Sarah Hall

Thank you, Sir Jeremy; it happens. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. I support public ownership of our water industry. Water is an essential public service, and it should be run in the public interest. People in my constituency cannot suddenly decide that they have had enough of United Utilities and switch to another water company. They pay their bills because they need the service, and they should be able to expect it to work for them. In reality, however, across the country, that is not what is happening. After years of neglect, failure to upgrade infrastructure, sewage dumping in our waterways and skyrocketing bills, people have frankly had enough. We have spent decades trying to regulate these monopolies, so that they behave somewhat like a public service, but it is clear that that simply has not worked. Across the wider water system, responsibility is divided between organisations, Departments, agencies and authorities, leaving people struggling to find out who will put a problem right. On new year’s day last year, families in Warrington had water coming into their homes, and when water is coming through the front door, they do not want an organisational chart; they just want to know what happened and what someone is going to do about it. The system that we have, which has been bolted together over the years, does not reflect how closely all those things connect. That is where we need to change the way we think. I want to see a publicly owned water company that works holistically across the whole system. A long-term public programme would give businesses certainty about the work coming in. A steady programme of work would give British firms the confidence to invest, take on apprentices, and develop skills and technology. We must use any change in the ownership model to change the way that the whole water system works, so that it is transparent, puts profits back into the crumbling system and ends the dumping of sewage in our waterways. The Prime Minister has spoken about stronger public control of essential services, and I welcome that, but in water, public control has to mean more than regulating private companies more closely. We have been doing that since privatisation. Regulation alone cannot decide what the company is ultimately there to do or whose interests should come first. Every one of us depends on water. I believe it should belong to the public and be run for the public good.