Speeches by Hatton.

“So you are confident that the Water (Special Measures) Act will enable you to go into these—”

“And you are confident that where you do persistently say to a water company, “This is ageing infrastructure; you need to repair it,” again and again, and they fail to act, the new powers in the Act will enable you to come down on them quite robustly for their failure to address crumbling infrastructure?”

“That transparency is certainly welcome. If you are now going around the entire estate every couple of years, can the Environment Agency realistically start to work more pre-emptively and take a far more preventive approach, where it looks at ageing, crumbling infrastructure belonging to these companies and says, “This …”

“Take Wessex Water in my constituency. In its latest business plan, it says it has committed £3.65 billion—a lot of which will go on investment to upgrade its infrastructure. Who is actually on the ground making sure that Wessex Water does what it has committed to doing? Again, you are monitoring the situation and I app…”

“Do you feel that Ofwat has the necessary powers to hold those big water companies to account, in terms of them actually investing in the infrastructure that they own when they say they are going to do so?”

“To be clear, I believe you just stated that you monitor what the big water companies do in relation to investing in their infrastructure. But you are not the inspectorate, so you do not have any formal powers to actually say, “You said you were going to invest this amount of money in this infrastructure by this time, a…”

“To start with a simple question, which one of you, as it stands, is actually responsible for ensuring that water companies deliver what they have agreed to do, particularly in relation to their infrastructure? When they make a commitment to invest x amount of money in x amount of infrastructure, how do we make sure tha…”

“Do you accept that many water companies, including the largest water company in the country, are in a very difficult financial position and that that could be a significant concern for the industry in the next five to 25 years, and indeed also for the taxpayer, should they have to step in to help those ailing companies…”

“One thing that is quite striking in the NAO Report is that whether we are looking at broken or burst pipes, at pollution and sewage spills or at leaks and the amount of water being wasted in that way, there has not been a significant improvement in performance over the last decade or so. As a starting point, why do you…”

“Figure 6 in the Report says that there was a 10.6% reduction over the last six years, which is not a huge change, to be honest. That is from an incredibly high point, as well. Many MPs here will have had endless emails from constituents about leaks.”

“To be clear—”

“Those were very helpful answers. Obviously, I agree that the demand for water, climate change and public trust are big issues. To build on the Chair’s point, is financial resilience not also jointly a serious concern? What explanation can you give the Committee to reassure us that the financial resilience of all the wa…”

“I have a very simple question. When we, as parliamentarians, look at the water sector in this country, the number of deeply rooted challenges is often quite overwhelming. In a nutshell, what is the single biggest challenge facing the water industry over the next 25 years? Are we in a fit state to even begin to address …”

“To return to the exchanges at the top of the session, I found it quite striking, David, that given the challenges you set out as facing the water regulators and industry, you felt the industry’s financial resilience was not of severe concern. Could you go into a bit more detail? Do you not share the concerns of many pa…”

“I welcome the Bill that the Secretary of State introduced this evening. It has the potential to transform public transport for communities across the country, especially in South Dorset. In towns and villages across my constituency, passengers—or indeed, would-be passengers—rely on buses to go about their daily lives. …”

“I completely agree with my hon. Friend’s overview. The new bus services that councils look to put in place must link people with services such as GP appointments. With that in mind, I hope that the new powers granted to local authorities such as Dorset council under the Bill will enable them to franchise their bus serv…”

“I am happy to support my hon. Friend’s campaign, and I will be meeting him shortly to discuss how I can best do so. Given that Bournemouth is the airport nearest to my constituency, my constituents would certainly benefit from that bus connection. I am desperate for the Bill’s reforms to be introduced as rapidly as pos…”

“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stuart, and I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Colne Valley (Paul Davies) for securing this important debate. Over the last few years, too many patients living with Parkinson’s disease have sadly been left facing unacceptable waits to be diagnosed and treated; th…”

“That certainly would be the case in my patch. If you were able to provide any further information, that would be very helpful. To move on, the big question is why you find it so difficult to retain work coaches. How are we going to address some of those challenges where we have the biggest shortfall of coaches, such as…”

“To build on the line of questioning that Chris was pursuing, one thing I found quite difficult to understand when going through the Report was, when you look at areas where there is a serious shortfall in the number of coaches, it often is only at quite a large level. We are unable to go down to that granular level. Co…”