In a Westminster Hall Debate on government support for Thames Water, I highlighted the company’s shocking mismanagement and its impact on people living in Clapham & Brixton Hill. During my time as an MP, hardly a year has passed without major water outages affecting our constituency, whilst the quantities of sewage unleashed into our waterways has only increased. Yet in this period, rather than ploughing money back into the system to fix these problems, water companies have given shareholders payout after payout.

Sewage leaks into our waterways because privatisation has enabled water companies to leak billions into shareholders’ pockets.  As Thames Water teeters on the brink of financial collapse, the public cannot seriously be expected to pour more money down this drain. Equally, selling our water off to profit-greedy American corporations (the company’s current preference) would be a disaster: a recipe for higher bills and more sewage in our rivers, lakes and seas. We must take water back into public ownership to make it accountable to service users and ensure the money we spend on water is recycled back into the system we rely on.