The greens supported this bill, but felt it was unlikely to solve the problems of a failing water industry dealing with sewage dumping, or leaking pipes. The government’s refusal to consider public ownership of water will lead to greater levels of debt and higher water bills. It will defer the inevitable collapse of the private companies and delay the much needed investment being put in place.
The government did accept three significant improvements to the bill.
Amendment 100 requires representatives of employees and the public to sit on the boards of water companies.
I signed Amendment 78 because who does not want regulators of a public service to work in the interests of the public? That is a very clear statement to make, I would have thought, and it is quite necessary, even though it seems so obvious.
Amendment 84 removes the duty of economic growth from water companies and regulators. The last 14 years is a remarkable success story with a huge growth in sewage and pollution, which has had a huge multiplier impact on gross national product. When we have a river full of dead fish, the authorities buy more fish to replace them. That is economic growth—a huge success according to this legislation. When E. coli is found in our water systems, we get a double hit of economic growth. There is the extra spending by the NHS on treating all the cases of gastro-enteritis and all the extra money spent on plastic bottles of water handed out when consumers cannot drink from the tap. When these private water companies take money out of the hands of bill payers and help the rich to buy new private jets, that also adds to GNP. Growth is not an indicator of happiness or of the economy being run for the benefit of many. It is a nonsense soundbite for the economically illiterate and needs to be deleted from this legislation.
Amendment 85, gives Ofwat a duty to protect the environment. There needs top be a clear connection in Ofwat’s role between signing off bill payers’ money to fund environmental improvements and ensuring that those improvements actually happened.
Amendment 37 would require consideration of opportunities to use nature-based solutions to address pollution within pollution incident reduction plans.
I supported Amendment 74 and Amendment 104 which seek to protect chalk streams. Chalk streams are incredibly important and they are so rare. We have the most in the world and we trash them.
My amendments 97, 98 and 99. All three of my amendments are intended to be helpful—that is, to help the Government regulate the water industry properly and end the 30 years of fleecing bill payers while dumping sewage into our waterways. It is an absolutely unforgivable three decades of abuse of the system.
Amendment 97 would prohibit the Government bailing out shareholders and creditors of water companies in the event of special administration.
Amendment 98 would allow the Government to take back control with public ownership of water companies, but it is only an option. It is an option that I believe the Government could use as a lever in their negotiations with the water companies, so I think it is worth putting it back in the Bill.
Amendment 99 would allow water companies to be put into special administration for failing on environmental issues, such as leaks and sewage spills.
Report Stage
I signed Amendment 2 which tried to ensure that bill payers money for investment is actually invested. The water companies have been saying that they invest all the bill payers’ money in infrastructure, but they then take out loans and pay themselves dividends. With this legislation—even with the amendments—the Government are missing the opportunity to crack down on predatory capitalism.
Amendment 49 puts a clear and unambiguous environmental duty on Ofwat. It gives the authority a primary duty to protect the environment.
I supported the amendment by Lady Willis, to prioritise natural flood management which is proving to be a cost-effective way of reducing flood risk, far cheaper than traditional construction involving lots of concrete. Water companies should be investing in these nature-based solutions to reduce the infrastructure cost of handling service water run-off, because every litre of water that soaks into the ground is a litre of water that does not flood into the water treatment system.
Amendment 54 would have created a special administration process for environmental failures, such as persistent sewage dumping. I do not understand why only financial failure should lead to special administration, when a much bigger failure is the sheer amount of sewage pumped into our rivers and on to our beaches. Thames Water, for example, will come out of special administration still in private hands, but with the bulk of the debt paid off by higher bills. My amendment would change this by giving the special administrator the power to write off the bulk of the debt where it has been used to pay for dividends and where the company has failed to deliver the investment to fix the sewage system.
Amendment 53 would prevent water companies being bailed out by either the public purse or via consumers’ water bills. This is because I am quite suspicious that the whole Bill is a tactic to support the water companies, at vast expense to bill payers and eventually to taxpayers. I simply do not understand why profits are privatised but losses are not. We, the public, pay for the losses but do not get the profits. There does not seem to be any protection whatever at the moment against a water company simply going through the special administration process and then hiking bills up on the other side.
Amendment 59 would require the Government to conduct a full assessment of the costs of bringing water companies into public ownership. Minister’s currently use dubious industry figures about how expensive it would be.
Jenny’s verbal contributions to this bill catalogued below
Final legislation here:
Water (Special Measures) Act 2025
Some of the amendments put forward by Jenny Jones
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.
37: Clause 2, page 5, line 29, at end insert—
“(7A) A sewerage undertaker must have regard to opportunities for nature-based solutions to be used to reduce pollution and to deliver other environmental benefits when preparing and publishing a pollution incident reduction plan.”
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb 