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Water and Sewerage (South-west)

My hon. Friend is making an excellent case, and I congratulate him on securing the debate and on all the work that he has done in the past. The scale of the figures that he is talking about shows the size of the investment that bill payers are being asked to make. That is the crucial point. If the Government cannot help with the lump sum because its scale in the current circumstances is so high, that shows what is being asked of ordinary bill payers in the south-west and, indeed, what has been asked of them during the past 20 years since the botched privatisation.