Speeches by Maynard.

“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Furniss. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for North Devon (Ian Roome) for securing this important debate and everybody who has spoken in it. There is a very strong message coming through about how much rural communities need this relief and how much they suffer. As my…”

“My hon. Friend speaks to the point. Of course, those people have been dead for many centuries, but we believe it is worth being able to access that information, and at the moment it is not accessible in most cases. That is something we really want to change. I look to Denmark’s registry-first legal architecture, with m…”

“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Western. I thank the hon. Member for Caerphilly (Chris Evans) for securing the debate, and I thank Ellie for all her work, as well as Hugh and the others who are pushing very hard on this issue—many thanks indeed. I want to try to make this debate a bit broader in t…”

“I have the letter of 18 December from the Post Office, which talks about redress update—that is helpful, so thank you for that. We also heard the panel earlier talking through the HSS panel and that process and the time taken to do that. Then, we flipped into the HSS appeals process, where often the payouts are multipl…”

“Thank you. Let’s get to that settlement as quickly as we can.”

“Thank you for being here today, Mr Patterson. It is a difficult position to be in. I take the point about Wyn Williams, and I think deferring to that is reasonable. The Chair’s point about the scale of Fujitsu—it is £49 billion of market cap. This company can afford to pay a very substantial chunk. This whole problem w…”

“Will the hon. Gentleman give way?”

“We have interest costs of 9.75% being paid. We have massive advisory fees coming out of the company. All the class A creditors’ legal fees—£15 million a month, give or take—were being paid for by Thames Water. To say that this is not all hitting the customers is not true. Who else is paying for this, if it is not ultim…”

“It feels as if we are locked in a system that nobody thinks is much good, and there are consequences to that—very real, human consequences. If we all acknowledge that this is not working very well—we can ask the Minister very shortly—what is needed to fix it? Are you telling us that if the Post Office does not think it…”

“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Harris. West Oxfordshire is very much ground zero for Thames Water. We have the Thames itself, the Evenlode and the Windrush. West Oxfordshire district council has done great work in going after Thames Water. We have WASP—Windrush Against Sewage Pollution—and we, as a…”

“Just to follow up, what answer do you get back when you ask that question?”

“I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (Clive Jones) for securing this fantastic debate. I also thank the Members in the room for all the work they have done, and the Minister for her engagement, particularly with the Brain Cancer Justice team. I really appreciate it. My sister Georgie received a glioblastoma …”

“During that process, did you have a named person that you could talk to, or was it all by letter or by email? How did it work practically?”

“I concur with those views from the hon. Member for Boston and Skegness (Richard Tice), but can the Minister confirm that those discussions with class A creditors will not involve forgiving the company for its fines?”

“Will the Minister give way?”

“Well done for challenging it and for keeping at it, but you really should not have had to.”

“Obviously, we need a plan—we should not just say “tough luck” here, given the trauma and everything else. It would be good to have a clear plan as to what happens. If you are saying this is closing at the end of January, what happens to anybody who comes in late?”

“I completely agree—well said. What is so depressing is that the Labour Government have embraced the Conservative’s mistakes over Thames Water, and our water sector more broadly, and then doubled down on them. The Government have been and continue to be hoodwinked by a bunch of hedge-funds whispering about financial Arm…”

“If the end of January date stands, what would you recommend for somebody who comes in late after that—that they go straight to DBT?”

“Glenys, when were you told that your conviction was finally considered eligible to be quashed under the Act?”