Speeches by Mayhew.

“The shadow Minister is right that a lot of the supposed solutions were uncosted and had an impractical timeframe. One that springs to mind was the Liberal Democrat amendment that was costed: there was a tax that was supposed to pay for the improvements to water quality. Does he agree that, on a basic calculation, it wo…”

“I have a slightly cheeky intervention. Is the shadow Minister aware that there is a debate in Westminster Hall at 4 o’clock tomorrow led by yours truly on nature-based solutions for farmland flooding? The fund is central to improving the situation.”

“The hon. Gentleman will perhaps know that under current insolvency law, there are secured creditors. There is a hierarchy of debt, and the least protected—not the most protected—are suppliers. Does he envisage changing the rules to give additional protection in this process to unsecured creditors and essentially revers…”

“They will be right at the bottom.”

“The hon. Gentleman is conflating the term creditor with debt provision, but actually there is a plethora of suppliers to any large organisation such as a water undertaker. They are creditors—that is just how they are defined. His clause would cover small and medium enterprises that are providers of services, and in fac…”

“The hon. Gentleman says it is the creditors who put the undertakers in the position that they are in, but surely that cannot be right. Creditors are the people who provide services for a fee to the undertaker—they will not be the organisations that put the undertaker into that position. Surely the hon. Gentleman agrees…”

“Well, there you go. That is six, in that case.”

“I can easily do that, as you well know. Claire Hazelgrove is the deputy chair of the APPG. I will set her a task, and I am sure she will do that.”

“Probably, but what would be plan B?”

“Yes, I think so. Speaking for myself, I would say yes.”

“Yes. Thank you very much for hearing me. I feel like I have queue-barged; sorry about that. I am here because I am chair of the all-party parliamentary group on financial education for young people. For the very few Members of Parliament who have not heard of that, we are one of the largest APPGs, second only to the al…”

“Will the hon. Member give way?”

“I think this is technically now a speech rather than an intervention. I am supportive of the content of the clause, but I have one technical question: if we choose to move a penalty from a fine to imprisonment, there has to be a person to apply that penalty to, rather than a body corporate. The question that obviously …”

“Will the Minister give way?”

“I, too, welcome the Secretary of State to her post, and look forward to helping her to do an excellent job. As we can see following the last few days of flooding, changing weather patterns are damaging our roads and increasing potholes. The last Government allocated an additional £8 billion for road improvements, paid …”

“I will speak primarily in support of amendment 6. I pay tribute to the former Member for Ludlow, the right hon. Philip Dunne, who throughout the previous Parliament was the Chair of the Environmental Audit Committee, on which I sat. The EAC’s work on water quality and the seminal report that we produced started this hu…”

“I am not against the principle of this—in fact, I am strongly in favour of it—but I have some practical questions. I wonder whether this would bump up against individuals’ human rights and restraint of trade arguments in the courts. I must confess that I was previously a barrister. That was a long time ago, so I have d…”

“I do not know about you, Mr Speaker, but I am not sure whether that was a commitment to match the £8 billion, or whether the Secretary of State considered it to be a fantasy commitment. However, it is not just the £8 billion investment that seems to have gone missing. As soon as they were in power, the Labour Governmen…”

“I am grateful for that intervention. However, it seems an odd way to proceed if it is recognised that there is a risk to voluntary members who join boards, exposing them to personal obligations, such as a fiduciary duty of care. There is also a legal duty of loyalty to the organisation, which such volunteers might find…”

“I have expressed my concerns. It would be perfectly possible to achieve the object, which I share, of improving the voice of the customer in water companies, or of improving the implementation of the existing obligation on water companies to take account of the consumer interest. I do not think that the current draftin…”