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Water Industry (Financial Assistance) Bill

Clearly, I am delighted that the Bill has been introduced. I would have liked to have seen it some time ago and I am very pleased that the coalition Government have responded to the call from people in the south-west for a measure of support towards the incredibly high costs that they pay for their water—or, more accurately, for the disposal of their sewage, as that is what we are talking about. We talk about water bills, and as a generic term I suppose that is fair enough, but in reality we are talking about the cost of dealing with sewage. As we heard from the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Mr Slaughter), that is clearly an issue in other parts of the country, too. This is very much a Bill of two parts and I shall not seek to comment on the question of what is required in London, other than to say that I sympathise with London MPs who see the costs that their constituents will pay in the future. Whatever scheme we use, and, clearly, the hon. Gentleman thinks that this is the right scheme, there will be greater costs for their water—or sewage—bill payers. From a south-west perceptive—that is, from a Cornish and Devonian perspective—people have been paying these bills for a long time, as we have heard. They are not worried about the future; they have been dealing with this problem since privatisation and, as we have heard, it goes back to the way in which the water industry was privatised. My speech is somewhat timely. I shall not seek to comment in detail on the inquest that has just reopened in Taunton, but we need to remember just how controversial the process of privatisation and how it was undertaken were. The water poisoning incident at Lowermoor in my constituency still concerns people today and I shall follow with interest the outcome of the inquest into the death of Mrs Cross and the question of whether information was withheld from people as privatisation was introduced.