Earl Russell (LD)

My Lords, I have two amendments in this group. Amendment 6, tabled in the name of my noble friend Lady Bakewell, to which I have added my name, would mean a water company could not give performance-related pay to persons holding a senior role if the company had failed to prevent all sewage discharges, spills or leaks. This definition also includes legal spills. We have included legal spills as this practice also needs to stop, and the only way to ensure that it does is by working to put pressure on private water companies to apply the appropriate and necessary levels of investment in infrastructure. Only then will these companies be operating as intended, and only then should they potentially be free to think about remuneration above and beyond basic salaries to their top executives. I have also added my name to Amendment 28, also in the name of my noble friend Lady Bakewell. This amendment creates a new section in the Water Industry Act 1991 to require Ofwat to ban bonuses for water company bosses if they fail to prevent sewage discharges, spills or leaks. Taken together, these amendments seek to help tackle head-on one of the main issues that I am sure many of your Lordships had raised with them, with passion, on the doorsteps at the last general election: the sheer hypocrisy of water companies continuously and seemingly endlessly failing to protect our environment. It is outrageous that they are continuing to get away with unabated sewage spills in our much-loved rivers and lakes, all the while paying themselves massive bonuses and dividends and racking up huge amounts of debt. We are not able to go to the beach or to wild swim, while they get rich off the back of failure after failure. All of this has been done while failing to adequately invest in the infrastructure that is so desperately needed to end this seemingly endless cycle of scandal. My party has tirelessly campaigned on this issue and we will continue to do so. No other issue has cut through to the electorate on such a scale and with such a level of arguable clarity as this one has. Indeed, the promise to scrap CEO bonuses was a core manifesto pledge we stood on at the last general election. The electorate are outraged and rightly so. No one feels good when they are overcharged for the privilege of receiving an appalling service. To be clear, this is exactly what bill payers are getting with a proposed 40% increase in bills and no end in sight to the pollution of our environment. Our rivers, streams and lakes have been polluted to the point of collapse. My party has led a campaign on these issues that cut through on all sides of the political spectrum. The broken system has seen those who have a duty to protect polluting with no consequences, and time and again they have rewarded themselves lavishly for the privilege. Instead of the “polluter pays” principle ever being applied, we have the “polluter awards themselves a pay increase” principle applied every time. In 2023 alone there were some 3.6 million hours of untreated sewage discharges in England, up a staggering 105% on the year before. How many fines have been levelled against water companies in the previous few years? I have really struggled to find that information. Meanwhile, water companies have paid at least £78 billion in dividends while failing to invest.