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

To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the reply by Baroness Hayman of Ullock on 3 September (HL Deb col 243), what steps they have taken to ensure that water shortage is not significantly due to poor management by water companies of leakage.

Water companies have committed to halving leakage by 2050, from a 2017/18 baseline, and the Government has set an interim target of 30% reduction by 2032. The Water Delivery Taskforce is holding water companies to account for delivery of their planned investments, within and beyond Price Review 2024.