Feargal Sharkey discusses the UK’s water woes with Toby Perkins MP in latest Committee Corridor podcast

The latest episode of Committee Corridor, out this week, sees host Toby Perkins MP, Chair of the Environmental Audit Committee, sit down with well known water campaigner Feargal Sharkey, before hearing from the Chairs of Parliament’s Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and Public Accounts committees about their work to investigate the issues besetting the water sector.

There is not a single river in the country that is not polluted”, Feargal tells Toby. He believes “a combination of colossal almighty failure of regulation and oversight” are responsible for an “industry that for far too long has been gaming the system to their advantage.”

Reflecting on the Independent Water Commission, headed up by Sir Jon Cunliffe, which two weeks ago published its interim report, Feargal quips that Sir Jon has been “Sir Humphreyed” with the Commission’s terms of reference being “so narrowly defined”, saying “we were promised champagne and now we’ve been offered sour milk”.

Feargal tells Toby that there needs to be a complete overhaul of the whole water system, a view echoed by MPs on Parliament’s EFRA Committee, whose ‘Priorities for water sector reform’ report published this week called for root and branch reform of the sector and said it had “completely lost sight of its purpose”.

Toby is joined on the episode by the EFRA Committee’s Chair, Liberal Democrat MP Alistair Carmichael, who says the sector has a serious culture problem and has forgotten its core functions, which are to provide water and sewerage services to the public and to protect the environment. Alistair states that with any model of ownership, “if you lose the focus on the customer service and environmental protection then you are always going to have bad outcomes”.

According to the EFRA Chair, the water sector is a sector characterised by “complex corporate structures” and a “profusion of regulators” within which he believes there is a “box-ticking culture”.

Asked by Toby about Defra’s role in water sector reforms, Alistair discusses the Government’s announcement of the ban on bonuses to water company chief executives and chief financial officers, highlighting that the Committee had recently learned that Thames Water had already paid out a tranche of ‘retention payments’ to 21 other individuals in Thames’ senior management team. He explains that Thames have stated that they have now ‘paused’ these bonus payments rather than abandoning them as DEFRA had implied and says that when DEFRA sees “that attitude” it is up to the government to act and that the “buck stops with the government”.

Committee scrutiny will continue over the coming months, when the Public Accounts Committee, chaired by Conservative MP, Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, reports on its inquiry into water sector regulation.  Last week, the Committee put the findings of the National Audit Office’s recent report on ‘Regulating for investment and outcomes in the water sector’ to witnesses from a range of bodies including Water UK, the Consumer Council for Water, Defra and Ofwat.

Sir Geoffrey tells Toby that consumer trust in the industry is at an all time low, saying that this is not surprising while the public are experiencing rising bills contrasted with poor performance by companies. He believes there is a view amongst the public that they have paid for improvements but have not got them.

The PAC Chair says that regulation, both in terms of the environment and in terms of finances, is not working in the consumer’s interest. Sir Geoffrey wants to see greater accountability from companies, suggesting that they should be expected to tell their customers what improvements their bills have financed each year.

Information on where you can listen to the podcast can be found here:

https://www.parliament.uk/business/commons/committee-corridor-podcast/committee-corridor-feargal-sharkey-on-the-uks-water-woes/

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