Gregory Stafford MP: speeches

Speeches

• 14 Sept 2026 · Water Sector: Public Ownership · Hansard source

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  I am afraid I do not know every word in the 2024 Labour manifesto, but I believe that a lot of what the hon. Gentleman is saying is in it, and I would encourage him to ask the Minister those very questions. I have joined the River Wey Trust for water testing, and I know that Thames Water is now undertaking phosphorus removal upgrades at the Farnham treatment works serving my constituency. However, a key question I want to ask the Minister is, will they be delivered in a timely manner? On infrastructure, when I last met Thames Water representatives, they told me it had inaccurate records for around 30% of its infrastructure. How can a modern water company properly manage its network if it does not even know what infrastructure it has? South East Water provides drinking water for the majority of my constituency, and it has received a £22.5 million Ofwat fine, yet leaks in my constituency take weeks to be sorted. Those are symptoms of an ageing network that requires proper investment and maintenance, and that is not cost-free. Nationalisation does not repair pipes, make treatment works cheaper or remove the need for investment; it transfers the financial risk—potentially £100 billion—to taxpayers, and it still requires regulation, which is clearly failing at the moment. I draw the attention of right hon. and hon. Members to what has happened to South Western Railway since it was nationalised: cancellations are up, trains are shorter and delays have doubled. Why would my constituents believe that the nationalisation of water would be any more successful than this Government’s nationalisation of the railways?

• 14 Sept 2026 · Water Sector: Public Ownership · Hansard source

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  I will not, because lots of other people want to speak—I apologise. My constituents are not asking whether the water companies are private or public; they are asking why their water company loses water through leaks, allows sewage into the River Wey and sometimes struggles even to maintain basic infrastructure. Is not the real test of this Government whether they can force these companies to perform better, as they promised in their manifesto, rather than simply changing their ownership? The choice is not between doing nothing and nationalisation. The challenge is to ensure that we have strong regulation, proper investment and real consequences for failure, without putting the bill on the taxpayer.

• 14 Sept 2026 · Water Sector: Public Ownership · Hansard source

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  My constituents want clean rivers, reliable water, functioning sewerage infrastructure and value for money. What they want is not necessarily a change in the ownership of water companies, but proper regulation, proper investment and proper accountability. Thames Water lost 136 litres per property per day in 2024-25—the worst performance in England and Wales—and South East Water, which also covers my constituency, lost almost 106 litres per customer per day. How can we ask customers to conserve water, as we have been doing over the past few months, when Thames Water and South East Water are losing so much of it? Likewise, sewage discharges, especially those into the River Wey in my constituency, are disgraceful, although we know about them only because the previous Conservative Government started measuring them.

• 16 Jul 2026 · Health Bill (Seventeenth sitting) · Hansard source

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  Unlike that of the hon. Member for Guildford, my constituency covers both Surrey and East Hampshire, so I welcome the focus that new clause 72 places on our local area. Constituents regularly raise with me their concerns about seeing an NHS dentist. As I have announced a number of times in this Committee—although I have not checked today, so may not be true any more—there is not a single dentist in my constituency taking on adult or child NHS patients at the moment. For many people, the challenge is not simply one of convenience; it is about being able to access timely care when they need it. Good oral health is an essential part of overall health, and we cannot allow dentistry to become an afterthought in our healthcare system. The ability see a dentist for routine check-ups, preventive care and urgent treatment helps to reduce pressure elsewhere in the NHS by dealing with problems before they become more serious. The new clause rightly highlights the need both for urgent appointments and for improved access to routine NHS dental care. Prevention is at the heart of a sustainable healthcare system, and regular access to dental services plays an important role in achieving that. I welcome the accountability that the new clause seeks to introduce. In places where there are persistent challenges in accessing services—so-called dental deserts—local communities deserve transparency about what action is being taken and why improvements have not yet been delivered. As I have mentioned before, the spanking new dental surgery in Haslemere hospital has sat entirely unused since it was built, and, as far as I am aware, there are no plans to use it. That seems like a shocking waste of money and, more importantly, a shocking waste of a dental surgery that could be treating patients in Haslemere and the wider area. The hon. Member for North Shropshire always wants to place the blame with the Conservatives, and does not seem to feel the need to challenge the Government, but I gently remind her that there was a Liberal Democrat Minister in the Department of Health and Social Care for five years, and apparently they did absolutely nothing to raise this issue. Although this issue is particularly important for Surrey and East Hampshire, it reflects a wider challenge facing communities across the country. Residents should not have to struggle to find an NHS dentist, and ensuring that provision is adequate must remain a priority. I hope the Government take that on board.

• 9 Jul 2026 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  The beautiful River Wey runs through my constituency, but storm overflows from the Farnham sewage treatment works are increasingly polluting the river, affecting my residents and businesses and those further afield, including the Peper Harow Park fly fishers in the constituency of my right hon. Friend the Member for Godalming and Ash (Sir Jeremy Hunt). What discussions is the Minister having with Thames Water about stopping the discharges from the Farnham sewage works?

• 7 Jul 2026 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  T6. During the election, the Government promised to cut bills by £300; in fact, they have gone up by £300. With that level of financial acumen, the Secretary of State will fit right in, in his new job at the Treasury, but my constituents and local businesses want their bills cut now, not at some nebulous point in the future. When he gets to the Treasury, will he remove the taxes on our energy industry, to ensure that bills actually come down?

• 7 Jul 2026 · Health Bill (Thirteenth sitting) · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship again, Ms Lewell. I think right hon. and hon. Members will be disappointed to know I am not going to speak too long on this, but they need not worry: in the next grouping, usual service will resume. I want to pick up a few points on the abolition of national Healthwatch. When we took evidence from Sarah Woolnough of the King’s Fund, I asked her a fairly open-ended question about when she gave evidence at the Health and Social Care Select Committee. I put it to her that she “seemed to suggest that the Government could achieve what they needed to in the 10-year plan without this reorganisation.” –– [ Official Report, Health Public Bill Committee, 16 June 2026; c. 15, Q23.] She gave me an answer that essentially said it could all be done without the need for the reorganisation that is in the current NHS Bill. I then asked Mr Jacob Lant, a representative from National Voices, whether he would agree with that and, unprompted, because I did not mention Healthwatch in my question, he replied: “Yes. I kind of think, as the debate goes on, that—with the changes to Healthwatch in particular—you could achieve so much without legislation. You could beef up the internal functions for listening to a patient and engaging with them without legislation—there is no requirement for that. You could invest more resource in that, and you could do the same with Healthwatch.” –– [ Official Report, Health Public Bill Committee, 16 June 2026; c. 16, Q24.] We already know from the evidence that we received, unprompted, from National Voices and the King’s Fund that the abolition of NHS England will not solve the problems that the Minister, the Government and the Department think are there, and indeed it could be done in a different way. I listened closely to the hon. Member for Lichfield. He seemed to be presenting a number of problems, but the solution that the Government have come up with does not hold water. As right hon. and hon. Friends have said, the removal of Healthwatch England and the introduction of a director for patient experience simply does not work because the independence—which is so fundamental to the HSSIB that we talked about— of local healthwatches, which we will talk about, and of Healthwatch England is fundamental to the ability of that organisation to do its job. In a previous career I worked for the Getting It Right First Time programme in the NHS. When that programme first started, it sat outside the structures of what was then NHS Improvement, latterly NHS England. At that point we could make recommendations to the NHS— I do not mean this flippantly —in a way that was unrestricted. As soon as we were brought into NHS England, into a governmental structure, the recommendations that we put forward were looked at and scrutinised and we were told often, “We do not have the money to afford that”, or, “That is not in our plan.” And that is precisely what will happen if recommendations are put through the director of patient experience. As others have said, when this director of patient experience arrives at a Select Committee, he or she will be there to represent and defend the Department and Ministers, understandably, because that is who he or she will work for. They will not be able to stand up, go on television or the radio, do the broadcast interviews or make representations, because they will be a creature of the system rather than a scrutineer of the system and an advocate for patients. That is a fundamental problem, and while I accept that there may be ways to improve Healthwatch England, as Members have outlined, this simply will not do it.