Clive Lewis MP: speeches

Speeches

• 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?

• 28 Mar 2025 · Water Bill · Hansard source

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  No, I do not. We have a distorted electoral system. Bring on proportional representation, because if we had PR, we would have had a different Government in 2019 and most definitely in 2017. Sometimes politicians have to do what they believe to be right and lead from the front. I think we should lead from the front.

• 18 Mar 2025 · Welfare Reform · Hansard source

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  When the Government made the decision to go down this route, did they understand the pain and difficulty that it will cause millions of our constituents who are using food banks and social supermarkets? These people are on the brink. This £5 billion cut is going to impact them more than her Department gives credence to. I would like to be able to look my constituents in the eye and tell them that this is going to work for them. As things stand, my constituents, my friends and my family are very angry about this, and they do not think this is the kind of action that a Labour Government take.

• 11 Feb 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend the Minister for all the support he has given the University of East Anglia to set up its dental school, but he will be aware that all those shiny new dentists coming out in a few years’ time will be going into the private sector, not the NHS, unless we can sort out the NHS dental contract. Can he give us any kind of timeline for when we can expect to hear an announcement on that critical factor?

• 5 Feb 2025 · English Devolution and Local Government · Hansard source

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  I congratulate the Secretary of State and her Ministers on the work they have done on this matter, and on the exhaustive consultations that have taken place between MPs, local councillors and stakeholders—no one is being forced on this journey. We in Norwich and Norfolk are happy to be on the express elevator to devolution. After 14 years of austerity and cuts to adult social care and children’s services under the last Government, will the Secretary of State promise us that she will encourage the new local authorities to engage in co-development and co-production of those services, and that they will be taken in-house, so that we can end the privatisation and outsourcing that has ruined those services for so many years?

• 28 Jan 2025 · Water (Special Measures) Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

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  That is my personal view; I put that on the record. These companies have legal obligations first and foremost to their shareholders, which means short-term profit maximisation. When water was privatised, to quote from Unison’s recent report on this matter, to “ensure the commercial success of the companies, the government wrote off all the existing debts of the RWAs”— regional water authorities— “(£6.5 billion in total) and gave the private companies £7.7 billion of public subsidies in tax relief on profits.” It has come to my attention that even some former chief executives of water companies fear for the future of the industry, because good investors have by and large exited it. It is now the Macquaries and vulture capitalists of this world that dominate shareholding. This issue goes far beyond regulation. Indeed, our own regulator, Ofwat, has been found wanting, as its own growth duty prioritises business as usual. In other areas, the Government have quite rightly recognised and embraced the value of public ownership, such as in rail and with Great British Energy. Unfortunately, when it comes to water companies there seems to be an inconsistency in Government policy. Many of us on this side of the House ran on a manifesto commitment to reduce the cost of living, and that commitment is one that I think every Labour MP believes in. However, the cost of corruption and of extraction by a private water company should under no circumstances, as is currently configured in the Bill, land on the heads of our constituents should any of these companies go bust or be taken into special administration. Water is a monopoly industry, which means that bill payers and taxpayers are the same. What message would it send to our constituents if they are asked to pay, via their bills or via tax, to make a payout for the mistakes and excesses of privatised water?

• 28 Jan 2025 · Water (Special Measures) Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

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  I agree with the hon. Lady. I hope her party comes to its senses at some point—maybe in the same way that my party needs to come to its senses—and accept that some form of public ownership will probably be the best way to resolve that.

• 28 Jan 2025 · Water (Special Measures) Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

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  I refer Members to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. First, I thank EFRA Ministers for the work they have done on this Bill, and for everything they have been doing in working on the consultation. It is quite clear to most of the public that not only is England’s privatised model of water failing, but it is an extreme ideological outlier. It is one of the worst for costs and results. [ Interruption. ] The hon. Member for Broadland and Fakenham (Jerome Mayhew) is chuntering away in his place. We need a long-term, patient approach, especially given the climate crisis, and that is fundamentally incompatible with privatisation.

• 28 Jan 2025 · Water (Special Measures) Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

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  I do recognise that, and not for one second am I calling for nationalisation, which is the model the right hon. Member was talking about. There is a plethora of possibilities for public ownership, from mutualisation through to giving regional authorities more scope, and even working with the private sector. We must ensure that the public have a critical say over the future of water, and there are multiple forms that public ownership can take. I am not necessarily in favour of 1970s-style nationalisation, which is pretty much what they have in Scotland at the moment. I will, however, ask those on the Front Bench to consider new clause 8 and ensure that our constituents—the people we came into politics for—do not foot a single penny more for the failures of privatised water. Investors, shareholders and creditors should be the ones who take the haircut. They should be the ones who foot the bill because of what they have done to our water. This should not be landing on the heads of our constituents. This is a political choice, and I urge my Government to make it clear that we will always back the public, not the private companies that have got us into this mess.

• 24 Jan 2025 · Climate and Nature Bill · Hansard source

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  I need to conclude, because I believe other Members want to take part. We have to understand that there are people who have done very well from this growth. The problem with growth is this: when we get GDP growth in unequal societies, and we bulldoze over beautiful woodland forests and expand airports—

• 24 Jan 2025 · Climate and Nature Bill · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention, and that was a great pun—“fly in the face.” This decision has not been taken. I, for one, do not believe that it is compatible to have expansion of aviation at these four airports: London, which has already been agreed, Luton, Gatwick and Heathrow. Choices need to be made here. Many of my constituents cannot afford to fly. Everyone wants to see their constituents benefit from the economy, and if we go down that path of expansion, we will be heading in the wrong direction. There will be many Members on both the Government and the Opposition Benches who do not want to see that. I believe that expanding Heathrow is incompatible with having a genuine approach to biodiversity and climate. The Climate Change Committee has already stated, before we even get to the seventh carbon budget, that this should not happen. We will need to have a very hard, honest conversation about that. I do not think it should happen.

• 24 Jan 2025 · Climate and Nature Bill · Hansard source

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  I will make progress. When we get that GDP growth in deeply unequal societies, it is those in the top 1% or top 5% who accrue the benefits. A working-class woman in one of the Brexit debates—and I was a remainer—was told, “You’ve never had it so good. You’ve had growth of 3% or 4% for so many years.” She stood up and said, “But that’s your growth, not our growth.” This is what I am talking about. If we want a sustainable economy and sustainable biodiversity, and if we want to protect nature and ensure that future generations have somewhere to live and have food security and water security, we need to ensure that this Bill, or something like it, becomes law. We need to ensure that Labour Members do the right thing for climate and nature. It is what our constituents want to see.