Darren Paffey

As far as I am aware, Sir Jeremy, you do. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship. I thank the hundreds of Southampton Itchen constituents who signed the petition because they know that the current model is an abject failure. Trust is completely gone, and they are fed up with being ripped off. My constituents’ bills doubled last year. Southern Water has racked up £7 million-worth of fines just this year. It won a record—not a record it wanted—£90 million fine five years ago after sewage poured into the River Test, one of Hampshire’s chalk streams. The other chalk stream is the Itchen, from which my constituency takes its name. Rare Atlantic salmon come to spawn in the Itchen, but E. coli is rife for people trying to swim there and the stench of sewage is so vile that schools near the river and the treatment works often do not let the kids out on to the playground. The public agree that the model has failed, not just Labour voters—those of us with a history of being pro-nationalisation—but people across the political spectrum. Some 68% back nationalising water, and support keeps growing. More than three quarters of Conservative voters—though possibly not as many Conservative MPs—want water back in public hands. That is as close to a national consensus as we get, so I understand why so many have signed the petition. I part company from the petitioners on one point, which has been reflected by several hon. Members: although I agree with the destination, I am traumatised by previous referenda. People are making their voices heard and telling us what they want. We are a Government with a majority; instead of a referendum, we need a plan of the kind that this Government have already shown they can produce. We did it for rail: a phased, legally underpinned route back to public ownership, transferring operators as contracts expire under a single new body and with no compensation from the taxpayer. I welcome the Prime Minister’s vision for greater public control of essential services but reforming a broken model is not the same as ending it. The public see that, so I ask the Minister: please, let us just crack on with it and get water back into public hands.