Speeches by Dixon.

“Sorry—I may be ignorant—but figure 12 in the NAO Report shows that the vast majority has come through debt and not equity being raised. At some point, as customers we are paying for that debt.”

“I am sure we will come back to this in the main session, but I am really keen to make sure we ask intelligent questions. Getting to the bottom of the scope of regulation and whether you agree that the scope of the financial regulation of Ofwat has been drawn too narrow is really what I am trying to get from you as a re…”

“On a point of order, Chair. We did not invite the panellists to declare any of their conflicts of interest—for example, how their organisations are funded. Rachel asked that question of John, but do either of the other witnesses needed to be clear about that?”

“Thank you. It is useful to put their comments in context.”

“You talked at the beginning about some of the challenges. When we were previously taking evidence from the chief medical officer, Chris Whitty, he was obviously very concerned about public health. If we think back in history, one of the great successes in public health was water sanitation. Mr Henderson, you said that …”

“Dr Keil, on your point about consumer confidence, people feel really angry about issues such as raw sewage dumping, don’t they? They have been paying for a service that they thought they were getting—the processing of sewage—only to find that even in low rainfall it was being dumped, effectively illegally, and that the…”

“Good afternoon. I declare a conflict of interest as I know Tamara—it is good to see you in in your seat. You talked a lot about the investment that is needed, particularly into new infrastructure. We have been talking a lot about reservoirs this week, but obviously there is huge existing infrastructure—reservoirs, sewa…”

“Perhaps you can help me, because over the last number of price reviews there has been quite a significant amount of money for investment. Without knowing the asset health—the baseline—and then measuring whether that investment has resulted in an upgrade to asset health, how on earth have you been doing your job?”

“Would you agree that your previous set of incentives was inadequate and led to short-term measures such as fixing leaky pipes rather than the long-term investments we needed in things like reservoirs and upgrading our Victorian sewerage systems to meet rising housing demand?”

“Philip Duffy, the NAO Report says that at the current rate of replacement for water mains, the entire network would end up being replaced just once every 700 years. Clearly, the industry has fallen quite a long way short of what you hoped for in PR19. You have again set expectations for PR24. How are you going to get t…”

“So did you not claw back money when they failed to deliver last time?”

“It will not be much reassurance for constituents whose homes or businesses have been damaged by burst water mains that the companies were given money to do a job, they failed to do it, and it sounds like up till now there has been little consequence. I am glad that you are changing your approach. My final question is a…”

“Do you think that if, as the EA, you had exercised your powers a bit sooner and harder to tackle illegal raw sewage dumping, these companies might have taken action sooner to upgrade their ageing assets?”

“So you are saying that over the last decade, as regulators, you have prioritised cost over environment?”

“I want to get into issues around finances—particularly the case of Yorkshire Water. You have mentioned it as a company that is looking to improve its performance, having recently been slapped with a fine. We are now using our new powers, which the Government have introduced, to make sure that the CEO is not taking a bo…”

“If you were kind, you would say it is “opaque”; if you were perhaps being more honest, you might say it is a bit “murky”, like most of our rivers. It feels like action is being taken now when these very complex financial schemes have been in place for a long time. Why are we only taking action now?”

“Are you saying that you now have the regulatory tools? Have you got the capacity in skills? One of the problems with these monopoly companies is that they will beat the regulator every time—we see it in other sectors. Are we not looking at regulatory failure?”

“It sounds like we are spending an awful lot of money trying to keep these companies honest—I just make that observation.”

“Can I get back to the lessons learned? It was very helpful to hear those reflections, because you came to the Committee for the report on the industrial strategy challenge funds back in, which came out in April 2021. I think you were looking then at some £1.2 billion of innovation, but there was a general lack of clari…”

“Would you like to add anything, Sir David?”