Water Companies: Regulation and Financial Stability

Debate between Tim Farron and Gideon Amos

Wednesday 23rd October 2024 Westminster Hall

[Tim Farron]

I agree. Although I also think an urgency is needed that many people who own water companies do not demonstrate, and that is why the Government need to lead—but I do think it is right that we get people together to make things significantly better.

Over the past 33 years, for every pound that water companies have spent on infrastructure and doing their job, 80p has drained away to finance debt and pay dividends. That is an appalling waste of billpayers’ money and water company assets. The separation of operating companies from parent companies, where the regulated operating company racks up huge debts to allow the unregulated parent company to pay huge dividends, has been a disgraceful scam. I am sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Charlie Maynard) will say more about how that model has done such damage to the customers of Thames Water; suffice it for me to say that that model of ownership must cease. For the regulator to have stood idly by while that has happened is unacceptable, and for it not to step in as similar asset-stripping begins in other water companies is an abysmal dereliction of duty by it and the Government.

What is to be done? I just want our waterways to work and to be clean and safe. I am not convinced that renationalisation would be a good use of public money. It could mean putting taxpayers’ money into the pockets of those who have already made so much money out of them without a single extra penny going to improving infrastructure. We propose a radical move away from the current model: water companies should be community benefit corporations, ensuring that all revenue goes into keeping environmental standards higher and solving the long-term problems of our network. Given that 45% of all water company expenditure has gone on debt financing and dividends, that kind of ownership and governance reform should mean that there is more money available for infrastructure renewal.

[Mr Gideon Amos (Taunton and Wellington) (LD)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Tim Farron]

I will give way one final time, because I am running out of time.

[Mr Amos]

Will my hon. Friend congratulate the Friends of French Weir Park in Taunton for helping to get bathing water status for the River Tone? Is it not a scandal that after £4.25 billion was paid by Wessex Water in dividends, the situation may arise whereby that status is removed because the Environment Agency and the water company will not have enough money to invest in improving river quality over the next few years?

[Tim Farron]

I absolutely endorse the work of the campaigners in my hon. Friend’s community. Those on the banks of Coniston Water have done the same in our area, raising the bar and the standards under the current regulatory framework, inadequate though that is.

It is clear that Thames Water has more than met the threshold to be taken into special administration, and I suspect that we will hear more about that later. As for the other water companies, the current regulatory framework seems to leave them immune, despite their repeated failure to meet basic obligations to prevent sewage from being dumped in our lakes, rivers and coastal areas, and even on the streets of many of the villages in my communities.

Under the current rules, to remove the licences to operate of the other companies, the regulator would need to serve a 25-year notice. I am grateful to my noble Friend the Earl Russell for proposing a Liberal Democrat amendment in the Lords that would take that ludicrous notice period down to just six months for an environmental failure. I hope the Government will accept that amendment; if they do not, I will table it in the Commons. Our vision is that the new, more powerful clean water authority would have the power to strip all water companies of their licence to operate within six months and then migrate them to the community benefit model. We believe that it is time for the British people to get a clean water system under which they get what they paid for, their hard-earned money is not siphoned off by overseas merchant banks, and their precious waterways are not infected, outrageously, with untreated sewage.

I represent what I would argue is the most beautiful part of England. One of the reasons it is beautiful is that it is also the wettest bit of England. The failure of Governments of different kinds, and the regulators and water companies, to tackle storm overflows was always going to hit hardest in the places with the most storms. That is why we are frustrated that the Conservative Government, who denied that the problem existed, seem to have been replaced by a Government who have acknowledged the problem but have announced that they are going to ponder it very hard for a bit. It seems to me that the problem is very obvious, and therefore so are the solutions. I call on the Government to act ambitiously and comprehensively, and to do so now, without delay.