the most vital of resources and because we cannot allow a continuation of the poor regulation, wanton pollution and abuse of power that became hallmarks of the water industry under the Conservative Government.

There is much to welcome in this Bill, including criminal liability for chief executives who are responsible for severe environmental failure—a measure that I remind colleagues was proposed by the Liberal Democrats before the last election, and that Labour refused to support at the time because it believed the measure to be unnecessary. We are pleased that Labour now agrees with us.

We are also encouraged by the proposals to increase some of Ofwat’s powers, to introduce a fit-and-proper-person test for chief executives, to institute an automatic fining system that makes sense, to install real-time monitors, and to create greater data transparency. All these measures are welcome, and they will all help, but they do not yet amount to the radical structural transformation that is so obviously needed.

The recent announcement of Sir Jon Cunliffe’s review is welcome, but it is also kind of frustrating. It suggests that the Government might well be up for a more radical change, just not yet. The review will not conclude until next summer, of course, after which many people, including in the Treasury, will need to go over its proposals before it hopefully makes it into a King’s Speech, running the risk that the more ambitious part 2 might not find its way on to the legislative timetable in this Parliament.

Of course, fixing the entire water industry and sewerage system is not an overnight job, but this feels like an especially ponderous way to solve such an urgent and pressing issue.

[Dave Robertson (Lichfield) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman talks about the perils of acting too slowly, but given that a Liberal Democrat was in charge of the water industry when it was privatised, does he not think that we might all be paying the price for the error of acting too quickly in that instance?