Mike Martin MP: speeches

Speeches

• 10 Jun 2026 · Water Supply in Kent · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Twigg, and an honour to follow so many fellow Kent MPs and constituency neighbours. In December last year, 24,000 properties in Tunbridge Wells were completely without water for a week. The following week, they had a boil notice, so they were without drinking water for two weeks. The stories that my constituents shared are harrowing. Someone who was incontinent with colon cancer was left to clean with wet wipes. Another lady who had a miscarriage was unable to clean herself, compounding the trauma. People fainted outside kidney dialysis centres and had to have CPR. Schools shut, GP surgeries received no bottled water deliveries and, as we have all spoken about, our constituents who are supposedly on the priority register did not receive any supplies. My office became a kind of crisis cell where people were able to feed requests to us to pass on to South East Water. It would be funny if it was not so serious, but when Dave Hinton was brought in front of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee in January, as he was speaking the water went off again in Tunbridge Wells for a further week. Local businesses in Tunbridge Wells lost millions over both of those outages, and the sum offered by South East Water was paltry. Working with the business improvement district and local businesses, we presented evidence to South East Water and secured a commitment that it would at least look at the size of the compensation it offered. I hope soon to bring the good news to colleagues that South East Water will increase the compensation, but local businesses lost the critical period before Christmas, which is when hospitality businesses make all of their money for the rest of the year. As has been mentioned, the chair and the CEO have gone. I am glad that we all united around the calls, originating during the December outage, for the CEO to step down—no change could happen at South East Water without the CEO, in particular, going. I have met the new chair, and I am impressed. There are some small seeds and shoots that we can look at, because although the chair and the CEO leaving is necessary, it is not sufficient. In Tunbridge Wells, we need to look at investment going into Pembury water treatment works specifically, as well as at the interconnections between all of our constituencies. South East Water was cobbled together from 20 other companies over 50 years, and the interconnections have not been built between those separate water networks. There is another point about shareholders and accountability. South East Water is owned by three major shareholders: the NatWest Group pension fund, Desjardins and Utilities Trust of Australia. One way they make a return on their capital is by charging extortionate interest rates on loans to the company—in the order of 10%. Putting reputational risk aside, it is effectively a risk-free investment because, in reality, the Government back the water network. South East Water’s debt interest runs at £3,000 an hour, so while my constituents did not have water in December, South East Water’s shareholders made £1.8 million in interest from the company. The result is that we have under-invested infrastructure that fails and causes outages, leading to the terrible problems we have been speaking about. I echo what everyone has said about the Minister being extremely forward-leaning and helpful in these crises. She suffered a personal tragedy during one of the outages in Tunbridge Wells, and before she went off on compassionate leave, she reached out to my office to make sure I had everything I needed from the Department. That speaks to her approach to the job, as well as her professionalism. The Water (Special Measures) Act 2025 fixes some of the regulation issues. The Liberal Democrats had been calling for a long time for the abolition of Ofwat and the creation of a regulator that brings together all these myriad regulators and strengthens their power, so we are very glad. However, I gently say to the Minister that there is an issue around the debt that the water companies hold. The sector is worth about £100 billion in asset value, and it borrowed £70 billion against that. A sector that has a 70% debt-to-equity ratio is not a sector that is able to deliver proper investment, and I have spoken about the high interest rates. We are in this mess because of financial engineering by the likes of Macquarie and other investors. Without looking at that financialisation and solving those problems, particularly around debt, it will be difficult to drive the investment required in companies such as South East Water. I want to touch very briefly on Ofwat, which recently fined South East Water £22 million. I think I have about a minute left.

• 10 Jun 2026 · Water Supply in Kent · Hansard source

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  I would argue that, rather than fining the company after the event, we should be forcing it to invest equivalent or larger amounts in infrastructure. I presented a resilience plan drawn up with water experts for Pembury water treatment works. That fine should be commuted. It just goes to Ofwat and then to the Treasury, but that money should be invested in the water network. I will conclude by looking ahead. The Water (Special Measures) Act is necessary but not sufficient—a bit like getting rid of the chair and CEO. Without tackling the debt burden and the financial structures of many of these firms, in which bonuses are still paid and part of the corporate structure is in the Cayman Islands or whatever, we will not get to the root of the problems in the water sector.

• 19 May 2026 · Energy Security · Hansard source

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  Is not the biggest problem with first past the post that often people are voting against rather than for someone? That poisons our democracy, because everyone ends up with someone who they do not want.

• 24 Mar 2026 · Oil and Gas · Hansard source

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  Will the shadow Minister give way?

• 24 Mar 2026 · Oil and Gas · Hansard source

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  I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on having the largest wind farm in Europe in his constituency.

• 2 Feb 2026 · Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction Bill · Hansard source

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  Like my hon. Friend, I have spent a fair amount of time on the ocean —not rowing but sailing. When sailing across oceans in a small boat, one cannot help but see the seas of plastic, whether left by fishermen or simply thrown overboard, that are carried on currents. Does my hon. Friend think the treaty goes far enough to tackle the scourge of plastic pollution in our oceans?

• 20 Jan 2026 · Water (Special Measures) Act 2025: Enforcement · Hansard source

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  I offer two examples—surreal is the only word for them. I was standing at a water station in Tunbridge Wells, speaking to South East Water, and I was told, “The water station is open.” I looked around, and it definitely was not open. The problem is that South East Water has a contractor that sets up the water stations that either is incompetent, is mendacious or lies—or all three—so the company does not have a grip of what is going on. I have another utterly surreal example. I think the hon. Member for East Grinstead and Uckfield (Mims Davies) was in the meeting with the Minister when the Minister said, “There seems to be a problem in Cranbrook, according to my briefing. Dave Hinton, could you speak to that?” For Members who do not know, Cranbrook is in the borough of Tunbridge Wells but not in the constituency. Alongside me was the chief executive from the borough council, who said, “What’s the problem in Cranbrook?” He immediately thought he had a problem to deal with. Dave Hinton, the CEO of South East Water, said, “Oh no, there’s no problem in Cranbrook. I think it’s absolutely fine. Where did you get that information?” The Minister asked her official where the information was from, and in a moment worthy of the best episode of “Yes Minister” the official said dryly, “Minister, we got that information from South East Water.” These people are utter gangsters. They gave evidence to the Select Committee, which is chaired by my right hon. Friend the Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael), and immediately afterwards the chief water inspector for England and Wales—God, he warms your heart if you are in the middle of a water crisis, I can tell you—came and rubbished their evidence. South Easter Water said the crisis was unforeseeable; the chief water inspector said, “No, not only was it foreseeable but we told you what you needed to do in the weeks and months preceding the outage. Had you done that, the crisis wouldn’t have happened.” To my mind, that is negligence. In the first crisis in December, people had to receive lifesaving treatment because a dialysis centre got knocked out. South East Water is a hair’s breadth away from a corporate manslaughter charge. These people are gangsters.

• 20 Jan 2026 · Water (Special Measures) Act 2025: Enforcement · Hansard source

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  My gangsters are worse than my hon. Friend’s. She makes a powerful point.

• 20 Jan 2026 · Water (Special Measures) Act 2025: Enforcement · Hansard source

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  I am well over my time, and I need to get to the point of my speech, but I get incredibly passionate when defending my constituents’ interests and their right to clean water. The White Paper is out today. My challenge to the Minister, whom I count as an ally in this fight, is this. What measures contained in the White Paper would have prevented the outages in Tunbridge Wells? She will, of course, give me an answer from the Dispatch Box, but I ask her to reflect honestly on that. I also ask her to think about debt, which the Government do not speak to in the White Paper. About £70 billion of debt is held across the water industry, much of it by shareholders in water companies that pay out 10% interest. Financial engineering got us into this mess, and we need a bit of financial engineering to get us out of it and to lower interest rates on that debt. I ask the Minister to speak to that.

• 20 Jan 2026 · Water (Special Measures) Act 2025: Enforcement · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Allin-Khan. I would like to start by thanking the Minister for all her support. I do not think we realised that we would spend so much time on the same Zoom calls with a vast collection of characters from across Kent and the water sector. I also thank the Secretary of State, who came to Tunbridge Wells last Wednesday to announce an unprecedented review into South East Water’s licence. It has been interesting to hear Members talk of their local water companies and how surreal it is that they are able to continue with such appalling performance while patting themselves on the back and rewarding themselves with eye-watering sums of money. I have news for everyone here—hold my beer—because South East Water is the worst in the entire country. At the end of November, the water went out in Tunbridge Wells, and South East Water got off to a good start by setting up a bottled-water station in another town. When we pointed out that Tonbridge and Tunbridge Wells are different towns, bottled water stations were then set up in the right town, although we had to point out where they should be. That outage lasted about two weeks, with a week of no water and then a week of a boil notice. South East Water handled the communications so poorly that, naturally, my constituents were quite fearful of the quality of water and whether they would be able to drink it. That space was then filled by bad actors and we had to ask the Cabinet Office to intervene to help us with the disinformation. South East Water’s crisis management and communications during that outage were absolutely appalling. The Minister will agree with me that through all of the Zoom meetings we had daily, the qualities on display among the representatives from South East Water were extremely poor. Yet when they were called to the Select Committee in January, they gave themselves an eight out of 10. [ Laughter. ] I did mention to Members that these are literally the worst people. They are gangster capitalists, as I will go on to explain. While the CEO was at the EFRA Committee giving himself an eight of 10, the water was going off again in Tunbridge Wells. At the exact moment he was saying there was a plan and everything was going to be okay, I got a text from my mother-in-law, who lives at one of the highest points in Tunbridge Wells. We are all water experts in Tunbridge Wells now, and the water goes off first on the high ground, because South East Water cannot pump it uphill. I immediately rang South East Water and was asked where I had got that information, so I was informing the water company that there was a major outage in Tunbridge Wells. I then picked up the phone to the borough council, which picked up the phone to Kent county council, which runs the resilience forum. That was the chain of the passage of information to get the local resilience forum stood up, rather than South East Water understanding, knowing what was going on, getting a grip of the situation and communicating effectively to local partners.

• 12 Jan 2026 · Water Supplies: East Grinstead · Hansard source

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  I thank the Minister for all the help she has given me and my constituents over the past month. Tunbridge Wells is yet again without water. We seem to roll from outage to outage. As we stand here today, 6,500 houses are without supply. Schools are closed, and even more are closing as more areas go out of supply. The Minister knows from personal experience that the leadership of South East Water suffers from an optimism bias, with appalling risk management. The leaders have no idea what is actually going on. During the call the Minister and I were on just an hour and a half ago, they said two things that were immediately proven to be false. That is not necessarily because they are lying, but because they do not know what they are doing. Plainly, the leadership of South East Water suffers from groupthink. Last week, the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee showed the leadership to be negligent. The Committee Chair, the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael), accused the CEO of misleading Parliament and said his position was “untenable”. The Secretary of State in the Minister’s own Department has said that she is “shocked” by Hinton’s “lack of accountability”. Does the Minister have confidence in Dave Hinton, the CEO of South East Water?