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12,832 spoken contributions under 12 words (interjections such as “Will the hon. Member give way?”) are hidden. Show them
Surfers Against Sewage’s submission to the independent water commission looked at five different public interest models for the water industry, each with its own strengths. Does my hon. Friend agree that there should be a culture of accountability to the wider public, not just to shareholders?
The Secretary of State mentioned the wider steel sector in his statement. I raise the issues experienced by Fowler and Gilbert and EverEdge in my constituency, both of which manufacture steel products and have been impacted by quotas and tariffs on steel imports. That is particularly the case with materials not produced in the UK, because it essentially adds a manufacturing tax to the work that they do. While their raw material costs are rising, there are no equivalent restrictions on imported finished products, particularly low-quality and low-cost imports from China. Those businesses face a situation where it is cheaper to import from overseas than to manufacture in the UK. Will the Secretary of State meet me to discuss the concerns of those businesses, which are significant local employers in my constituency, and to find a solution that works for the whole steel sector?
The hon. Gentleman is being very generous with his time. Does he agree that, as well as putting water companies into public hands, which I agree with, the companies should also be required to do more to support people to harvest their rainwater? That would reduce water bills and the amount of water being pushed into the sewers, which causes discharges into our rivers and seas.
Sampford Arundel, Rockwell Green, Thurlbear and Bishop Henderson are just four schools in my constituency that plan their grants on the basis of having the sport premium grant. Now it has been removed, how will they fund sport, and have the Government made any assessment of how many PE teachers are losing their jobs as a result of this change?
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Jeremy. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Colne Valley (Paul Davies) for opening this debate and for his patient and gracious fielding of so many interventions. I express my thanks to Ash Smith and the phenomenal team at Windrush Against Sewage Pollution for bringing this petition before Parliament and for their dedication and commitment to protecting our rivers. I also thank the other campaigners who are in the Gallery; they are passionate and perseverant in their pursuit of cleaner water across our country. More than 208,000 people signed the petition, including over 600 of my South Cotswolds constituents, which is the ninth most sewage-polluted constituency in the country. Last Saturday, I stood beside the River Coln at Fairford in my constituency with residents who are sick and tired of seeing their river used as a sewer. I spoke with Debbie Campbell, who is in the Gallery and who was most charmingly dressed as a poo emoji. Debbie became a campaigner after swallowing polluted water while open water swimming and ending up doubled over in pain. Her experience is shocking, but sadly the pollution that caused it is no longer exceptional; it has become the norm. Behind the sewage scandal lies another scandal—what has happened to customers’ money? The promise of privatisation was that private capital would bring investments and efficiency, but research from the University of Greenwich estimates that between 1991 and 2023, shareholders extracted around £85 billion more from English water and sewerage companies than they actually contributed in new equity.
I absolutely agree that we need to get upstream of the problem, and I assure her that I always try to step out of pubs carefully. The supposed justification for private ownership was that investors would bring money into our water system. Instead, over those three decades, vastly more money has flowed out to shareholders than shareholders put in. Money went out, infrastructure deteriorated and debt piled up, and now customers are being told that they must pay to put it right. That is what makes the British public and me so furious. The water companies need to come clean and so does the Government.
I absolutely agree—much like our water supply, these arrangements need to be more transparent and stink less. Ministers have been talking about the forthcoming £104 billion investment programme as though the private sector has suddenly reached into its pockets and found that £104 billion to rescue our crumbling water infrastructure, but it has not. Ofwat has confirmed that that money will come through a mixture of customer bills and yet more borrowing and shareholder equity.
The hon. Gentleman makes an extremely good point that I totally agree with. This is not private enterprise riding to the rescue; it is customers being made to pay yet again for the consequences of corporate failure, and we cannot take our business elsewhere. If I do not like my supermarket, bank or mobile phone provider, I can take my custom elsewhere, but I cannot change from one water company to another unless I physically move house. We are captive customers of a monopoly, which gives water companies an extraordinary responsibility, but they are not living up to it. Too often, we see risks pushed onto customers while the rewards go to investors. Going back to Fairford, we can see exactly how that plays out in the real world. Fairford sewage treatment works was among the approximately 120 deferred Thames Water investment schemes. Thames Water’s former chair told the EFRA Committee that more than £1 billion was removed from its capital programme to preserve liquidity. In other words, the investment that was needed to protect communities, rivers and nature was postponed because the company needed to shore up its financial position. Now my constituents are living with the consequences. The analysis of Professor Peter Hammond at WASP records that, at Fairford alone, more than 8,100 hours of sewage spills have flowed into the River Coln since the beginning of 2024. Under the Environment Agency’s “heavy rainfall” methodology, only 347 of those hours—just 4.3%—were assessed as compliant. That means that more than 95% of that outflow was not compliant. This is not an occasional emergency measure; it is sustained pollution on an industrial scale. It is not only an assault on people: rivers are living ecosystems that sustain fish, birds, insects and plants. Pollution strips oxygen from the water and destroys habitats, but nature has no seat in the boardroom and no voice with the regulator. Nature depends on us to speak for it today, and I am doing what I can, as many colleagues have, to speak up on behalf of our waterways. I feel like I have spoken time and time again in this House about sewage, failing infrastructure and Thames Water, yet the sewage keeps flowing, the debts keep mounting and customers keep being asked to pay more. Frankly, they have had enough, and so have I. I share the petitioners’ diagnosis that the present model has failed, but the Lib Dems differ from others on what we believe should happen next. We do not believe, as a number of colleagues have mentioned, that we need to spend a long time waiting for a national referendum to tell us something we already know. The Liberal Democrat answer is mutually owned public benefit water companies that are professionally managed but owned by and accountable to the customers who depend on them, with profits reinvested into the water system rather than extracted for shareholders. For Thames Water in particular, that journey should begin with special administration now. Take on the creditors, restructure the company and bring it out the other side under a fundamentally different ownership model. Ownership change alone is not enough. The new Clean Water Authority must have the teeth that Ofwat so conspicuously lacked. It must inspect assets, publish open data and require companies to measure what they actually put into our rivers—not just the duration, but the volume and toxicity. I want to see citizen scientists and environmental experts formally represented in water company governance so that somebody is at the table to speak for the river itself. I would like to ask the Minister for three further commitments: ban bonuses until spills end and leaks are fixed; introduce a three-year cooling-off period before the new regulator can employ people from the industry it regulates; and create a single social tariff so that nobody is priced out of the precious water that they cannot do without. The River Coln flows into the Thames, and the Thames flows past this Parliament. The evidence of the failure of privatisation is literally on our doorstep. The petitioners are right to demand fundamental change: the question at the heart of the debate is not simply whether ownership should be public or private, but who is the water system here to serve? For too long, customers have paid the bills, carried the risk and lived with the pollution while money flowed elsewhere. Our water system should serve customers, communities and the environment, not shareholders, creditors and bottom lines. I do not want to have to come back to this Chamber to again state the obvious: we have to get upstream of the sewage crisis and change the ownership of the water companies, and change it now.
I congratulate the hon. Member for Colne Valley (Paul Davies) on his eloquent speech, and I thank everyone who signed the petition and the people in the Public Gallery—it shows how much interest there is in this issue. Since the water companies were privatised, they have paid out billions in profits, taken on billions of pounds of debt, paid out millions of pounds in bonuses and put up bills. We have had hosepipe bans and sewage is being discharged into our local streams, beaches and waterways.
I completely agree with my hon. Friend. All the issues that I just highlighted were the result of a failure of regulation over decades, and it is absolutely time that we reform the way water companies are structured, owned and run. We have sewage pouring into the chalk streams in Winchester—we have the River Itchen and the River Meon, and next door we have the beautiful Test valley—which are unique habitats with unique biodiversity. They are sites of special scientific interest. The salmon in southern chalk streams are genetically distinct from the salmon in the Atlantic ocean. The destruction of this type of habitat by sewage and pollution is ecological vandalism. Businesses are also affected. A farmer contacted me because sewage discharged by Southern Water was ruining his crops. He had to get me and my office involved just to enter into a conversation with the water company to get the compensation he deserved. People’s health is affected. I heard just last week from a mother whose three-year-old baby has been hospitalised with potential liver failure because he was playing in a stream and she was unaware that sewage was being discharged into the waterway. I heard from a woman who got very sick after paddleboarding in a stream; she was unaware that sewage was discharged upstream. This is affecting businesses, health and our local environment. Before I finish, I want to pay tribute to the dedication of the amazing citizen scientists who have worked to gather data so that we can hold water companies to account and know the situation on the ground. To name a handful, there is the Winchester Downs Cluster, the Upper Itchen Restoration group and the Environmental Farmers Group. One of our amazing local councillors, Margot Power in Alresford, has for decades been taking samples of invertebrates in the river to measure their health. I also pay tribute to the Southern Water crew who work on the ground when there is a flood or a discharge, or a drain needs unblocking, often in terrible weather and often late at night. Those guys are doing a brilliant job. They work in companies that are not fit for purpose, in a system that needs to be reformed. We need to ensure that they have all the support they need to make sure we have fresh water and a clean environment, and that people’s bills do not go up while directors get huge bonuses.
18. What discussions her Department has had with local authorities on ensuring that SEND services accurately cater to levels of unmet need.
A great number of children across Surrey have been left without the special educational provision they need this year and a disproportionate number—64%—of those who require specialist autism provision live in the new West Surrey unitary authority area. Given Surrey county council’s historical failure to align provision with need, and with worrying reports that the SEND system is being allowed to collapse in Surrey’s final year of operation, will the Minister directly intervene to ensure that Department for Education capital investment prioritises the specialist autism places that West Surrey desperately needs? Will she meet me and the incoming leaders of West Surrey to see how that can be done?
First, may I pass on my condolences and those of my party to the Prime Minister on the sad passing of his father? I thank the Secretary of State for his statement. We Liberal Democrats recognise that national security, energy security and food security are all intertwined. Steel is critical to our renewables sector, our defence and our national infrastructure. In a previous debate on this company, we said on the record that nothing should be off the table, and we look forward to receiving further details from the Secretary of State as the process continues. I have a few questions for the Secretary of State. First, on jobs and the employees, can he offer any further information not just on training, as another hon. Member has raised, but on the timeline by which staff will have more information about what this decision means for them? The Secretary of State highlighted that this process may end up in public acquisition. Is he in a position to say how much that would likely cost the taxpayer? Can he give us a broad estimate or range for how much those costs might be? Related to that, I note that the Secretary of State said that it would be funded through existing budgets. Can he say where that money might come from and whether it might get rediverted from other sources of funding, such as for transport, energy projects or something else? I have two final questions. We know that the warning lights were flashing for a very long time—the Secretary of State mentioned that himself. Will there be any formal process to look at the lessons learned, both politically and administratively, to make sure that something like this never happens again? Finally, he will know that as well as using domestic steel suppliers for our British procurement, the way to really boost British industry is to have a stronger relationship with Europe, so that British steel can be used throughout supply chains and procurement right across Europe. Will the Government look at strengthening that relationship?
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Barker. I thank the many constituents who signed this petition. We have heard a range of views from across the Chamber on the best ownership model, but we can surely agree that the current model is untenable, is unsustainable and lacks democratic involvement. No one wants it except the water bosses themselves. My constituents continue to write to me to express their dissatisfaction with the system. Our local waste water company is Wessex Water. The former chief executive, Colin Skellett, received an £170,000 bonus from parent company YTL Utilities in 2024, despite a Government ban on performance-related payments following criminal pollution convictions. Accounts covering the period to June 2025 show that the Malaysian-owned parent company paid Mr Skellett remuneration of £693,000 in total. Wessex Water was subject to a bonus ban after being criminally convicted in November 2024 over a sewage pumping station failure. My hon. Friend the Member for Frome and East Somerset (Anna Sabine) condemned this passionately, but I am sorry to say that since then things have not got any better. Our rivers are not cleaner, our infrastructure has not seen significant upgrades and our water bills have not gone down. However, Ruth Jefferson, the current chief executive of Wessex Water, has received a 14% pay increase, from £590,000 to £671,000—well above inflation. Environment Agency data shows that last year the company released 190,666 hours of raw sewage into the waterways—equivalent to about 21 years of continuous spillage. How many of our constituents got a 14% pay rise for failing to do their job so spectacularly? People recognise it for what it is. Mutual ownership by customers would put an end to this mockery. It would allow profits to be reinvested in infrastructure rather than being paid to shareholders. It would allow legally binding priorities to be set—[Interruption.]
I thank the hon. Member for his intervention. I was trying to say that mutual ownership would allow legally binding priorities to be set so that companies would have to protect the environment, provide clean water and provide standards that we do not have at the moment. I want to say one other thing: it is not just the default local water company that deals with waste water. On many modern estates, private companies that are separate to the default water company for the area are taking the waste, and there are no guarantees. If they fail, the responsibility for that waste reverts to Wessex Water in our case, and it may end up taking on even more inadequate infrastructure than it already has. That is something else to consider when we are discussing this issue.
2. What steps she is taking to support young people not in education, employment or training.
I associate myself with your comments, Mr Speaker, and those of the Secretary of State. Figures quoted today by the BBC suggest that as many as one in five young people in education may not be attending college courses regularly, so the situation may be even worse than outlined in the Milburn report. While I welcome the Secretary of State’s commitment to a fundamental encouragement of technical education, does she think we are approaching a crisis and that we need to rethink exactly what it is that will engage our young people in education, because they are not getting from it what they need to feel prepared for their future life? If so, how will she go about that?
The sewage literally flows outside the King of Prussia in Kingsbridge, and customers have to be really careful when they step outside it every time we have heavy rain. Does my hon. Friend agree with me and the more than 800 people who signed the petition from my constituency that we have to look again at the water ownership model? It is just not working: bills are going up and up, while shareholders are still extracting money from the water companies rather than it going into upgrading infrastructure.
4. What steps she is taking to implement the recommendations of the curriculum and assessment review.
The Government have committed to providing an enrichment entitlement for every child, including access to nature. Evidence shows that outdoor education can be part of the solution to some of the biggest issues facing our young people, such as the mental health and obesity crisis, the rise in NEETs and a failing SEND system. However, when a fifth of children in the most deprived parts of the country never spend meaningful time outdoors, something has to change. A framework for schools is not enough; we need a step change. Will the Secretary of State back my Outdoor Education Bill so that every child can grow up outdoors with better mental wellbeing, physical health, attainment, attendance and employability?
My constituents have strongly supported this petition because they feel ripped off by Thames Water. Does my hon. Friend agree that the Government’s refusal to consider special administration for Thames Water sends a signal to all other water companies that investing money in paying off bondholders is more important than sorting out the mess that is their infrastructure?
Many across the House, like me, welcome the Foreign Secretary’s announcement of a ban on products from illegal settlements in the occupied territories. Back in the early ’80s, I was a kibbutznik based at Kibbutz Re’im in the Negev, where I was conducting agricultural research. In those now far-off days, I would go with my Israeli friends to meet their Palestinian friends in Gaza—to meet, to trade, and to drink strong black Arabic coffee. Re’im was one of the kibbutzim attacked on 7 October 2023, so I can say that I understand something of the area and the tensions, and I can also say that peace is possible. I would like to talk about a topic raised by one of my constituents at a constituency surgery in Melksham and Devizes last Saturday: the closure of the unit tracking potential law breaches, as announced in The Guardian on 24 April. The closure of the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office’s international humanitarian law cell is doubly worrying at this time, especially when it means that funding for the conflict and security monitoring project run by the Centre for Information Resilience will come to an end.
I heartily agree with the hon. Lady. The centre’s work for the FCDO included the world’s largest open-source monitoring of incidents across Israel, Palestine and Lebanon. It is the only programme in the UK that collects, verifies and analyses human rights and conflict incidents in Israel and the occupied territories. The closure of the monitoring programme will mean that the Foreign Office will lose access to a database of 26,000 and counting incidents in the middle east, stretching back to 7 October 2023. The database also helps FCDO teams decide whether arms export control licences to Israel should remain suspended, and it is used by officials discussing whether international humanitarian law—for example, rules on proportionality—is being breached. The head of the Metropolitan police’s war crimes team in the counter-terrorism unit underlined the importance of CIR’s work in helping the Metropolitan police to consider war crimes allegations, including the unlawful shooting of minors in Gaza. I hope the Minister can clarify whether these cuts have been reversed. For the Government to be operating blind at this time would be extremely concerning. Furthermore, this issue casts light on the importance of the FCDO’s work and the self-defeating nature of the Government’s cuts to our aid programme, which those in my party, and I suspect many Members across the Chamber, condemn.
The Liberal Democrats understand the purposes of this Bill and accept some of the Government’s conclusions about how the grant needs to change, but we continue to be concerned about transparency. It is important to make it clear at the start that the sovereign grant provides no personal income to the King or Queen or any member of the royal family; the funding is tied entirely to the running of the institution. We recognise that the household’s budget has increased, but the bulk of that increase is earmarked for a maintenance backlog across the royal palaces, green infrastructure, and cyber-security in an increasingly hostile international landscape. We agree that it is right for the grant to be reset now that the Buckingham Palace programme has finished. However, taxpayers will rightly have questions about where and, importantly, who this money goes to. The Government must ensure that not a penny of this grant goes to Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, who disgraced his title in office —
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I will move directly on to our amendment, which would insert a new subsection stopping the royal trustees from proposing any future increase to the percentage of Crown Estate profit used in the grant formula unless three conditions are met first: the National Audit Office must be commissioned to carry out a value-for-money assessment of the proposed change—
Clearly, I have been very well briefed. I think my comments at the beginning were probably sufficient. We understand the purpose of the Sovereign Grant Bill. We have some concerns about transparency, but I will return to those later.
The Liberal Democrats support the thrust of the Bill. We understand why the royal household budget has increased and agree that it is right for the grant to be reset now that the Buckingham Palace programme has finished. However, we remain concerned about transparency and have put forward an amendment to that effect. Our amendment would insert a new subsection that would stop the royal trustees proposing any future increase to the percentage of Crown Estate profit used in the grant formula unless three conditions are met first. The National Audit Office must be commissioned to carry out a value-for-money assessment of the proposed change; that NAO report must be laid before both Houses; and finally, the House of Commons must debate and approve the change by resolution. This contrasts with the Bill as drafted, which sets the figures straight into primary legislation on the strength of the royal trustees’ own conclusions, with no separate independent check built in for the next time that the percentage is revisited. That matters because it is the royal trustees who produce that report—the Prime Minister, the Chancellor and the Keeper of the Privy Purse. In other words, the people proposing the change are marking their own homework, with no independent body or vote required to test whether it represents good value for the taxpayer. Our amendment is not about opposing the grant or blocking today’s readjustment, which the Liberal Democrats accept is right now that the reservicing works are complete. Instead, it is about ensuring that if a percentage increase is proposed again in the future, taxpayers get an independent, NAO-assessed value-for-money check, with their elected representatives getting an actual vote on it, rather than the change simply following through the trustees’ own formula. To conclude, the Liberal Democrats believe that greater transparency and independent scrutiny of taxpayer money must be built into the system for the future, not treated as optional, and that that is best guaranteed by external checks, not simply taking the Government’s word for it.
I thank the Minister for his comments on the Liberal Democrat amendment that was discussed earlier, and we recognise the arguments that he made in response. I support the Bill. Question put and agreed to. Bill accordingly read the Third time and passed.
We have heard a lot about constituents getting sick; one of my Padstow constituents was hospitalised just a few weeks ago. On the hon. Member’s point about the Environment Agency’s ratings, Surfers Against Sewage says that 80% of hospitalisations come from bathing waters judged “good” or “excellent” by the Environment Agency. Does he agree that it is a nonsense to have a regulator like that?
On that breach of public trust, my Mid Sussex constituents tell me they do not trust South East Water because it does not take part in planning consultations and does not say if it can supply the water that new housing will inevitably require. Does the hon. Member agree that water companies must contribute to planning consultations for the new housing that is needed?
For some neurodivergent children, mainstream school is not a place where they can succeed. One such child is Livvi, who is 14. Following autistic burnout and a period of not being in education, education otherwise than at school has been an absolute godsend for her, but her amazing mum, Carrie, is worried about the Government’s proposed changes to EOTAS provision. Carrie is coming to Parliament this evening; when I meet her, what should I say about whether people who have fought for their kids, like her, will get a say in what future EOTAS provision looks like?
Children in Gorton and Denton are being left without suitable education while families wait for SEND tribunal appeals, but they are waiting for school places that do not exist. Does the Minister agree that we need an independent assessment of SEND school capacity? The Government reforms will not help if we do not first fix the capacity crisis.
I have been contacted by students, parents and teachers in my constituency telling me that the cost of transport is a key barrier to accessing education and other opportunities. A 19-year-old told me recently that it costs her more than £9 for a return fare to the county town of Hereford, and Hereford sixth-form college has told me that 21 young people dropped out last year because of transport problems. Does the Secretary of State recognise that the cost of travel is a big barrier to accessing education, training and work? Will she work with Cabinet colleagues and the Treasury to implement free bus travel for all young people, in order to invest in them?
I will use my contribution to do two things: first, to reiterate that international law and human rights are absolutely critical, and secondly, to reflect on the responsibilities that they impose on the UK and on our wider responsibilities as parliamentarians and citizens. International law and human rights frameworks are vital guiding principles. The terrorist atrocities of 7 October were a clear and obscene violation of those principles. Every single person responsible for those horrors must be held to account, and every life taken or damaged must never be forgotten. Equally, the collective punishment of the people of Gaza is also a clear and obscene violation of international law and breaches basic human rights. We see mass atrocities, displacement, deliberate starvation, the indiscriminate bombing of hospitals, withholding access to water and medical supplies, and the targeting of journalists and aid convoys. We must call what has been happening in Gaza what it is: genocide. In the occupied west bank, we have seen the violent expansion of illegal settlements, ethnic cleansing, the execution of children, detention without trial, people forced to live under apartheid and settler terrorism. All of that has been happening for decades, but it is worse since 7 October, with Prime Minister Netanyahu emboldened by the current US President. Political leaders have largely fallen short when it comes to holding the Israeli Government to account for their human rights crimes and their flagrant disregard for international law, but policial leaders come and go. Meanwhile the international courts get on with their work upholding the standards and the UN resolutions that the world has collectively agreed. We need political leadership and we need it to be guided by international law and human rights frameworks, so it was hugely welcome to hear the Secretary of State last week recognise the 2024 ICJ conclusion that the occupation of Palestine is illegal, reiterate the illegality of expansionist settlements and take the vital first step of banning trade with and advertising of those illegal settlements. Their illegality is absolutely clear under international law. The UK has done the right thing in recognising the role of international law and human rights standards, and it is starting to act accordingly, but genuine respect for international law and human rights means we cannot pick and choose. Suspending the licences of some arms used by the IDF in Gaza and the licensing of other arms and exports that materially contribute to the occupation makes a difference, but the double lock that the Government have announced does not include components for the F-35 combat aircraft that, according to Campaign Against The Arms Trade, is the most substantive part of the UK’s arms trade with Israel. It cannot be beyond the wit of officialdom to find a way of tracing these parts, so that they are not used. The UK remains complicit in Israel’s genocidal war crimes until it ends its role in supporting Israeli forces. I urge the UK Government to be consistent in their commitment to the legal and human rights frameworks that underpin their recent decisions. I welcome the steps they have taken, but it is too little, too late and there is much more to be done. Secondly, I want to reflect on the wider responsibilities that we all have, especially as parliamentarians, in the context of rising hate crime and growing divisions in our communities. We each have a responsibility to show leadership, to stand against antisemitism, to stand against Islamophobia, not to conflate criticism of the Israeli Government with antisemitism and to call it out when we see others doing that, not to hold the Jewish people responsible for the actions of the Israeli authorities or the ideologies that drive them, and not to hold Palestinians responsible for the actions of Hamas. We have a responsibility to recognise the many ways in which those who advocate for Palestine are defamed, often as antisemitic, as a way of shutting down or silencing their advocacy, and to recognise the damage that that does by distracting from critical work identifying and confronting antisemitism, which is so crucial at a time when attacks on Jewish communities and Jewish spaces in this country and around the world are increasing. We have a responsibility to recognise anti-Palestinian racism and the multiple ways it manifests itself in our politics and society: a responsibility to stop putting people in boxes, to stop defining them as either allies or enemies with nothing in between, and a responsibility to resist the whipping up of hatred and the way in which nuance, understanding and compassion are being bludgeoned to extinction in public discourse. All of us need to show leadership in our dialogue, in our constituencies, communities and our own parties, and to demonstrate in our words and our deeds that there is no competition or contradiction between supporting and defending Palestinian human rights, and supporting and defending thriving Jewish communities here in our country. I am making these points in this debate because the response to what is happening in Palestine and Israel is being used by some political actors here in the UK to whip up antisemitism; by some to advance anti-migrant and anti-Muslim agendas; by some to justify chilling restrictions on civil liberties and our right to free speech and to peacefully protest; and by some to stoke division between minoritised communities. Leadership requires being alive to those realities and risks and recognising how they might prevent the emergence of shared visions of justice, democracy, human rights and religious and political pluralism. That underscores the importance of defending and upholding the international legal and human rights frameworks that we already have fully and wholeheartedly. Twenty-five years ago, I took up a job co-ordinating the UK arm of the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel. I was an atheist working for a Christian organisation with Jewish, Muslim and Christian communities in the lands of Israel and Palestine to build peace. The spirit of working across boundaries is the only thing that will get us to peace and justice.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Barker. After successive years of failure, we need a water sector that serves people, not profit. We in the Green party have long made a cast-iron pledge to support bringing water back into public ownership. During its passage, I attempted to expand the powers of the Water (Special Measures) Act 2025 to enable environmental failures—not just insolvency—to trigger Government intervention, and I backed a cross-party amendment on mutual ownership. The Government rejected both, and public ownership itself was denied any place in the legislation by the Minister. Over the last three and a half decades, we have seen companies ripping off consumers while failing to invest in our crumbling infrastructure. While investors receive billions in dividends, the system needs its biggest ever investment programme. More than £50 billion has been pocketed by shareholders since privatisation, while around £16 billion is needed in the next few years just to fix storm overflows and solve poisonous nitrate pollution. Instead of pouring money into profits and managing failures, we need to build a system that is fit for the future. It is no wonder that this privatisation experiment has failed: water is a public resource and a natural monopoly. Fantastical figures are used to scare people off the pursuit of public ownership as a solution. The figure of £90 billion was first cooked up in a Social Market Foundation report paid for by—oh!—four prominent members of the water sector. The Government could leave the debt with the debt holders and look at alternative models, such as Common Wealth’s economic assessment reflecting years of neglected infrastructure, companies struggling with insolvency, and debt leveraging for commercial survival. While costs would be incurred in facilitating the transfer, an honest valuation would put public ownership within reach. As we see company debt and statutory fines loaded on to bills, record sewage spills and billions in dividend payouts, I implore the Government to set out a timetable to restore our water to public ownership and end Thatcher’s failed 37-year privatisation experiment.
9. If she will include different autism profiles as part of SEND training for school staff.
I thank the Minister for her answer and for all the work she is doing on this. Following on from the question from the hon. Member for Broxtowe (Juliet Campbell), the issue of differing profiles is really important; pupils with a pathological demand avoidance profile of autism will require a totally different strategy from staff at the reception desk and teachers to get them into school and get them engaged with education. Will she keep pressing the Department on teacher training to really focus on these different profiles and the responses to them, and can she confirm that she is also working with the Department of Health and Social Care on the independent prevalence review, as all that amazing work by mental health experts across the UK should be feeding into this work?
The hon. Gentleman is well known for his courtesy, as he has just illustrated by giving way. Even more shockingly, around 80% of water companies are foreign owned—in other words, the majority of their shareholders live abroad, in all kinds of places, including China. Most users of water would be shocked to hear that. The Government have an obligation not to allow key utilities to fall into foreign hands.
It is apposite that the hon. Gentleman should do so, because Joe Chamberlain is a great hero of mine; indeed, his portrait sat in my office when I was a Minister. What Joe Chamberlain understood was the balance between private interest and the public investment and public accountability that the hon. Gentleman describes. That is entirely compatible with the views of people across this Chamber and should not really be seen in Chamberlain’s terms; it should be seen as doing what is right by the people and for the people.
You will recall, Mr Speaker—as will the Minister, from his earlier life—that when I was the Skills Minister, we had the biggest number of apprenticeships in modern history. I did that because I believe in elevating the practical, but, too often, careers advice and guidance delivered in schools drives people down an academic route to study degrees that have neither academic rigour nor economic value. Will the Minister look again at the advice and guidance given to people, so that aptitudes, talents and taste can be met by good-quality vocational and technical education?