Helena Dollimore MP: speeches

Speeches

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

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Jeremy. I pay tribute to the campaigners and citizen scientists—some of whom are in the Public Gallery—who have exposed the scale of the sewage scandal. It is only because of them and their campaigning that we are having this debate. Our water industry is fundamentally broken. I sat with my hon. Friend the Member for Mid and South Pembrokeshire (Henry Tufnell) on the Select Committee and questioned the water bosses, and all we heard was excuse after excuse. We need a fundamental change to protect our failing water infrastructure. That is a top priority for our Labour Government and I welcome the steps that have been made so far to ramp up regulation and get tough on the water companies, but as I will outline, we need to go further. Nothing enrages the people I represent in Hastings and Rye more than bills going up every year to prop up failing companies, while executives and shareholders try to find ways to evade bonus bans as their companies edge towards bankruptcy. We have already taken important steps, but we must go further to protect vital national infrastructure. In Hastings and Rye, we already see the impacts of the regulation that we introduced: more Environment Agency staff focused full time on monitoring Southern Water, more inspections taking place, and more enforcement notices issued. We are starting to see the results of that work, but there is still more to do. Those of us in the Chamber who favour a co-operative model believe it is the solution that would put people before profit in fixing our broken water industry. I will talk briefly about the impact of our failing water industry on the people I represent. We have had two major water outages in the past couple of years, one lasting nine days and one five days; there was major flooding in Hastings town centre that ruined people’s livelihoods; and 300 million plastic beads washed up on our coastline—we found out that they came from a Southern Water treatment plant only because we got down on our hands and knees and exposed that scandal. Public health has been compromised and sewage is dumped in our sea regularly. Right now a digger sits on the beach in Hastings, an eyesore, because of Southern Water’s failings. I believe that the solution is to move to a co-operative model, which would be the radical shake-up that this industry needs.

• 16 Jul 2026 · Business of the House · Hansard source

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  Our roads in Hastings, Rye and the surrounding villages are riddled with potholes, and it is one of the biggest issues we face. One of the most frustrating things is that on the rare occasion that a pothole gets filled, all the other potholes around it are left untouched. That is why I wrote to the new leader of the Reform-led East Sussex county council on 21 May to urge him to take decisive action on this issue by reviewing the contract with Balfour Beatty and changing the intervention criteria. Two months later, and despite my writing repeatedly to him about this issue, he has not responded to any of my questions about potholes. Does the Leader of the House agree that this shows that Reform is not interested in fixing the issues that local people care about, even when it gets record money from this Labour Government to do so?