Rachael Maskell

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mrs Barker. We have all seen the price of failure. “Dirty Business” hit us hard with the true cost—the human cost—and the scale of sewage and chemicals. Professor Alistair Boxall is drawing to our attention the pollutants that are destroying our river health and ecology and causing our rivers to die, but also the money and how it flows—the revolving doors and the completely unaccountable power within the water industry. Of course, when we see the revolving doors between regulators and companies, we know that we cannot trust the system. Our constituents cannot trust the system as they are fleeced to pay more for the profits of these companies—of these now millionaires who are allowing sewage to run through our cities. York has the second-worst polluted river, the River Ouse. We see floods and droughts in our city, and burst pipes that are unaddressed for days. We see the cost to our constituents. The Minister must bring water into public ownership, and must not prevaricate or look for a different route. Plain and simple—let’s just get on with it. We have heard how we can bring forward an SAR to bring those companies and contracts back into public hands. I also say to the Minister that I have looked at this issue over the summer, and it is vital that we look at how we hold public institutions to account, who makes decisions and how the public can have a say. As politicians, all we can often do is come to this place and plead, and use our campaigning platform to speak of the challenges we see, but we do not have power and leverage over systems. Setting up public ownership is important so that we and the public have leverage over the system. The public would have the ability, through a deliberative process and a citizens assembly, to hold water companies—public companies—to account so that they can get the answers that they deserve.