Water Industry: Financial Resilience Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
Khalid Mahmood
Main Page: Khalid Mahmood (Labour - Birmingham, Perry Barr)Department Debates - View all Khalid Mahmood's debates with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
Water Industry: Financial Resilience
Khalid Mahmood Excerpts(10 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Rebecca Pow
Privatisation has enabled clean and plentiful water to come out of our taps. It has unlocked £190 billion of funding to invest in the industry. That is the equivalent of £5 billion annually, and is double what we had pre-privatisation. I am not saying that there is not still a lot of scope for improvement. I have stood at this Dispatch Box many times, as has the Secretary of State, to say that some actions of water companies are completely unacceptable. That is why we have introduced the storm overflow plan and our plan for water.
Mr Khalid Mahmood (Birmingham, Perry Barr) (Lab)
As two Members have said, funding and loans to the water companies are a huge issue, as that is where they have paid their dividends from. On shareholders, we have foreign investors taking huge amounts of money away from this country, and we need better fund managers who are able to assess where they put their money. They should be held accountable, too.
Ofwat has not been doing what it is supposed to do. I believe that the chief executive of Ofwat applied for a job at Thames Water. That shows what the companies are doing and how Ofwat works with them—rather than scrutinising them, people are looking for the next job. We have to stop that and stop my constituents paying more for water. They need decent water in their homes and in the environment around them. That is what we want the Government to ensure. This Tory policy has failed for years.
Rebecca Pow
I am not sure what the question was. We want the same things: value for customers, and clean and plentiful water. We want to hold the water companies to account. We want them to invest the money needed to deliver the right services. That is why we have a plan for water, our targets and the measures in the Environment Act. It is why the regulator Ofwat has taken all the actions I mentioned to increase the transparency of water companies and to ensure that money is not being paid out if there is any environmental impact or performance negativity.