Clive Lewis MP: speeches

Speeches

• 8 Jun 2026 · Water Companies · Hansard source

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  (Urgent Question) : To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment if she will make a statement on the performance of the water sector.

• 8 Jun 2026 · Water Companies · Hansard source

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  I thank the Minister both for her response and for putting up with me—I am a bit of a broken record on this issue. We are all well aware that water is essential to life itself—to food, industry, nature, housing, energy, and now even the data centres powering the supposed AI revolution—and yet we have handed a monopoly where no competition is possible to companies, many owned overseas, whose overriding priority is profit. The result is systemic failure, with not one major reservoir built and the old ones sold off. That is why we were back in the Chamber last week over South East Water and the drought outages, just weeks into the summer. Raw sewage has poured into our rivers and seas—3.5 million hours of it in 2024 alone—fouling beaches where children swim. It is why eight-year-old Heather Preen died after contracting E. coli from raw sewage, and why thousands of our constituents are made sick every year. When public anger saw the Government ban bonuses, water execs raised their salaries and rebranded the payouts “retention payments” and that comes on top of the £78 billion to shareholders and £60 billion borrowed, our bills up 40%, and 30p in every pound we pay servicing water companies’ debts instead of fixing pipes. This was never a market failure. Instead, it is the market working as designed—profits out, sewage in, cost of living up and security of supply decimated. Surely the Minister understands that we can no more regulate privatised water companies than regulate the tide. How many more failures, inquiries and deaths before the Government accept that these problems are systemic and give the public the option of taking their water back?

• 3 Jun 2026 · South East Water: Disruption of Supply · Hansard source

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  South East Water is one of a number of privatised water companies that are responsible for selling off 35 reservoirs since 2017, and those companies have not built a single one since privatisation that is complete. We understand that this Government are committed to a regulatory approach to dealing with this issue, but that is akin to putting a complaints box on the Titanic. It is a nice idea, but I do not think it will work. Ultimately, private water companies’ first priority is private shareholders—many of them overseas—who do not give a damn about our constituents. This situation will keep happening until water is put back under public control, in public hands, and owned by the public.

• 21 Jan 2026 · Water White Paper · Hansard source

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  After 18 months and an independent inquiry, the Government’s answer is more regulation, not enforcing the law as it is. Not one water company has lost its licence, yet we think that more bureaucracy and more regulation will make a difference. More bureaucracy will not fix our water. I am afraid the Secretary of State needs to know that the problem is ownership. Private monopolies with guaranteed incomes have asset-stripped, polluted rivers and paid themselves billions. Until that changes, nothing will change. Will the Secretary of State meet me and other water campaigners to discuss this document? We cannot see any public consultation in the White Paper, so will she at least commit to that, please?

• 2 Dec 2025 · Budget Resolutions · Hansard source

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  I refer Members to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, which includes the donations for my work on public ownership of water, crowdfunders and my articles covering some of the topics I will mention today in Byline Times , The Guardian and the New Statesman , which are available from all good newsagents. There were decisions in this Budget that deserve recognition, as many Members have said, including ending the two-child cap, meaningful moves towards a fairer tax system, higher taxes on dividends, a surcharge on multimillion-pound properties and rightly expecting more from online gambling companies whose profits come with real social harm. Raising the minimum wage will give millions a little more breathing room, and giving local authorities powers to raise revenue through visitor levies will finally give them a long-overdue additional fiscal lever. These choices matter. They show that tactical interventions can ease pressure on households and help redistribute income and power, but we cannot pretend that a series of tactical fixes adds up to the strategic plan that this country urgently needs. When the very economic system itself is producing the crisis, incremental adjustments will never be enough. Repainting the wallpaper will not fix the crumbling walls. Alas, by that measure, this Budget falls short. It does not answer the two fundamental questions before us: how do we renew our social democracy, and in doing so, how do we finally tackle the cost of living crisis? The crisis of our democracy, the crisis of social democracy, is inseparable from the cost of living crisis. They are driven by the same forces: first by the climate emergency, which now one of the biggest drivers of inflation through water stress, food insecurity, rising extra costs and global supply shocks. Secondly, the ability of Governments to act in the public interest is being weakened. Silicon valley and finance capital now wield increasing power over our daily lives. Thirdly, the loss of democratic agency leaves us exposed to corporate extraction: extreme price gouging; essential services like water, food and energy run as cash machines; and monopolies with almost no restraint. If we fail to confront those forces—fail to tackle the profit-maximisation-at-any-cost operation that now dominates our economy—we cannot bring down the cost of living. By that metric, this Budget failed, and until this Government are prepared to tackle those structural failures, my fear is that they will continue to lose their way, as they are currently doing. The Government must change course. They must fix the structural concerns of this country, and they must do so now.

• 3 Sept 2025 · Living Standards: East of England · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend for an interesting contribution. I will take a time-out on the AI component. I think it has a place and could, I am sure, contribute something, but the real way to ensure that resources are going to the right place is to ensure real devolution: empowering communities, local government and local people to decide where the money is spent, because they know best. Ultimately, pushing power down is how we will get better outcomes. Let us be blunt: living standards as currently measured give us a snapshot, but not the whole picture. They can tell us whether the tills are ringing, but not whether the people are thriving. Look at Norwich: a zero-hours care worker has no work-life balance to speak of; they have work-life whiplash. Mental health referrals in Norfolk are up 40% since 2020—we will not find that in an Office for National Statistics income chart. The poorest wards in my city have five times fewer parks per person than the richest. Try raising kids in a concrete cage in one of the most polluted parts of the city—where, unfortunately, our Government subsidises electric SUVs that, through their brakes and tires, churn out more particulate matter than smaller electric vehicles—and then tell me that their living standards are on the rise. Let us look at Norwich South. We had more than 500 sewage pollution incidents last year. My constituents are not comforted by fines levied on Anglian Water; their lived standard is filthy rivers, dead fish, cancelled swims and massive bill hikes, while they watch multimillion-pound payouts to shareholders and executives—and that is after the passing of our much vaunted Water (Special Measures) Act 2025. So when the Government cheer that GDP is up, or that the average household is a few pounds better off, I say, “Growth for whom? Growth for what? Growth at what cost?” I acknowledge that this Labour Government have already taken steps to make a difference. The extended household support fund for councils, soon to be replaced by the crisis and resilience fund, has been a lifeline for many. Our new Best Start hubs, replacing the axed Sure Start programme, will help millions, as will our new universal breakfast clubs and investment in home energy efficiency, which will cut bills for years to come. Those are brilliant and welcome tangible measures, but we cannot stop there. Too often, we give with one hand and take with the other. We extend support, but keep the two-child cap that pushes hundreds of thousands of children into poverty. We invest in households, but cut disability benefits that provide dignity and security for millions. We offer relief, but leave the structures that drive poverty and insecurity untouched. As the charity Norfolk Community Law Service told me: “We’re seeing a growing number of families live in extreme poverty, struggling with benefits that don’t provide enough to live on, unable to feed themselves properly or heat their homes. This is not because they are lazy or unprepared to work hard in their lives, but often because they are caught in the poverty trap, unable to break free.” The problem is compounded by neglect of prevention. As Age UK in Norwich explained: “The lack of strategic investment into community, preventative services is not only threatening the voluntary sector—it’s chipping away at the foundation, the NHS and social care so many rely on.” Here is the challenge: unless we deal with those deeper structures, we will never truly lift standards in the fullest sense of the word. That means overhauling our tax system. Yes, we need higher taxes on wealth, windfalls, capital gains and inheritance, but we must also face a hard truth: without structural reform, much of that revenue simply flows straight back into the pockets of large corporates—companies that now absorb vast amounts of public money in contracts, subsidies and outsourcing while skimming billions in excess pay, dividends and profit. Tax reform must go hand in hand with a clampdown on corporate capture. I fear that many of my colleagues now in Government understand that after 45 years of privatisation, deregulation and outsourcing, the levers of state are increasingly connected to very little. “Deliver, deliver, deliver,” we are told; but how can we deliver when the accelerator and the gearstick are connected to thin air? Let us not forget that, when those same interests come under pressure, they rarely look in the mirror. Instead, they reach for the oldest trick in the book and tell us that the problem is not profiteering landlords or privatised monopolies. They tell us that the problem is foreigners; that migrants are the reason wages are low; that Europe is the reason services are stretched; that some other is to blame. That scapegoating is not accidental. It is structural. It protects an economy built on extraction—extraction of wealth, of labour, of nature—and it corrodes our democracy, replacing solidarity with suspicion, and common purpose with division. Labour, at its best, has always known better. There was a time when our movement understood that redistribution of income, wealth and power was not a footnote to our mission—it was the mission. We understood that we could not simply leave the means of production, distribution and exchange in the hands of those who use them to extract, rather than to serve; that, if our economy was to work for the majority, if standards of living and wellbeing were to rise, people needed more than just money in their pocket. They needed more say, more power and more ownership over the things that make life bearable and meaningful. That meant public ownership of essential services, from water and energy to rail and post. It meant universal basic services such as healthcare, transport, housing, education and, in our age, internet access. It meant building new institutions to strengthen the cohesion of our society: co-operatives, trade unions, community media and local assemblies. It meant giving people not only the means to live, but the means to shape the communities in which they live. These are the specific asks I would like to put to the Minister. I ask the Government to introduce rent caps in high-pressure areas, as seen in Austria and Scotland, so that families are not priced out of their communities; to cap food prices for a basket of essential goods, as France and Hungary have, so that no child goes hungry because the basics are unaffordable; to abolish the two-child cap on benefits and reverse the recent disability payment cuts—policies that undermine dignity and trap children in poverty. I ask them to launch a major programme of public housing construction using public land to build secure council homes for rent; to take our water companies back into public hands, ending the scandal of dividends flowing abroad while sewage pours into our rivers; to mandate universal broadband and affordable transport access as basic services in a modern economy. I ask the Government to overhaul the tax system, to close the loopholes, tax wealth properly and ensure that revenues are not siphoned off into dividends and corporate profiteering, and to tie corporate subsidies and contracts to strict conditions on pay, investment and environmental responsibility. Finally, I ask them to stop mainstreaming racism. By all means, secure the borders and control migration to what we need, but take out the toxicity. Open secure routes and defend and deepen human rights—do not water them down—for all our sakes. Those are not revolutionary demands, and they are not even radical demands; they are common-sense measures to ensure the economy serves the public, not the other way around. We need a plan for transformation, rather than tinkering at the edges or hoping that growth alone will deliver fairness by accident; a plan in which the demos, the people, have a greater say on how their life, and the life of their community, is shaped. The alternative is stark. Failure to do those things will deliver our country into the hands of the authoritarian right. If we get this wrong, it will not mean some marginal difference in some marginal metric of living standards—it will be the difference between civil co-existence and barbarism, between a society held together by solidarity and one held together by scapegoating and fear. People are crying out not just for a few extra pounds in their wage packet, but for security, dignity and hope. That means we must confront the extractive model, rediscover our roots in redistribution and democracy, stop pandering to racism and rebuild the social compact that once gave Britain both prosperity and purpose. People are not simply consumers to be measured or units of labour to be costed. They are the economy—not components of it, or cogs in someone else’s machine; they are the economy, and we seem to have forgotten that. If we forget it, we will not only fail to raise so-called living standards, but we will fail to rebuild trust, fail to hold our community together and fail to protect our democracy from those who would happily divide and rule. We can do better.

• 3 Sept 2025 · Living Standards: East of England · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention and for all his work in this area. Council homes are overwhelmingly the solution to this country’s housing problems. There is always space for private housing, for affordable housing and for housing associations, but it is council housing, built in a sustainable way, that will solve the housing crisis in this country. I agree with him that developers—not climate, nature or local democracy—are the block to building more houses here, and I am firm in making that point. Public transport in my region is patchy at best. Broadband in rural Norfolk is slower than a tractor on a Sunday morning—people who live in Suffolk or Norfolk will know what I mean. Child poverty levels run at one in three in Norwich once housing costs are factored in and, although we are blessed with extraordinary landscapes, too many of our neighbours live in what I can only describe as nature deserts—no green space within walking distance, and no safe place for kids to play.

• 3 Sept 2025 · Living Standards: East of England · Hansard source

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  I beg to move, That this House has considered living standards in the East of England. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Hobhouse. As I will be discussing nature, water and the far right, I would like to declare interests that meet the relevant test. The first is my role as vice-chair of the climate and nature crisis caucus. The second is that I have received donations from Compass and Betterworld Ltd, which have supported my work on water. The third is support I have received from the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung—try saying that after a few pints—to attend their parliamentarian forums on the far right. I have written about issues touched on in this debate—climate, water, the far right and economic growth—for The Guardian and B yl ine Times , which I have been paid for. If we take an honest look at life in the east of England today, and in my city of Norwich, we do not see the prosperity that Governments have often boasted about. We see a region where too many people are running faster and faster just to stand still. In Norwich, wages remain below the national average. One in five workers earns less than the real living wage. One in six is trapped in insecure work—zero hours, agency or short-term scraps dressed up as jobs. Meanwhile, rents have risen by more than 20% since 2021. A quarter of private renters are handing over half or more of their income just to keep a roof over their heads. That is not prosperity; that is daylight robbery with a tenancy agreement.

• 21 Jul 2025 · Independent Water Commission · Hansard source

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  I am afraid that the report feels like a missed opportunity for the Government to show the public whose side they are on. It entrenches a privatised model that has already failed economically, environmentally and democratically. With 20% to 50% of bills going on servicing debt, why is public ownership—if it is good enough for rail, GB Energy and renewables—not good enough for water?