Independent Water Commission: Final Report

Helen Maguire Excerpts

Tuesday 10th February 2026 Westminster Hall

[Dr Chowns]

I thank the hon. Member for that clarification, and I am delighted to hear that in this Parliament that has been changed. Historically, it was run by the water industry, which is why it was necessary to set up a new group.

I will confine my comments today to the two elephants in the room: ownership and agriculture. They are effectively missing from the Independent Water Commission. They are effectively missing from the water White Paper. That is frankly extraordinary. Why did the Government prevent the Cunliffe commission from looking at those two crucial issues? Without addressing them, we cannot tackle the problems in the water sector.

Privatisation of water has comprehensively failed. Privatised water companies have paid £85 billion in dividends to shareholders since privatisation, and they have racked up debts of £65 billion. All the while, leaks have been proliferating, infrastructure has been crumbling, there has been a failure to build reservoirs, and customers have been paying hand over fist for poorer and poorer service. It is completely unacceptable.

Nearly every river in England is polluted. England’s bathing water quality is the fifth worst in Europe. England’s surface water quality is the seventh worst in Europe. Over 1 trillion litres of water were leaked in 2024. I have already mentioned the £85 billion paid to shareholders and the £65 billion of debt. Privatisation will cost customers a further £22 billion over the next five years, because that is the return on capital that has been set by Ofwat. Around a third of customer bills now service corporate debt, and Ofwat allowed bills to go up by 26% this financial year alone—an average of £123 per household.

That is a failing water system. No other country in the democratic world has privatised its water system to the degree that we have in this country. It is clear that a market-based approach to the water sector simply does not work. Water is a natural monopoly. Customers have absolutely zero choice. Water is a public good and should be in public hands, so that it works for public benefit. Why did the Government prevent the Independent Water Commission from even looking at that question?

[Helen Maguire (Epsom and Ewell) (LD)]

The Rye brook in Ashtead, which runs past local schools, has suffered loads of raw sewage leaks. It feeds into the River Mole, which has seen 3,000 hours of storm overflows in January 2026. The run-off pollutes local chalk streams as well. The hon. Lady might be interested to know that, while the report also ignored reforming water companies, it mentioned chalk streams only twice. Does she agree that privatisation is not working and that we need to bring water companies into mutually owned public benefit companies and end the sewage scandal for good?

[Dr Chowns]

We need to bring water companies into public ownership, because only by running water for public good will we tackle the scandal that has been caused by privatisation in recent decades. Some 82% of the British public want water to be in public ownership. That is more than the percentage who want the railways to be in public ownership, so why are the Government so opposed to it? They are very fond of citing completely imaginary figures about the supposed cost of doing so, but Thames Water, for example, apparently has a market value of £4 billion, judging by the last market offer, and faces a repair bill of £23 billion, so in effect its value is nil. We could take it into public ownership at zero cost and run water for public benefit.

The second lacuna in the work of the Independent Water Commission and the water White Paper is agriculture. Why did the Government prevent the Independent Water Commission from looking at agricultural pollution? We know that diffuse agricultural pollution is half the problem, so we cannot ignore it. It is another elephant in the room, and we have to focus on addressing it, together with farmers, who are crying out for support to do that.

To give the Independent Water Commission some credit, it did actually look at the issue and mentioned it in its conclusions. It says on page 20 of the final report that

“agriculture has the most significant environmental impact on water bodies in England and Wales.”

In fact, almost the very next sentence cited the River Wye in my North Herefordshire constituency, where problems relating to diffuse agricultural pollution have led to huge economic, social and environmental problems.

A few pages later, the Independent Water Commission said that the Government’s water strategy

“should be cross-sectoral, setting out in one place the requirements on all the sectors impacting on or interacting with the water environment…including agriculture”.

Yet on only one of its 50 pages did the Government’s White Paper talk about agriculture. That is not a comprehensive, joined-up strategy.

As the Independent Water Commission pointed out,

“achieving a future environmental target for water…will depend more and more upon reducing the contribution of agricultural pollution.”

We must work with our farmers—the stewards of our land—to tackle this problem. It is more than half the issue, and the Government can no longer ignore it. I beg the Minister to please give it the same attention that we rightly give to the water and sewage companies. Without a comprehensive approach, we will simply fail to clean up our rivers, lakes and seas.