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Water Supply

My Lords, I will come to the point about reservoirs in a moment. On the latter point, since privatisation water companies have invested £55 billion from their profits. There is no competition between companies in terms of supply through pipes to the customer, but the water regulator could say to them that their profit distribution would be restricted if they did not perform well, and that money would be diverted, in the public interest, to investment in the infrastructure. That is a very seductive point and I have made it many times in the past, wearing other hats, as I have talked about the rip-off merchants and so on. But the fact is that the water companies have invested £55 billion since privatisation. Wearing one of my previous hats, that is one reason why we are bringing in water charges in Northern Ireland—so that we can get proper investment. There is no water charge there, so there is no income stream. The water companies have plans for five new reservoirs in the south-east of England and three extended reservoirs to be built between 2008 and 2020. The plans are public knowledge but planning permission has not been obtained and that will all be some way down the road. My noble friend is right that we need to save more water but reservoirs are not purely the answer. The mere fact that reservoirs exist means that water is removed from the environment, so we need to do lots of other things to make better use of our water resources.