Feryal Clark

I totally agree with my hon. Friend. When a failure in water infrastructure can disrupt NHS treatment, we are no longer talking simply about poor customer service; we are talking about critical national infrastructure. What made this incident particularly unacceptable was not simply the fact that a pipe burst—we all know that infrastructure can fail—but what happened afterwards. My constituents faced conflicting information about whether their water would return, and they struggled to contact Thames Water. Bottled water stations were located in places that were extremely difficult for elderly and disabled residents to reach without a car. When I raised that issue with Thames Water, this was its extraordinary response: “It’s not uncommon for us to set up bottled water stations in the London area without considering residents without a vehicle.” Think about that: an essential utility provider responding to an emergency affecting thousands of people admits that it does not routinely consider whether vulnerable customers can actually reach the emergency water it provides. If an essential service fails, surely the absolute minimum people should expect is to be told what has happened, what they should do, where they can get help and when the service should be fixed. This experience inevitably raises a much bigger question: who is our water industry ultimately being run for? I welcome the Government’s determination to strengthen regulation, but we should also ask whether regulation alone can solve the problem.