Dame Meg Hillier

I urge the hon. Lady to listen to what I say. I did not say that I had people saying overwhelmingly that they wanted public ownership—certainly not. They are saying that there is a problem, and saying, “You lot are in government. You need to sort it out.” Over the last 20 years that I have been in this place, and particularly in the last Parliament, there has been endless discussion about how to resolve this situation, and stasis in the Government. We now have a Government who have acted to begin to tackle some of these huge challenges. I give real credit to the Minister, who has engaged massively with Members across the House on this. She is absolutely aware of the issues, partly because many of us across the House have lobbied her, because our constituents have lobbied us. I do not think there is doubt about the problem; the issue is about the solution. We should absolutely have a big public consultation, but that is to inform the work of the citizens’ assembly. Clause 4(3) states that the citizens’ assembly must “be composed of a randomly selected representative sample of users of water and sewerage services in England and Wales, and…consider any matters which the Commission refers to it in relation to water ownership.” I want to be clear that that will be a randomly selected representative sample of users, and the Bill is silent on the model. I appreciate what the hon. Member for North Herefordshire (Ellie Chowns) highlighted—that there is a science to doing this—but the Bill is silent on how it would be done.