B

Baroness Altmann (Non-Afl)

Speaking in the House of Lords on 28 April 2025

Debate

Thames Water: Bids

Contribution

My Lords, the water industry serves a public good and putting it into private ownership needs very careful handling. It seems to me that Governments over successive years have not paid sufficient attention to the financial dealings that were going on, extracting dividends, not just profits, from these companies. In addition, the companies know that the regulator is not sufficiently resourced to check sewage discharges, for example. I know the Minister is very concerned about that herself. Can she give some reassurance to the House that any new owner of Thames Water would inject sufficient equity capital into the structure and not just debt and would be charged with investing sufficiently and being monitored sufficiently to make sure that past practices are not repeated?

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