My amendment to require representatives of employees and the public to sit on the boards of water companies

After Clause 12, insert the following new Clause— “Governance structure of water companies After section 10 of the Water Industry Act 1991 insert— “10A Governance structure of undertakers (1) The board of directors of a water or sewerage undertaker, and any parent or holding company, must have— (a) at least one third of its members elected by the employees of the company or group, (b) at least one sixth of its members chosen by local authorities in the water catchment area, in consultation with independent environmental and consumer groups. (2) Employees as a group are entitled to a minimum of one third of the total votes in a general meeting of the company. (3) Bill-payers as a group are entitled to a minimum of one sixth of the total votes in the general meeting of the company. (4) The Secretary of State may by regulations made by statutory instrument increase the proportion of directors in subsection (1) that Water (Special Measures) Bill [HL] 37 are elected by employees to one half, and chosen by local authorities to one quarter, and mustraise the proportion of votes in the meeting in subsections (2) and (3) accordingly. (5) A statutory instrument containing regulations under subsection (4) may not be made unless a draft of the instrument has been laid before and approved by a resolution of each House of Parliament.”” Member’s explanatory statement This amendment aims to require representatives of employees and the public to sit on the boards of water companies.

I will speak to my Amendment 100. The issues of water pollution and the supply of clean water to everybody are ones I clearly care a lot about. But this Bill is just papering over the cracks. If we are going to paper over cracks, we could at least try a radical departure; perhaps we could try to bring some democracy into the regime.

I take issue with the Duke of Wellington and Lord Remnant. I have chaired a board and it was extremely successful. Part of that was because I invited people who thought very differently on to the board. We had 20 members or so. It was called London Food and we were tasked with writing a report for the Mayor of London on a sustainable food strategy for the city. It was successful, I would argue, partly because of my charm—obviously —but also because we had extremely good reports from every single aspect of food and food supply for London. We had a member from the City who was obviously a Conservative, we had an organic farmer and so on. We had a huge range of people, but we agreed on the strategy and we came to some very useful conclusions. This is what we need: we need some democracy in the systems that try to keep us safe.

Honestly, given the scale of the challenge that the water industry faces at the moment, in trying to make a system work that has proved not to work, we need to ensure that there are some new voices that can represent other parts of society that use the water system and care very deeply about it. We should also involve the people who actually do the work. My amendment brings in people from the workforce.

At the moment, the CEOs and senior staff are more focused on delivering dividends than they are on delivering a quality service, so having worker representatives on the board would provide a constant voice for those whose job it is to provide a service. The regulators have been captured by the industry they are meant to be keeping an eye on, so they are almost useless. This system should not be a national scheme but one based on the geography of the water systems themselves.

I am a believer in democracy and this would be an extremely useful way of making sure that a crucial industry for our society has some resonance with people out there. I am sure that this would be welcomed by the majority of people, just as I am sure that the Minister is aware that polls suggest a majority of people would prefer public ownership. Failing that, however, let us get the public in there, talking and being listened to.

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