UK PARLIAMENT · SITTING

Dame Meg Hillier

MP for Hackney South and Shoreditch · Labour (Co-op) · United Kingdom

IN THEIR OWN WORDS

“The hon. Gentleman anticipates a further area of my speech. I believe very firmly in devolution, but there are some caveats. That is something that we may consider.”
House of Commons28 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

“Overall, I think we must see cross-party support for the approach to support households in these challenging international times, when a lot of the things that buffet the Government are very difficult for them to control. We must support small businesses. Quite rightly, we all are lobbied a lot by our small businesses.”
House of Commons28 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

“As the hon. Gentleman rightly highlights, I have not had time in the moments since the Chancellor sat down to go through every graph in the Red Book or, indeed, the OBR’s forecast. Obviously, the Chancellor laid out the figures very clearly at the Dispatch Box, and we will be raising these issues in the Committee.”
House of Commons28 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

“I look to the reputation of my predecessor in this role, who took her job very seriously but would still make a point. It would be very difficult for me to stand up and, from the Government Back Benches, not react to those in the Conservative party who crashed the economy in 2022 and left a lot of the mess that we are now dealing with.”
House of Commons28 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

“Yesterday, I was with the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions in my constituency of Hackney South and Shoreditch. We met with Scope, which is doing amazing work with disabled people. Some 72% of the recent cohort supported into work were still in work 26 weeks later—people who had been written off by the system.”
House of Commons28 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

“The right hon. Member for North West Essex (Mrs Badenoch) needs to have a tough look at the reputation of her Government. She talks about welfare and she talks about defence, but it was her Government who crashed the economy.”
House of Commons28 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

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“That sounds like an absolutely wonderful policy, and a lot of people lobby for it, but the reality is that it squeezes the funding of our higher education institutions, so that they have no option but to find overseas students who will pay more. We have seen an element of that in England, but the problem is exacerbated in Scotland because of the proposals of the Scottish Government.”
House of Commons25 April 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“At the time, Brexit was widely expected, and the Scottish Government’s expert advisory group discussed a possible fall in net migration to Scotland of between 30% and 50%, but so far the opposite has happened, as it has in the rest of the UK. Net international migration to Scotland in 2022-23 was an estimated 48,000, according to the most recent figures from National Records of Scotland. That is about four times the pre-pandemic average of 12,000. In January 2025, the Scottish Government said that the recent increase in net migration to Scotland could be largely explained by international students, but might not be sustained when restrictions introduced by the last Government feed through. There is an important point there about the education system. We have seen the Scottish Government introduce free tuition.”
House of Commons25 April 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“My hon. Friend took the words out of my mouth; he says it better than I could. Let me turn for a moment to what the SNP-led Scottish Government wish to deliver. In 2020—I think this was referred to—they published a paper arguing for some devolution of immigration policy to Scotland. I remember well before then, when I was a Minister, having discussions about that and—I would not normally be so crass—slapping down the idea that there could be a separate immigration policy for Scotland. The paper argued that Scotland was more reliant on migration than other parts of the UK, and noted that the population of Scotland would be falling if it were not for migration from the rest of the UK and overseas. An Opposition day debate on a motion condemning the UK Government’s response to that paper took place on 11 February 2020.”
House of Commons25 April 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“A new Government—a new broom coming in next May in Scotland—who understand these issues, are able and willing to get their head around how to tackle them, and are willing to work with Government in Whitehall, will deliver for the young people of Scotland and for the Scottish economy.”
House of Commons25 April 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I have absolute confidence and faith that my Scottish Labour colleagues will have done the maths, will know where the money will come from, and will have looked at the matter in the round, and will be more willing to work with Whitehall on these issues. We will no doubt discuss with the Secretary of State for Scotland, the Home Secretary and others in Government, as necessary, how they will ensure that everything matches up, because that is right. Scottish Labour will invest in young people—something that the SNP has a woeful record on. That investment includes putting people through the right skilled routes, so that we have the skills that are needed in Scotland. My point is that under the SNP, the Scottish Government have this immigration policy that they have promoted hard, but they have never dealt with its consequences.”
House of Commons25 April 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“That is exactly the point. The hon. Member for Arbroath and Broughty Ferry puts great faith in Committee stages. I have been here a long time, and they are not always as good as people say that they will be. Even if there was a Committee stage, there are so many other elements. That is one of the challenges with a Bill that is simply one line long. There are issues and knock-on effects for not just the Home Office, but all the other cross-UK institutions. I spent more than a decade on the Public Accounts Committee, and I know that if we pull a lever somewhere in Whitehall, unintended consequences flow into places we would never have thought of. The skill in government is to try to work that out, and a Bill like this would not deliver that necessary joined-up approach.”
House of Commons25 April 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The Government are not against foreign students coming here—that is important—but we need to strike a balance, so that there are enough places for the young people in Scotland and across the UK who want to attend Scottish universities, and who are perhaps being squeezed out by the imbalance and the cost of going.”
House of Commons25 April 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“My hon. Friend has hit the nail on the head. I absolutely take what the hon. Member for Arbroath and Broughty Ferry highlighted. As I said, there are really challenging issues with the demographics in the Scottish population. We all need to put our shoulder to the wheel to deal with those things, rather than saying, “If only the SNP Scottish Government were in charge of immigration, it would all be fine.” This Bill is a gimmick, and the hon. Gentleman knows that it will not work. I will touch on the higher education figures. In the last two years, we have seen the number of home Scottish students drop. In 2021-22, the figure was just over 183,000, and it has dropped to just shy of 174,000. The number of non-UK students has gone down in the past couple of years, but it is nevertheless a significant number at 73,915.”
House of Commons25 April 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Applicants would need to have graduated from a Scottish institution—we have already seen an interesting divide on that—to have lived in Scotland for an “appropriate amount of time”, and would have to intend to live and work in Scotland. The visa would be linked to a Scottish tax code, which we have heard a lot about today.”
House of Commons25 April 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“My hon. Friend is right. We have seen the pain and challenges caused by Brexit for academic movement. Knowledge has no boundaries or borders, but there is a danger of the Bill not recognising that. Let me turn to the Scottish National party’s proposal for a Scottish graduate visa. Overseas students in the UK can get a two-year graduate visa. That is an extension available to those who complete their degree in the UK, allowing them to stay on and work without sponsorship for two years—or three if they are PhD graduates. The SNP Scottish Government have proposed an additional Scottish graduate visa that would be available to those on UK graduate visas. It would allow them to stay for another two years.”
House of Commons25 April 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“As ever, my hon. Friend talks enormous sense. Let us talk through the practicalities of the proposal that I have just outlined. A person graduating from a Scottish university would be able to stay on and work in Scotland without sponsorship for four years in total. To remind the House, that means two years on a UK graduate visa—or three for a PhD—followed by two years on a Scottish graduate visa.”
House of Commons25 April 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“They could not possibly work through the system on their own without professional advice, which is costly. That is discriminatory, really. They find it very difficult. The more complication we add, the harder it will be.”
House of Commons25 April 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“On the tax code, I have spent quite a lot of time considering how our tax system works, and every time a Chancellor of any party stands up at the Dispatch Box to announce something, it adds complexity to the tax system, which can be very confusing for people. One of the last things that we wanted to do in the previous Labour Government, but which was too complicated to deliver in time, was codify all immigration law into one Bill—but, boy, was that a big task. It is the sort of thing that a Government would need to start at the beginning of a 15-year Government. Perhaps I should suggest it to the Home Secretary, because I am sure that this Government have the prospect of seeing it through. People come to my constituency surgery—and to those of many other Members, I am sure—to ask for information about their immigration status.”
House of Commons25 April 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I hope that I am beginning to explain how some of these interactions— [ Laughter. ] I am only just beginning. [Hon. Members: “More!”] I fear I might be cut off, which is a great shame, because I had really looked forward to going into this in more detail. If the person completed undergraduate and postgraduate in Scotland, they would qualify for permanent residence simply by having been in the country. We might want to support that, but we ought to debate, it rather than sleepwalking into the challenges of having two systems set up for different purposes. That would be confusing for the individual and for the businesses employing them, as they might not know whether visas were needed. It would be very complicated.”
House of Commons25 April 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I am proud to represent a constituency that shows tolerance to people from all backgrounds, unlike the political hot potato the issue has become in this place and in political dialogue. I have a constituent who transitioned in the 1970s. She has used female toilets for more of her life than any other toilets. Are we saying that her dignity and the respect the Minister talked about will be in any way improved if there is a ban on her using the toilets she has been using for so many years?”
House of Commons22 April 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I applaud my right hon. Friend for his decisive action in this matter. I have only had a chance to read the Bill for 10 minutes— [ Interruption. ] That is not a criticism; it is the natural procedure of this House. The Bill could not be laid until First Reading. The Bill talks about compensation. He has made the point that he is not planning to take over and run British Steel, which is not the desirable option, but has he done some sort of impact assessment on the potential range of costs to the taxpayer in these circumstances?”
House of Commons12 April 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Since the spring statement the world has been rocked by the announcements by President Trump on tariffs last week. It is an event as significant as the financial crisis of 2008, or perhaps as covid, and in those instances the state unleashed everything it could to try to resolve those issues. Is the Chancellor considering changing any of her rules to ensure that everything that the state can throw at this problem is being done?”
House of Commons8 April 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“There is a real housing crisis in Hackney, where we spend £54 million a year on temporary accommodation. I visit families, most of them working families, in tragically overcrowded accommodation. We need this social housing as quickly as possible, and I know my right hon. Friend is putting her shoulder to the wheel. Will she visit Hackney to see the work that the council has been doing to build properly affordable social rented council housing? The council could do so much more with more Government support.”
House of Commons7 April 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I commend my hon. Friend not just on this report, but on her strong leadership of the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee. In the report, the Committee describe the very real lives of the 3,770 children from my borough who are in temporary accommodation. That is enough to fill eight primary schools. There are other impacts, too. She talked about what the Government are doing, and the report mentions the report that is expected in July. Can she give the House any indication of when that report will come, and what will her Committee do to follow up on it?”
House of Commons3 April 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“This situation was left by the previous Government, who did not deal with it for 14 years. Then we have Porton Down. In 2017, it was going to be moved and rebuilt. Again, the facility deals with some of the most difficult scientific issues; there could be catastrophic effects if it was not there to deal with them. What has happened? There has been no movement at all. Again, it has fallen to this Government to spend something. Around £700 million had been spent, but nothing had been achieved. This Government have picked up the pieces.”
House of Commons28 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The list also includes the fact that we have not yet in this country decommissioned a single nuclear submarine, which is not just a monetary cost. It needs to be done, but we are finding it hard to bring submarines into port to repair them. It has been left for decades, and has now fallen to this Government to resolve. I gather that the first one is now being decommissioned—thanks, again, to a Labour Government being in power. We have real problems at the animal health centre in Weybridge, where we do not have space to deal with two zoonotic diseases at the same time. To deal with these difficult diseases, the centre has special facilities so that no contaminants can escape. If we were hit by two zoonotic diseases in this country, we would be in a catastrophic situation.”
House of Commons28 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“However, all this costs money. We have roads, railways, the water industry, schools and hospitals all in dire need. We need that money to go into the NHS to reduce waiting lists, which have reduced for five months in a row. We are seeing those waiting lists go down. Constituents of mine were in desperate straits—anyone who had a bit of money was paying privately to have their hip replaced. The constituents I visited who did not have that kind of money were on a long, slow waiting list while their health deteriorated, unable to work or go about their lives. We have to see this issue in the context of all the money that needs to be spent. A year ago, I produced a list of what I call the big nasties. I have highlighted some of them.”
House of Commons28 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“A spoke is only about £1.50, but getting a wheel trued—I am not expert enough to do that myself—costs a lot of money. These are issues that are actually hitting the pockets of our constituents. It is not about me; many people have these problems. I have had the opportunity to spend a lot of time in Northamptonshire, and I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough and Rushden (Gen Kitchen), who has fought a tough campaign against potholes in her constituency, underlining how poorly the council has managed its roads. She has done excellent work to highlight the problems and to challenge and look at the council’s contracts, and that has led to the Government’s announcement in just the last week about investing in potholes—they have taken her blueprint from Wellingborough and are applying it to the country.”
House of Commons28 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“His Bill suggests that on the second occasion, the state would take the company’s assets and run it, but the taxpayer would still pick up an enormous bill for that. It is important to reflect on the context that we find ourselves in today, whether we are talking about investment in water, our railways, the 700,000 pupils in schools not fit for purpose, or in our crumbling hospitals—including the 40 built with reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete, which I visited during the last Parliament. Those will be unfit for purpose within the next five years and need money to be invested in them. We need to invest money in our roads. It is great that the Government are putting money into potholes—that is a start. However, we know that we need more than that. I cycle, and potholes cause me enormous grief. I am constantly breaking a spoke.”
House of Commons28 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Nobody could say that he does not believe passionately in what he is talking about today. He is right to shine a light on the failures of the water industry—the profits that people are making while organisations such as Surfers Against Sewage have to deal with the very real issue of paddling through sewage. I am trying to be polite. We have to go right back in time to see why the system was set up. The water companies were privatised to avoid taxpayer investment and to get the private sector to pay. That of course meant the need for dividends, and we have seen how that has worked. My hon. Friend talked about the last chance saloon—“Two strikes and you’re out”—for the water companies.”
House of Commons28 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich South (Clive Lewis) on introducing the Bill. Whatever my position on its detail and on the history of what has happened with our water industry, we would all agree on how important it is to have a proper debate about water. Unlike many of the Members present today, I have the privilege of having served in the previous Parliament, during which water and sewage discharge were constant topics of conversation. It is absolutely right that we talk about that and that we act. I am now proud to be in the party of a Government who have begun to act on the big challenges facing us when it comes to water. I congratulate my hon. Friend, too, on the enormous passion that he brings to all the issues that he cares about.”
House of Commons28 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“In that case, it was because of criminal activity by a fraudster. Their life savings have gone. The people who have invested and bought those shares, often very humble families who have worked hard all their lives, need some compensation. A student debating society might be tempted to say, “Let’s take it all back, and forget about the impact,” but we cannot forget about the impact, because it often falls on low-paid, hard-working people who are taxpayers too—they would end up paying a double whammy.”
House of Commons28 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I thank my hon. Friend for that point. I hear his passion and his helpful iteration of those historic examples. However, I would also say that we need to be clear about who the shareholders are—very often, they are our pension funds. Pension fund trustees have a fiduciary duty to ensure they are maximising the income for those pensioners. If that does not happen, we know that, effectively, the taxpayer picks up the tab. A reality of privatisation was a drive to have a shareholder society. We can argue about whether that was the right or wrong thing to do, and I think we would probably agree in many respects on that. However, that is the reality of the situation now. Earlier today, before the House was sitting, I was on a call about constituents who had lost money in an investment and are in a desperate situation.”
House of Commons28 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“She has been elected, which is a privilege as we all know, to represent her constituents in this place, yet months after her election, she wants to pass responsibility for this big, difficult decision to a citizens’ jury, rather than taking responsibility for that decision as an elected MP.”
House of Commons28 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“It is the same with water companies—it is not as easy as saying, “One day it’s private, and the next day it’s national. No problem at all.” The upheaval would be immense, so we need a measured plan, and I think this Government have begun to develop that plan, for all the reasons I will outline. I will talk a little about what the Government will do to improve the situation, and then I will talk about the Bill, but I want first to touch on the comments of the hon. Member for Bristol Central (Carla Denyer). I am very interested in her passionate commitment to citizens’ juries.”
House of Commons28 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I spent a decade examining the work of Whitehall, and there are some excellent civil servants in this country who have done amazing work—many of the civil servants who did not do such amazing work appeared before the Public Accounts Committee—but finding somebody overnight with the technical and management expertise to run a major water company is a challenge. To take the corollary, I am passionate about seeing insourced services in our hospitals, but after having intense conversations with executives at my local hospital, I know that, when the public sector has not done something for many years, it takes a very long time to build up the expertise. Let us take catering. If hospitals do not cater well, they could kill patients, so they need to make sure they have the management structure in place to deliver those skills.”
House of Commons28 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Water bills are therefore a significant issue, which is another reason why I am delighted to be here today, supported by colleagues of all parties who want to talk about the challenges of water. On the face of it, the argument for nationalisation sounds appealing to many, but there is a cost—and it is not a hidden cost: to those who bought shares in good faith, to those pension funds that are investing, and in the upheaval of turning around these companies. Where would we get the people to run a nationalised water company? It is likely to be the same executives, if they would take the pay cut. There is not a wealth of expertise.”
House of Commons28 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“A number of constituents who are very worried about their water bills have written to me just in the last fortnight. When we talk about money in this place, we sometimes talk about millions or billions of pounds, but £100 a month is a great deal of money for many of my constituents. To set that in context, I have a number of fantastic street markets in my constituency—ones where people can buy fruit and veg, and clothes and underwear at a reasonable price—and I also have the lovely Broadway market, where sourdough bread costs about £5 a loaf. I have constituents who do not have £5 left at the end of the week, let alone at the end of the month—those are the margins that people are working with.”
House of Commons28 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“It seems there are an awful lot of mind readers in the Chamber today, because the hon. Gentleman anticipates my comments. I am proud to be a Labour and Co-operative Member, so I have thoughts on how, one day, we may be able to move to that nirvana of co-ownership. We have seen too often that dividends and bonuses are paid without investment in infrastructure, which is where my hon. Friend and I would agree. We have a privatisation model that was supposed to deliver investment on the back of people investing in shares. In return for getting a dividend, there would also be an investment, but we have not seen enough of that. Of course, under Ofwat rules, water customers bear a share of the cost. In Hackney, under Thames Water, which has been a poster company for the problems in this sector, bills are going up by more than a third.”
House of Commons28 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“My point is clear. Just as, many years ago, a certain Mr Ratner famously talked about the price of a prawn sandwich in Marks & Spencer and the price of earrings in his store, people do not want to be on the board of Marks & Spencer to get a decent prawn sandwich; they just want to be able to buy a decent prawn sandwich, and while my political foundations are in devolution, neighbourhood structures, working and listening to people, ultimately we must responsibility ourselves. I am looking at clause 4, as the hon. Lady highlighted. I have been around for many years, but one of the challenges about citizens’ juries is that while we can have this engagement, they are lengthy and costly, and we know that not everybody attends the whole time. How would we select people? There are many challenges in setting them up.”
House of Commons28 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Well, in my experience of 20 years in the House, this system has been used once, and that was in 2019, by a selection of Select Committees, not by the Government of the day. I am aware that the first debates about citizens’ juries were 30 or so years ago, and there are many challenges to delivering them.”
House of Commons28 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Absolutely. I think we would all agree that we talk all the time to constituents, whether on doorsteps or at public meetings and other forums, because that is our job. I say to constituents every week when I am on their doorsteps, “I am here because I need your expertise. I can’t do my job without you.” But it is a cumbersome task to be on a citizens’ assembly as it requires people to devote a great deal of time, and only a certain subset of society has the time to do that. Many of my constituents are working three or four jobs and struggling to survive. They do not have the time to do that, but their voices need to be heard, too.”
House of Commons28 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Subsection (1) says: “Within four months of being established under subsection (3), the Commission on Water must establish a Citizens’ Assembly on Water Ownership…to…consider different models of water ownership, and…make recommendations for reforms to water ownership and governance.””
House of Commons28 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I will be careful not to try your patience, Madam Deputy Speaker. We could have an endless debate about the difference between selecting people through the sortition process—I am well aware of how that works—and how our electoral system works, but, in the end, we face our electorate, and they can reject us. Many colleagues have been sacked on television at 4 o’clock in the morning because the electorate rejected them or their party. There is no same power over a citizen’s assembly. Let us be clear. Perhaps I should talk in a bit more detail about clause 4 of the Bill as proposed.”
House of Commons28 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“We can all go out to our constituencies and do roundtables, knock on doors and ask people what they have to say about water. However, I think that most of us have had quite a strong indication about that from our constituents, in our mailboxes and from our time on doorsteps—I have not got into all the issues in the waterways in Hackney, which are utterly appalling in relation to sewage discharge. We need to make sure that we have that public consultation.”
House of Commons28 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“That is one of the challenges: we can set up this lengthy and expensive process and then it does not necessarily hold any sway. I was going through the provisions in clause 4, and as we get into the details of the citizens’ assembly, I sense that there is an appetite to discuss that. Perhaps I can continue my remarks before I take any further interventions, or we will be here all day—but I suppose that that is what today is for. The commission would support the work of the citizens’ assembly. Clause 4(2) states that “the Commission on Water must undertake a public consultation on water ownership in which all individuals who use water and sewerage services in England and Wales can participate.” Hallelujah to that—to a strong, well-founded public consultation!”
House of Commons28 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I do not think there is doubt about the problem; the issue is about the solution. We should absolutely have a big public consultation, but that is to inform the work of the citizens’ assembly. Clause 4(3) states that the citizens’ assembly must “be composed of a randomly selected representative sample of users of water and sewerage services in England and Wales, and…consider any matters which the Commission refers to it in relation to water ownership.” I want to be clear that that will be a randomly selected representative sample of users, and the Bill is silent on the model. I appreciate what the hon. Member for North Herefordshire (Ellie Chowns) highlighted—that there is a science to doing this—but the Bill is silent on how it would be done.”
House of Commons28 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I urge the hon. Lady to listen to what I say. I did not say that I had people saying overwhelmingly that they wanted public ownership—certainly not. They are saying that there is a problem, and saying, “You lot are in government. You need to sort it out.” Over the last 20 years that I have been in this place, and particularly in the last Parliament, there has been endless discussion about how to resolve this situation, and stasis in the Government. We now have a Government who have acted to begin to tackle some of these huge challenges. I give real credit to the Minister, who has engaged massively with Members across the House on this. She is absolutely aware of the issues, partly because many of us across the House have lobbied her, because our constituents have lobbied us.”
House of Commons28 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“It was the Green-run council that provided £36 million of public money to pay for that vanity project, and in the end taxpayers in Brighton and Hove were left £51 million out of pocket and Brighton and Hove council were left to pay £2 million a year for the foreseeable future. I do not think we need to take any lectures from the Green party about how to manage public money, because when they have been in power, they cannot do it. No wonder they want to pass responsibility over to a citizens’ jury rather than take responsibility themselves. I have been diverted, but I think it was useful. Before I move on to my next point, I will take one more diversion.”
House of Commons28 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Member for North Herefordshire has highlighted from her constituency is necessarily what would apply—let alone the challenges that other hon. Members have raised. Turning to the hon. Member for Bristol Central, I would be surprised that a member of her party is so willing to pass responsibility over, but then I look at what happened in Brighton when the Greens controlled Brighton council. I will put aside the rubbish collection issue and the infighting and look at the issue with the i360—the tower that is now a tourist attraction. The company behind it went bust with over £50 million of debt.”
House of Commons28 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I think my hon. Friend makes some important points. We have seen from citizens’ juries, including in Ireland, which has a well-worn route for using these for their referenda, that people do drop out and do not always attend, because life gets in the way. That is why we are elected: to make hard decisions and defend difficult issues. We cannot make the world like the land of milk and honey—certainly not after the inheritance we received from the last Government after 14 years of mismanagement. We have very big challenges and we need to tackle them. It would put heavy pressure on citizens’ juries to do that. The key point here is that, whatever the best practice, the Bill does not go into the detail of it, so we cannot assume that the good practice that the hon.”
House of Commons28 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“On a hot, sunny day on Hackney Marshes—sadly no longer in my constituency after the boundary changes —people can be seen swimming in the river, and that is not a place they should be swimming. It is one of the most polluted rivers in the country, but it should be a blue lung for east Londoners. We need to get this problem tackled.”
House of Commons28 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“If that is not bad enough, it is almost double the figure from 2022, when sewage was discharged into the River Lea for 5,891 hours. It has been getting worse. We have been raising this issue in the House, and in the last Parliament not enough happened to tackle it. Now, thank goodness, we have a Labour Government who are beginning to act and make sure that water companies are taken into account. The water quality of the Lea has had a damning assessment: an overall classification of bad, failing on chemical standards and bad ecological health. It is a tragedy that we worked so hard to get our waterways cleaned up during the run-up to the 2012 Olympics, which was a major boost to east London, but we now have bad ecological health.”
House of Commons28 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Madam Deputy Speaker, I do not want to try your patience, so I will move on from the Green party, because the subject of the debate is the Water Bill that my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich South has put forward. I want to talk about the challenges that we are seeing in water. Nobody would argue that there is not a problem we are having to deal with. I take the example of my wonderful constituency of Hackney South and Shoreditch and the amazing resource that is the River Lea. It runs through my constituency, starting further up beyond London. We do not have the figures for 2024 yet, but in 2023 there were 1,060 instances of sewage discharge into the River Lea. That amounted to 11,502 hours of sewage discharge from storm overflows.”
House of Commons28 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Friend the Member for Norwich South, who introduced the Bill today, that the commission will be the platform for discussions about the future. Tempting as it may be for him to want to get his Bill passed today, it would not deliver in the timeframe that he would want it to, as that would take a while. Let us take a measured stand and look closely at the independent commission—as I have warned my hon. Friend the Minister, I will be watching it very closely and asking questions about it—because we need to see that overview from every angle. Sir Jon Cunliffe is an independent individual who will be very tough with the Government on this issue.”
House of Commons28 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

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