Jon Pearce

I thank the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) for bringing this debate to the House. I thought it might be helpful to give some context to the debate; it does not start with the last Conservative Government’s 14 years of failure, which we have heard so much about. I want to talk about the 1980s, when—gripped by ideological fervour rather than the national interest—the Thatcher and Major Governments set off on a sales binge of our strategic assets and infrastructure. All these years later, that has left us almost uniquely exposed among the G7 to global events. Only two weeks ago, this Government recalled Parliament to save British Steel, a vital strategic asset—not just for our economy, but for our security and defence. The Conservatives fragmented British Rail, which this Government are now taking back into public control piece by piece. Most relevant to today’s debate, they privatised our water, not into a market of competing firms but into private monopolies, shielded from scrutiny and driven by dividends. In selling off the family silver, those Governments wreaked havoc on our public services. To be generous to them, at least they had a vision, which is more than can be said about the last 14 years of the Conservatives. For those 14 years, the Conservatives were asleep at the wheel, and sadly for five of those years, the Lib Dems were snoring away quite happily in the passenger seat. While raw sewage poured into our rivers, the Lib Dems and the Conservatives allowed cash to pour into the pockets of the wealthy through shareholder payouts and executive bonuses. While the Environment Agency cried out for resources, the Conservatives and the Lib Dems cut its funding by half. That was into the River Wye, the River Etherow, the River Noe, the River Derwent and Blackbrook, and equates to a sewage spill every five hours. That is a damning indictment of the failures of successive Governments. As a consequence, just before the election, we in High Peak saw sewage pumped into our rivers 1,653 times. By contrast, this Labour Government have passed the Water (Special Measures) Act, which introduced criminal liability for company executives who obstruct investigations. We have banned their bonuses, and we have given regulators the power to recover the costs of enforcement, ensuring that polluters, not taxpayers, foot the bill. We have mandated real-time public reporting of sewage spills. That is only the start. We know that wider reform is needed, and that is why we have launched the largest review of the water sector since privatisation. We know the size of the challenge to halt the decline, and we are the only party with a serious plan to do so.