Contribution
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich South (Clive Lewis) on introducing the Bill. Whatever my position on its detail and on the history of what has happened with our water industry, we would all agree on how important it is to have a proper debate about water.
Unlike many of the Members present today, I have the privilege of having served in the previous Parliament, during which water and sewage discharge were constant topics of conversation. It is absolutely right that we talk about that and that we act. I am now proud to be in the party of a Government who have begun to act on the big challenges facing us when it comes to water.
I congratulate my hon. Friend, too, on the enormous passion that he brings to all the issues that he cares about. Nobody could say that he does not believe passionately in what he is talking about today. He is right to shine a light on the failures of the water industry—the profits that people are making while organisations such as Surfers Against Sewage have to deal with the very real issue of paddling through sewage. I am trying to be polite.
We have to go right back in time to see why the system was set up. The water companies were privatised to avoid taxpayer investment and to get the private sector to pay. That of course meant the need for dividends, and we have seen how that has worked. My hon. Friend talked about the last chance saloon—“Two strikes and you’re out”—for the water companies. His Bill suggests that on the second occasion, the state would take the company’s assets and run it, but the taxpayer would still pick up an enormous bill for that.
It is important to reflect on the context that we find ourselves in today, whether we are talking about investment in water, our railways, the 700,000 pupils in schools not fit for purpose, or in our crumbling hospitals—including the 40 built with reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete, which I visited during the last Parliament. Those will be unfit for purpose within the next five years and need money to be invested in them.
We need to invest money in our roads. It is great that the Government are putting money into potholes—that is a start. However, we know that we need more than that. I cycle, and potholes cause me enormous grief. I am constantly breaking a spoke. A spoke is only about £1.50, but getting a wheel trued—I am not expert enough to do that myself—costs a lot of money. These are issues that are actually hitting the pockets of our constituents. It is not about me; many people have these problems.
I have had the opportunity to spend a lot of time in Northamptonshire, and I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough and Rushden (Gen Kitchen), who has fought a tough campaign against potholes in her constituency, underlining how poorly the council has managed its roads. She has done excellent work to highlight the problems and to challenge and look at the council’s contracts, and that has led to the Government’s announcement in just the last week about investing in potholes—they have taken her blueprint from Wellingborough and are applying it to the country.
However, all this costs money. We have roads, railways, the water industry, schools and hospitals all in dire need. We need that money to go into the NHS to reduce waiting lists, which have reduced for five months in a row. We are seeing those waiting lists go down. Constituents of mine were in desperate straits—anyone who had a bit of money was paying privately to have their hip replaced. The constituents I visited who did not have that kind of money were on a long, slow waiting list while their health deteriorated, unable to work or go about their lives.
We have to see this issue in the context of all the money that needs to be spent. A year ago, I produced a list of what I call the big nasties. I have highlighted some of them. The list also includes the fact that we have not yet in this country decommissioned a single nuclear submarine, which is not just a monetary cost. It needs to be done, but we are finding it hard to bring submarines into port to repair them. It has been left for decades, and has now fallen to this Government to resolve. I gather that the first one is now being decommissioned—thanks, again, to a Labour Government being in power.
We have real problems at the animal health centre in Weybridge, where we do not have space to deal with two zoonotic diseases at the same time. To deal with these difficult diseases, the centre has special facilities so that no contaminants can escape. If we were hit by two zoonotic diseases in this country, we would be in a catastrophic situation. This situation was left by the previous Government, who did not deal with it for 14 years.
Then we have Porton Down. In 2017, it was going to be moved and rebuilt. Again, the facility deals with some of the most difficult scientific issues; there could be catastrophic effects if it was not there to deal with them. What has happened? There has been no movement at all. Again, it has fallen to this Government to spend something. Around £700 million had been spent, but nothing had been achieved. This Government have picked up the pieces.