Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the answer by Baroness Hayman of Ullock on 23 July (HL Deb col 354) that taking Thames Water into public ownership would "cost billions of pounds and take years to unpick the current ownership model", whether they plan to publish a full analysis of those costs.

The cost of nationalisation was calculated in a report published by the Social Market Foundation titled ‘The cost of nationalising the water industry in England’. The report estimated the costs of nationalising water companies, including Thames Water, would be £90bn. This research draws on a range of existing academic studies, as well as publicly available data from Ofwat, the London Stock Exchange and the annual accounts of the water companies. The research can be viewed on the Social Market Foundation’s website www.smf.co.uk.