Clive Lewis MP: speeches 2025

Speeches

• 28 Mar 2025 · Water Bill · Hansard source

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  One second. If scientists tell us the climate crisis is an existential threat to humanity and to this country, we must treat it as such: an existential conflict. In that context, the actions of these companies—selling off reservoirs, failing to invest, polluting our water—are not just negligent; they are acts that actively undermine our national water security. In any other existential crisis, we might call that what it is: sabotage. And in a time of national peril, sabotage has another name: treason. Let me explain why this matters to me personally. When I served on tour in Afghanistan back in 2009—not in a boy band—I experienced something utterly alien to me: the gnawing fear of thirst; not the mild irritation of forgetting a water bottle, but the deep physical worry that there may not be enough clean water to get through the day. In Britain, we have been blessed: water falls from the sky; it fills our rivers, it soaks our fields, and we joke about it—it is part of who we are. But in Afghanistan there was no humour; only heat, dust and desperation. There I saw children trekking miles through the desert, not for food, not for money, but to beg for clean bottled water. Once we have seen that, and once we have felt that fear, we can never take water for granted again. We never again believe it is something we can waste or pollute or privatise without consequence. That is why I have brought forward this Bill: because anger is not enough; outrage, no matter how justified, will not fix the pipes, stop the sewage or fill the reservoirs. We need a plan. We need a strategy. We need a future. We can do it better. My Water Bill delivers that. It sets out the high standards our country deserves and the democratic governance our water system desperately needs. First, it establishes clear, ambitious targets to stop the sewage in our rivers and on our beaches, to restore our water to high ecological and chemical standards, and to deliver universal, affordable access to water as a basic human right—a right we have never had before in this country. It demands a system designed not just to extract profit but to adapt, to build resilience in the face of climate change, and to harness nature-based solutions that work with the environment, not against it. Secondly, it transforms governance. The Bill introduces representation for workers and local communities on the boards of water companies. It gives voting rights to employees and customers, so that those who use and maintain a system have a real say in how it is run. Water is not a commodity but a common good, and those who depend on it and pay for it should help govern it. Thirdly, the Bill lays the foundations for a democratic future. It establishes a commission on water ownership to advise the Secretary of State on long-term strategy, looking at international best practice, especially in OECD countries, where public water ownership is the norm, not the exception. Crucially, it creates a citizens’ assembly on water ownership to bring the public into the process, to deliberate, debate and decide how we can govern this most precious of resources. The public care, but how do I know that? I know because a small fraction of them are in the Public Gallery today, having travelled here from all over the country; I know because of the thousands of emails that have been sent to MPs across the House; and I know because those people will never stop campaigning until this injustice is resolved. They know that we can protect something not by selling it off, but by standing up for it, involving people in its care and ensuring that it serves the public, today, tomorrow and for generations to come. My Bill offers a pathway out of crisis. It offers control, resilience and democracy. It is not just about cleaning up our rivers, but about cleaning up the system that allowed them to be polluted in the first place. Privatisation is not just a problem—it is the problem. We can do it better. I can hear some people on the Labour Benches thinking, “But we have just passed”—

• 28 Mar 2025 · Water Bill · Hansard source

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  For how long does my hon. Friend think we should polish the turd—we can probably find that floating in most of our rivers—of privatised English water?

• 28 Mar 2025 · Water Bill · Hansard source

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  On the issue of water, yes, I would say they are, because whether I like it or not, Reform has a policy for water to be owned 50% by pension companies and 50% by the public. As much as it grieves me to say it, that is a policy of public ownership. They are populist; they are listening to a popular voice.

• 28 Mar 2025 · Water Bill · Hansard source

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  People talk about whether something can be taken out of public control and put back into privatisation. Of course, Parliament is sovereign and that can always happen, but there is a point about giving control to the public. Let us take the NHS, which is a public service. Any Government in the post-war period could have taken the NHS back into privatisation. Why did they not do so? They would not have dared, because it would have been so publicly damaging and politically destructive. That is what would happen with our water. Does the hon. Member agree? [Interruption.]

• 28 Mar 2025 · Water Bill · Hansard source

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  I will just make some progress, and then I will give way. I am on a roll. Let me tell the House where the money has not come from for these past 35 years. It has not come from private shareholders or long-term thinking, and it certainly has not come from some mythical well of benevolent capitalism. The private companies have put in less than nothing; in fact, they have racked up more than £60 billion in debt. Thames Water has paid more than £7.2 billion in dividends since privatisation, and is now £15.2 billion in debt and counting—work that out. Now, it is trying to plug the hole with a £3 billion emergency loan that will cost 10% in annual interest. That is more than half a billion pounds a year, just for interest payments, courtesy of our bills. That money will not build a reservoir, fix a pipe or clean a river, but it will keep a rotten system afloat for a little longer.

• 28 Mar 2025 · Water Bill · Hansard source

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  Does my hon. Friend agree that the Government’s Water (Special Measures) Act 2025 could have instructed Ofwat to take a far more rigorous approach to the payment of bonuses? At the moment, bosses do not get their bonus if they have a one-star rating. In the last 15 years, every single water company, except one, has had more than a one-star rating, hence they have been able to pay bonuses. Does my hon. Friend think that could have been tightened up?

• 28 Mar 2025 · Water Bill · Hansard source

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  I can now—for my next trick, I can hear thinking! I can hear them thinking, “But we have just passed the Water (Special Measures) Act 2025, Clive, so what are you talking about?” Yes, we have, but I am afraid to say it has been watered down— [ Interruption. ] Sorry, I had to get that one in—it was all going so well. The Act does not live up to what was promised, it does not deliver what is needed, and it certainly does not live up to its name. Do not get me wrong: it is a start.

• 28 Mar 2025 · Water Bill · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend for giving way, and I will be very brief. There is a crisis of democracy, and as my hon. Friend the Member for North East Hertfordshire (Chris Hinchliff) has just mentioned, we are rejecting a citizens’ assembly. Such an assembly could have the technical support and technical capacity as well, but it would give a voice to the public. Instead, we have decided to give that voice to Sir Jon Cunliffe, a lifelong Treasury insider who works in the City of London and who will make a decision based on its interests. Can she not see the problem here, and the lack of confidence the public have in the democratic decisions that are being taken by people like that?

• 28 Mar 2025 · Water Bill · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend for making a powerful speech in this debate. There are a few things to say about the costs. First, we would control the assets. The assets would come off the balance sheet, which would be one mitigating factor. Secondly, throughout the post-war period, with British Leyland, Railtrack in 1945, coal, steel, gas, civil aviation and even the Bank of England, we paid less than the market value. As I explained at the beginning, this is about a mindset. We can do an audit of what the companies have taken out —what money they have extracted from our economy— and then we can pay them an appropriate rate and return. It may well be that they are paid nothing, but they may get something. Their creditors may take a haircut, but, frankly, that is better than our constituents taking a continuous haircut with their bills.

• 28 Mar 2025 · Water Bill · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend for his question. I agree with him wholeheartedly and I am just about to come to that point in relation to what the Water (Special Measures) Act does and does not do. It addresses some of those points, but as we have already discussed, privatisation is not just a problem, but the problem, and it is a big part of why so much has gone wrong. Unfortunately, the Water (Special Measures) Act does not live up to what was promised or what is needed, and it certainly does not live up to its name. However, it is a start, and I praise my colleagues on the Front Bench, including the Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Haltemprice (Emma Hardy), who has done so much work in this area. Unfortunately, the Act is not a solution. Remarkably, my Government’s Water (Special Measures) Act does not even define what clean water means. There are no standards or targets—just vague intentions handed over once again to a regulatory system that has already failed us and to the companies that caused the mess in the first place. It says nothing about better governance, and absolutely nothing about the big, fat, humongous elephant in the room: who owns our water? If we do not deal with ownership, we cannot deal with accountability. If we cannot deal with accountability, we can forget clean water. No—we must go further on clean water standards, corporate accountability and what happens when companies fail.

• 28 Mar 2025 · Water Bill · Hansard source

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  May I make a more general point? If the Bill went into Committee, we would look at this in far more detail, but a big part of the Bill is about a mission and our direction of travel. It is about tackling the crisis in democracy, and trusting our fellow citizens to give a point of view, with guidance from experts, so that we can make a decision. When the founders of the renaissance or capitalism sat down, did they know that the renaissance would happen, or that capitalism would end up like this? No. This is about heading in a certain direction and having some imagination—

• 28 Mar 2025 · Water Bill · Hansard source

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  My apologies, Madam Deputy Speaker; I should have said that my hon. Friend made his point. The clock is ticking. The climate crisis is no longer a distant warning. It is our lived reality. Rising droughts, creeping desertification, depleted aquifers, wildfires, systemic collapse—these are no longer projections; they are the forecast turned fact. Preparing for this future and adapting to what is now inevitable has never been more urgent. The evidence is sobering. The UK’s water resources are under mounting pressure and not just from the climate emergency, but from rising demand and population growth. Experts now project that England could face significant water supply deficits as early as 2034 unless we act decisively. That is not a distant horizon; it is a little over a decade away. But while the threat has grown, our resilience has shrunk, because while the climate crisis has intensified, our water infrastructure has stood still, or, worse, been sold off, hollowed out and left to rot. In the 35 years before privatisation almost 100 reservoirs were built; in the 35 years since privatisation, not one major English reservoir has been built. But it gets worse, because in that same period private water companies have sold off 25 reservoirs without replacing one. Instead of investing in resilience, they have extracted value: £72 billion paid out in dividends while pipes leak, rivers choke, and the public pays the price. My hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (Mr Frith) asks how we can afford it; how can we not afford it? That is not mismanagement; it is a betrayal. If scientists tell us the climate crisis is an existential threat to humanity and to this country—

• 28 Mar 2025 · Water Bill · Hansard source

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  No, I am going to carry on and make some progress. You made your point. Let the public—

• 28 Mar 2025 · Water Bill · Hansard source

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  Those are the reasons why I have brought forward this Bill. The Government’s Act does none of those things, but my Bill does. Take just one example—

• 28 Mar 2025 · Water Bill · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. and learned Member for his contribution to the debate. Private water companies have invested less than nothing of their private equity in our water system since privatisation—in fact, we have £60 billion-worth of debt. I reiterate that taxpayers’ and bill payers’ money has gone into the investments in the water system. The private sector has paid less than nothing, so how we can say that a privatised water system—a natural monopoly, for which there is no perfect competition, or no competition at all—is generating innovation or investment? I fail to see that.

• 28 Mar 2025 · Water Bill · Hansard source

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  After 35 years of abject failure, it is too little, too late. My Bill would put the final nail in the coffin of this sorry chapter of our country’s water and water system.

• 28 Mar 2025 · Water Bill · Hansard source

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  I will obviously come to many of those points later in my speech, but let me make this point now: I do not believe in nationalisation, and this Bill has nothing to do with nationalisation. This is about giving the public a say over their water. It is about governance, standards and democracy.

• 28 Mar 2025 · Water Bill · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend for an excellent speech. I have learned so much history; it has been very interesting. He might be surprised to learn that I do not believe in state ownership of our water assets either. The Bill gives the public the final say on that, along with the Secretary of State and the commission. There are so many other models to consider: municipalised models, mutuals, handing the companies partly over to the strategic authorities and the Mayors that the Labour Government are setting up. There are myriad opportunities, options and routes to go down. People say that the change would not be cheaper. I draw my hon. Friend’s attention to research by Visiting Professor David Hall and Conor Gray at the University of Greenwich. They said that the savings from within the system on a transition to some form of public ownership would amount to between £3.2 billion and £5.8 billion annually for England and Wales—enough to deliver price cuts of between 22% and 34%—because there would be lower rates for the financing of future expenditure.

• 28 Mar 2025 · Water Bill · Hansard source

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  The cheapest borrowing in the country, without a doubt, is public sector borrowing. The private water industry, which has had 35 years to sort this mess out, is not going to find investment. It is up to its eyeballs in debt. It is relying on a 50% increase in our bills by 2030, if we include inflation, and that is in the middle of a cost of living crisis. How can we justify that? The answer is that we cannot.

• 28 Mar 2025 · Water Bill · Hansard source

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  With the leave of the House, I will not get back into a tit for tat over some of the comments that have been made at the Dispatch Box, because I would like to thank everyone who contributed to this fabulous debate on a critical issue. I think that most of us want to get to the same place: we want clean, drinkable, swimmable, and surfable water. I thank everyone who took part in this debate. I thank the Minister for all the work she is doing and will be doing. I thank the Opposition too. Even my wife Katy Lewis turned up today to come and listen, so I thank her for that. It is probably the longest say I have had in a debate in quite a while—I will not hear the end of that for a while, I am sure. I will finish on this point. I sometimes wonder what would happen if the NHS did not exist and we in this place had to come together to decide how we were going to provide healthcare for the people of this country. Having listened to today’s debate, I think this place would say that it was too difficult to create a national healthcare system and that we could not do something based on need, rather than on profitability and private sector investment. Yet we managed to do that after the second world war, which had absolutely obliterated our public finances, because we knew it was right, and we knew that some things are not to be judged by their profitability, because they are things that we need. Our health is one such thing, and I and millions of other people believe that water is one of them too. I hope that at some point, those on the Benches on my side of this House—my Government—will acknowledge that and do something about it. Ordered, That the debate be now adjourned.— (Taiwo Owatemi.) Debate to be resumed on Friday 4 July .

• 28 Mar 2025 · Water Bill · Hansard source

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  I will make some progress. Let us recap, because I do not want to go on too long; I want to conclude, if I can. That money from Thames Water—that half a billion pounds in interest payments—will keep a rotten system afloat for just a little longer. The myth of privatisation is that the private sector will act in the long-term interests of the British public because it wants to turn a profit. That is preposterous, as is proven by the state of our water, and exhibit A is Thames Water. We can now turn to the question of where the investment will come from. Under public ownership, it will come from the only place it ever should have—from us, the public—and every penny of it will go back into the system. It will go into the pipes, the rivers, the seas we swim in and the water we drink. There will be a direct relationship between what we pay and what we get, with no offshore dividends, no bloated bonuses and no debt-laden shell games—just clean, accountable, democratic water. When I was in Afghanistan, every soldier had one critical duty: to stay hydrated. To dehydrate was considered a military offence, because it put the soldier and their team at risk. If someone ran out of water, we did not debate markets or metrics; we shared what we had. We had each other’s backs. As the desert-dwelling Fremen in James Herbert’s novel “Dune” believed: “A man’s flesh is his own; the water belongs to the tribe”. It is time our water returned to the tribe, to the people, to the public. We can do better; we must, and with this Bill, we will. I commend it to the House.

• 28 Mar 2025 · Water Bill · Hansard source

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  Unfortunately, I do not, because again the elephant in the room—who owns our water—has been ruled out of the Cunliffe commission’s operational process. It cannot actually look at that issue. I have no issue with Sir Jon Cunliffe, but let us not forget that he originates from the Treasury—he probably has Treasury brain. That economic orthodoxy is part of the reason why we are in the place that we are. I do not have so much confidence in the Cunliffe commission, but I do have far more confidence in the People’s Commission on the Water Sector, which is being run by academics and which will report at the same time. I will be very interested to hear what it says.

• 28 Mar 2025 · Water Bill · Hansard source

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  If I could sum up the hon. and learned Member’s argument, he seems to be telling the public, “You’ve never had it so good.” I think many members of the public would disagree with that. I would also make the point that all the investment that has gone into our water since privatisation has come from our bills. Private companies have paid dividends and left themselves £60 billion in debt. That is money that otherwise would have been invested into the public water system.

• 28 Mar 2025 · Water Bill · Hansard source

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  At the beginning of my now seemingly rather long speech, I think I referred to a failure of imagination. Ask what Margaret Thatcher would have done when she was faced with similar problems. She would have fought her way through it. She changed the very fabric of our economy, our democracy and our politics, and she made it work. We can do the same, because the public are behind us. They want this to work.

• 28 Mar 2025 · Water Bill · Hansard source

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  Will my hon. Friend give way?