(Urgent Question): Will the Secretary of State for the Environment make a statement following the disruption of water supplies throughout the area served by South East Water during the spring recess?

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for asking this question. I will update the House on the water supply disruption in Kent, and I want to begin by expressing my sympathy for those affected by the disruption. Being without water is distressing at any time, but particularly during a period of hot weather, alongside school revision and examinations. This is now the third major outage affecting South East Water customers in recent months, and it is simply not acceptable. South East Water reported that thousands of customers were impacted by supply disruptions over the course of the incident, and I am pleased that normal water supply has now been restored. I met the interim chair and senior operational staff twice during the course of the incident, including on Sunday, and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs team met them daily to hold them to account for the incident and to request that they set out by the end of this week how they will compensate customers. Water supply disruption causes significant cost to businesses and impacts the most vulnerable in society. I have heard of a 100-year-old lady without water, and a care home in Cranbrook using wet wipes to keep their residents clean. This is simply unacceptable, and the company must take urgent action. I thank all those working in the Kent local resilience forum, the local authorities, the health and social care partners, and civil servants in the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government and DEFRA for their hard work to support those affected. I am also grateful to operational staff and volunteers who worked on the ground to restore supplies and provide alternative water. A reliable supply of clean water is one of the foundations of a healthy, functioning society. The situation demands further bold action to deliver fundamental long-term reform, and that is why we are delivering whole-scale reform to the water sector. Through our clean water Bill, we will create a new single, powerful regulator, giving us for the first time a clear system-wide view of company performance and the tools to intervene more quickly when companies fall short. We will put consumers first by introducing a water ombudsman, ensuring that customers have a stronger voice and clearer routes to redress. We have already passed the Water (Special Measures) Act 2025, which introduced the toughest sentencing powers ever applied to lawbreaking water company executives, and introduced powers to ban unjustified bonuses. It is vital that South East Water and all water companies deliver on improvements to their infrastructure, but most of all, they must continue to improve their ability to maintain water supplies to their customers, whatever the weather.

I thank the Minister for her obvious and genuine concern, and for the measures that she has sought to take. I join her in thanking the very many organisations that have sought to help us through this problem, and I include in that the employees on the ground at South East Water. Mr Speaker, you know that thousands of people in Herne Bay in my constituency and thousands more in Whitstable, in the constituency represented by the hon. Member for Canterbury (Rosie Duffield), were left without water during the four hottest days of the year so far. That is totally inexcusable and totally unacceptable. Not only were households disrupted, but at the very time when they should have been having a glorious start to their season, guest houses, hotels, restaurants and pubs were shut, care homes had frightful problems, and a doctor’s surgery lost consultations, because they did not have water. There is no quick fix. The Broad Oak reservoir should have been built 50 years ago. It will take 10 years if we start tomorrow, but we have to try to make sure that in the coming months, because there will be more hot weather, this does not happen for a fifth time across Kent. Finally, I do believe that the water companies face a very real problem in the regulations as they stand. They are required by law to connect every new house to a supply, but they are not consultees in planning applications—we have to correct that. They have to be given a voice because they cannot spirit water out of thin air.

I share the right hon. Gentleman’s outrage at the situation. He is quite right to say that one of the answers is the reservoir, which will take a long time to build, but this is not just about the reservoir. It is also about desalination plants, and the need for more urgent action to tackle leakage; too much water is lost through leakage. Across Government, we are looking at building standards for new homes and at how we can make homes more water-efficient, because this is a big problem. I hope that I can offer the right hon. Gentleman some reassurance by telling him that the National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority has been doing some mapping to identify areas of the country that have more acute water shortage problems and what we need to resolve them. I asked the company, “What are the actions you can take now?” There is no excuse for poor communication; that is something it can fix overnight. It can also improve its relationship with the local resilience forum. That does not cost any money. It can look at its bulk supply deal with Southern Water—that is another action it can take. It can accelerate its work on leakage reduction—that is another action it can take. Fundamentally, though, the right hon. Gentleman is quite right: the answer is building reservoirs and having greater water storage across our country. Quite frankly, I think it is that we have a situation where we complain about the drought all through the summer and complain about the rain all through the winter, yet have no way of storing that water. I am urgently trying to change that.

I remind everybody that this urgent question is about South East Water, not other water companies. I am sure that all questions will be linked to that subject.

Like many of my constituents, I have lost all faith in South East Water after its repeated failures to deliver adequate standards for customers in my constituency and across Kent. The latest incident left around 4,000 of my constituents having to cope for days with no water entirely, an intermittent supply or low water pressure. South East Water’s failure to invest in infrastructure means that I have no confidence that it will be able to provide a basic standard of service. Moreover, it kept in place the hosepipe ban until February, and there was no preparedness for the coming hot weather, so there is a lack of understanding by the senior leadership within that organisation. What practical measures can the Government take to ensure that we will not suffer in the coming summer months?

I share my hon. Friend’s outrage at the situation. He has been a fantastic champion for his constituents in raising this matter with me a number of times. On the immediate action that South East Water can take, we have said to the company that it needs to be prepared for future hot weather during the summer. What is its resilience plan, what actions will it take and where can it identify immediate actions to take? The longer-term solution is greater water storage. Fundamentally, this company is a water-only company. It has one job—that is all—and that job is to supply water, and it is, quite frankly, astonishing that it is failing to do that at the moment. My hon. Friend will be aware that South East Water is under investigation by Ofwat and the Drinking Water Inspectorate as to whether, because of its recent credit downgrade, its licence conditions have been broken—so serious actions are being taken against the company. I will, of course, update the House as soon as I hear more about the actions it will be taking in the immediate short term. I should also say that the CEO has offered his resignation and the chair has already resigned. There is an interim chair, and the CEO is currently there while the organisation looks to replace him.

I call the shadow Minister.

Thank you, Mr Speaker, for granting this urgent question from my right hon. Friend the Member for Herne Bay and Sandwich (Sir Roger Gale). I thank the Minister for her approach and engagement on this vital issue. It is deeply regrettable that we are here yet again with unacceptable outages from South East Water following the events back in December and January. The shortage of water supply in Kent in these hot conditions has had a terrible impact on local communities: homes have been without water supply; schools and businesses have been impacted; farmers and horse owners, again, feared not having enough water for their livestock; and local residents have lost confidence in their water supply and are switching to bottled water. That is simply outrageous. These repeated failures from South East Water are simply not good enough. We have heard repeated accounts about poor communication and logistics from South East Water, including difficulties in accessibility to collect bottled water, compromising vulnerable residents. Can the Minister please provide guidance on what is being done to ensure that, moving forward, people can reliably access adequate supply, particularly vulnerable households? What is being done to ensure that vital healthcare delivery can continue uninterrupted? In these hot conditions, what measures can be put in place so that farmers and horse owners have enough water for their livestock? What meetings has the Minister had with South East Water, Ofwat, the Drinking Water Inspectorate, local resilience fora and affected councils since this latest disruption? We have seen resignations at the top of South East Water, but we are yet to see any change in performance. What enforcement action is being considered against South East Water if it is found again to have failed its statutory duties? What investment has South East Water committed to improve resilience in Kent, Sussex and other areas, and how will Ministers ensure that it is delivered? Do the Government accept that repeated water outages are unacceptable, and what steps will Ministers take to support people in South East Water’s area so that they do not face yet another period of interrupted supply?

Access to water for livestock was raised with me after the last outage—I think by the hon. Member and the hon. Member for East Grinstead and Uckfield (Mims Davies). This time, South East Water did make deliveries of alternative water to farms across the region during the incident—or that is what I have been informed, but if there is intelligence otherwise, I am keen to learn about that and to understand. South East Water has said that it continues to monitor farms in at-risk areas. The issue of vulnerable customers continues to be a challenge. I have been talking to the Cabinet Office about whether there are ways to share more accurate information and data. The water companies say that it is challenging to keep a priority register up to date because people sometimes fall in and out of being classified as “vulnerable”. For example, a lady who is pregnant is classified as being vulnerable and needing water, but after she has had the baby, she is no longer classified as vulnerable in the same way. We need to ensure that we can maintain accurate records of who is vulnerable and in need of additional water, so I am having conversations with the Cabinet Office about whether there are ways of sharing data, while bearing in mind the sensitivities and complications of sharing information. I ask all colleagues to encourage their constituents to self-identify through the priority services register if they are classified as “vulnerable”, so that they can access water as they expect. I met the interim chair of South East Water, and we had a productive conversation. She is keen to reset relationships, and she wants to meet MPs who represent constituencies in the area and talk to them. She is committed to rebuilding the relationship with the local resilience forum and looking at how the company can improve communications. To be fair to her, she has been in post for only a few weeks, so this incident has happened very early in her interim chairship, but there are things that we can work on and build on. There are things that the company can do now around communications and I am concerned by what the hon. Gentleman says about accessibility problems at drinking-water stations. The hon. Gentleman asked about who I have met. I have met the new interim chair and the senior people involved. I regularly meet the Drinking Water Inspectorate and Ofwat. There are currently live investigations into the company following the last incident and those will continue.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for the way that she has approached this incident, particularly for pointing out that South East Water has one job. Unfortunately, the company is accountable to its shareholders more than to the people who it is supposed to serve. Notwithstanding the reforms to the water industry that the Government have already put in place, may I make a suggestion for the future? Rather than simply fining these companies when they fail so catastrophically, we should take stocks in the company to the value of the amount of the fine to be held by a locally convened water board, so that residents have some form of control and accountability for the decisions that are made. Otherwise, we are relying on extractive capitalism and that will destroy our water supply.

My hon. Friend makes a powerful point. As the White Paper set out: “Where a water company might want to transition to a new ownership model, such as a not-for-profit, the regulator will develop a transparent process to assess whether a water company’s requested move to a new model should go ahead”. We are looking at developing a transparent process, if that is something that the water company might want to consider. My hon. Friend is absolutely right about increasing the customer voice. On day one when this Government came to power we announced new consumer boards for water companies. The Consumer Council for Water has covered the entire country, gathering together different people for customer panels. It has already held a customer panel in the South East Water area, so that customers can hold water company bosses to account—it works very much like a Select Committee hearing. I will share the report from that panel with the House. It is interesting that the No. 1 issue that came up for the water company to tackle was the lack of adequate communication. That does not require millions or billions of pounds spent on a reservoir—it just requires competence.

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

Leaving thousands of South East Water customers without access to drinking water has become a pattern of neglect, enabled by a water system that fails to hold water companies accountable for their actions. Whether it is environmental disruption or consistent water disruption, this situation is simply unacceptable, but the Government’s timid reforms do not rise to the scale of the challenge. We do not need more tinkering—we need a total structural overhaul. Given the repeated failures in water supply and sewage pollution in the South East Water area and across the country, will the Minister back Liberal Democrat proposals for a mutually owned public benefit model for water companies, focusing investment on the environment, customers and infrastructure, rather than on lining the pockets of the bosses of water companies such as South East Water?

South East Water is a water only company, not a sewage company, so we can criticise it for many things, but sewage pollution is not one of them. When the Government came to power we introduced customer panels on day one, and since then we have secured £104 billion of private investment, passed the Water (Special Measures) Act 2025 and given the Environment Agency more powers to monitor water companies and uncover wrongdoing. In fact, the EA has done more than 10,000 inspections of water companies and uncovered 81 examples that have gone on to criminal investigations. I gently point out to the hon. Lady that under the coalition Government funding for the EA was cut by more than a half. We have also introduced criminal liability for water companies, introduced automatic penalties, reduced the burden of proof, introduced cost recovery, banned the sale and supply of wet wipes, looked at reforming our bathing waters, established the water delivery taskforce and have abolished Ofwat. Yes, there is more work to do on top of that, but I stand proud on the record of the actions that we have already taken following years of inaction.

I thank the right hon. Member for Herne Bay and Sandwich (Sir Roger Gale) for securing the urgent question. The disruption caused by this incident has been extremely distressing for my constituents on the Sussex-Kent border who are served by South East Water. Many residents and businesses were impacted, and it is right that the chief executive and the chairman of South East Water have resigned. I urge the Government to look at the terms of the company’s licence and whether they have been breached. We are here in the Chamber again discussing another major water outage—as the Minister knows, there have been two major outages in my patch—and we see the same mistakes and failures repeated time and again by the water companies. The Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee looked at the issue and found that the water companies need to have clear plans of action in place, including for providing water stations in the right places, such as those that people can get to without a car, and they need to think about the impact on businesses and maybe deliver water to them to keep them open. All of those things are forgotten every time, so will the Minister instruct all water companies in the country to have detailed emergency response plans in place for every constituency in the country and ask that they work with local MPs on them? We are the people who can get the contact details for the local headteachers and vicars, as I had to last Christmas eve, who can set up water stations, but the water companies need to do the planning before disaster strikes and people lose water. I urge the Minister to look at such measures.

South East Water has broken its licence conditions, and it is currently in breach of its licence. It has been downgraded by Moody’s credit rating agency because of its performance—I think it is the first time that a credit rating agency has downgraded a water company over performance rather than insolvency. Its licence is also being investigated by Ofwat under the consumer duty because of the supply outages in December and January. My hon. Friend asked about emergency response plans. Water companies should absolutely have emergency response plans, but clearly the plans that South East Water has are inadequate. That is why we want to work with the local resilience forum, the water company and officials from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to ensure that those plans are improved before we have another short spell of hot weather.

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his thoughtful question. The water companies have a statutory duty to provide wholesome water. In the event that they cannot do that, they must include provisions of alternative water supplies, as set out in the Security and Emergency Measures (Water and Sewerage Undertakers and Water Supply Licensees) Direction 2022, so they have that statutory duty to plan and prepare. The right hon. Gentleman’s suggestion is a helpful one, and I would want South East Water to work with the LRF on this issue. In this case, it was just a water supply issue, but often when we have incidents that take out water supply—such as flooding, potentially—there is more than one issue, so it is important that companies work really closely with local resilience forums. I can commit to contacting the company and the local resilience forum to ensure they have those plans in place, and also recommend that they speak to the local Members of Parliament about those plans, to ensure that they are felt to be satisfactory.

And the councillors, of course, through the local resilience forum; they need to make sure they are ready for what may be another hot summer.

Constituents of mine have been really worried and concerned by seeing residents of Herne Bay and Whitstable along the coast deprived of their essential water supplies. It should not have come as a shock; we know that there was 15% extra usage of water during the heatwave the other week, but local farmers were telling me in March and April that water supplies in the swales on Sheppey were really low. We have more investment coming, but it is really chalk and cheese in my area and in Swale, where we have Southern Water and South East Water. South East Water is absolutely dreadful, whereas on Sheppey—which is particularly vulnerable to water supply issues—we have a new water main coming, £4 million-worth of investment, and a massive new drainage system. The difference between those two companies is obvious, so will the Minister tell me how we cannot just increase the amount of investment going into the water system, but deliver it at pace, and how we can end the postcode lottery of whether people get water or do not just because of the management of these firms?

On the issue of farmers and water supply, I am keen to make it much easier for farmers to set up on-farm reservoirs. I have heard repeatedly from farmers that they find that difficult, so I want to make it as simple as possible. I have spoken to too many farmers who tell me about their frustrations, particularly in the Suffolk area; they say, “All winter, we send all the water out into the sea, and then all summer, we wish we had it back.” I want to do something about that. Every single water company has been told to produce a drought emergency plan ready for the summer, to make sure we are prepared. As for making sure the companies deliver what they promise, one of the things we did through the Water (Special Measures) Act was ensure that if they do not deliver what they promise, the money they have taken to deliver it must be refunded to customers. That money has been ringfenced, and the Water Delivery Taskforce tracks all of the major projects to make sure they are on track and on budget. If they are not, we as a Government intervene to understand why, and to assess what can be done to bring those projects back on track. My hon. Friend is quite right that someone who lives in a certain area should not suffer a much poorer service than they would receive if they lived somewhere else. That is why we want to get a better grip on the delivery of projects, and also make it easier for people to hold on to water during the winter, to make sure they have it during the summer.

I thank the Minister, who has been engaged on this issue for a long time—she talks to me and my neighbours, and I know she really cares. My neighbours and I spend far too much of our time talking about the latest water shortages. Heat seems to equate to a lack of water in the taps. Whitstable has been devastated yet again, and we are really worried about too many new houses whose demand for water will not be met, as well as about local businesses in the summer. The excellent Nomad Pizza, an independent company, had to close for days during a peak time for tourism. By the way, lots of my constituents are very behind the nationalisation model; I get a lot of emails about that. With our reservoir 10 years away from being built, how can I assure my constituents that the tanks will not still be empty in July and August? If they are, businesses will suffer.

That pizza business sounds great, and definitely worth a visit in summer. The hon. Lady is right; when I spoke to South East Water again on Sunday evening, I asked, “What immediate measures can you put in place over this summer to make sure we have enough water supply?” I have had some really productive conversations with the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government about how we build homes that use less water—what we can do through building standards to build homes in a different way, so that they do not have to use the same amount of water. That happens all over the world; it is not beyond our grasp as a Government to do. Fundamentally, we are going to need to build the reservoirs. We are going to need the desalination plants and those big sources of water, but as I have mentioned before, one of the more immediate things that South East Water could do is tackle the leaks. At the moment, too much water is going into the ground and being wasted.

Residents in Dartford, like those across Kent, are experiencing poor service and increased bills—including residents in Ebbsfleet, who have to pay an additional sum for waste water to flow from their community into the Thames. That is charged for by the Port of London Authority; it is called dewatering, and it is incredibly unfair to those residents. They ask me continually why it is acceptable for this poor performance to occur and for water executives to continue to pay themselves large bonuses. What work is going on to tighten the regulations so that reward matches performance?

I totally agree with my hon. Friend. As I have mentioned before, I do not have an issue with bonuses per se; I just think they should be linked to how well people do their jobs. We have banned unfair bonuses through the Water (Special Measures) Act, but some companies have attempted to exploit loopholes so that they can continue to award them. We are determined to close those loopholes.

We have had a few days of hot weather, and yet again we have had water outages in my constituency and across Kent, on top of what we saw earlier this year and last year. Residents, businesses and livestock owners are frustrated, but they are also really worried, because getting water is the most basic thing in this country. It is right that the chief executive and chair of South East Water have gone; my anger with them was particularly about their response and how they have handled these outages. However, there is a longer-term problem with water infrastructure and supply that will not be fixed overnight. In my constituency, 20,000 more houses are in the pipeline for the next few years, and thousands more in the surrounding area. Is there enough water for those thousands of additional houses in rural Kent?

The hon. Lady raises an important point—I remember how powerfully she described the impact on her constituents and businesses when we were last in the Chamber talking about South East Water, so I know this is something she cares deeply about. As I have said, one of the things we are doing through the Water Delivery Taskforce is identifying areas of the country where there are more acute water shortages, and therefore what actions can be taken to ensure that people have the homes to live in that they need, and businesses have the water they need, without having a detrimental impact on the residents who already live in those areas. South East Water, in particular, is reliant on a bulk supply agreement with Southern Water. That is one of the things I am keen to look into the details of, to make sure that that can be guaranteed, whatever circumstances Southern Water finds itself in. There are various other actions we can take; I have mentioned businesses, building standards and the way we build homes. In Cambridge, they have looked at retrofitting some homes to make them use less water. There are various other rules and regulations on businesses’ use of water—at the moment, we have a slightly bizarre situation where businesses have to use potable water. They are not able to use other types of water, and it seems a bit crazy that we are wasting drinking water on things that are not drinking or for domestic customers. We are looking at a whole spread of different actions to make sure that we have the water we need; the nine new reservoirs, the desalination plants and all those things are brilliant, but they are not going to be in place this summer or next summer, so we are looking at what more immediate actions we can take.

Order. I will gently say that the question was about South East Water. The Minister has opened it up by mentioning other water companies, but it would be more helpful if we could concentrate on the theme. I am going to test that by calling Clive Efford; I think his constituency is covered by Thames Water, but I am sure that he will link his question in.

Absolutely, Mr Speaker: my question is about South East Water, because what we have here is a company that fell over at the first short period of hot weather. We have to wonder what planning has gone on in that company, given that it fell over so quickly in the season. When are we going to call time on these water companies? The consistent failure that we see from them, while they extract enormous profits from the industry, has to come to an end at some stage. I know that my hon. Friend is as frustrated with these water companies as the rest of us, but there must come a time when we say to them, “Enough is enough”, and take control of them for the public good.

As I have highlighted, the White Paper talks about companies that wish to move to alternative ownership models, but I will briefly touch on special administration for breaching statutory duties. Under section 37 of the Water Industry Act 1991, a water company has a duty to supply water within its area of appointment. A serious breach of these principal duties or of an enforcement order can be grounds for a performance special administration regime, if that breach is so serious that it is no longer appropriate for the company to continue to hold its instrument of appointment.

I absolutely despair of South East Water. As we have heard from Members who represent Kent constituencies, South East Water cannot cope with large water outages; but nor can it cope with small water outages. In my constituency, the village of Staplefield has just gone through 30 hours without water, without bottled water being supplied and without good information—indeed, there was even some misinformation. I understand that trying to fix decades of neglect of water infrastructure will take a long time, but in the Minister’s next meetings with executives at South East Water, will she ask to look at their communication plans so that people can know what is happening, get timely information and get the bottled water they need, since outages seem to be par for the course these days?

The hon. Lady is absolutely right. One of the issues that we discussed in the conversation on Sunday was communication, including about where to put bottled water stations. I was told that during this incident, South East Water had worked more closely with the local resilience forum to listen to its advice about where to place those stations. If that is not her experience, I would be keen to hear about that, so that I can take that back to the company. South East Water has an interim chair, who I know is keen to build new relationships with Members of Parliament—she has assured me that she will be meeting MPs. I urge Members collectively to raise this issue of communication and where bottled water stations are directly with the interim chair, so that we can have them in the right place. Fundamentally, Members of Parliament and councillors probably know and understand their areas far better than a water company does.

I thank the right hon. Member for Herne Bay and Sandwich (Sir Roger Gale) for securing this urgent question, and I thank the Minister for her approach to this difficult and appalling issue in Kent. Can she update the House a little bit more on the work to get meaningful compensation for the affected residents and businesses? In the longer term, what is she doing to improve the system of compensation? Many of my residents who had a water outage had to wait a long time for money to be paid back.

One of the first things we did when we came into government was to look at the guaranteed standards scheme. We have introduced increased compensation payments and new standards. Previously, compensation was not being paid when people were under a boil notice, but this Government have introduced that, along with doubling compensation for failings such as supply interruptions, low pressure and sewer flooding. Because of those changes, customers should for the first time be receiving payments for boil notices. We have told water companies to make compensation available to people as soon as possible. We are clear that customers come first. They are the people I care about, and they are the people for whom I am the Water Minister. We will also look at introducing a water ombudsman. In the conversation I had with South East Water on Sunday, I asked it to identify by the end of the week what compensation will be paid to who, and when, and I will be following up on that.

As the Minister is looking into the situation with South East Water, can I also feed back what happened last week, when parts of Weybridge had restrictions on water supply? Although we are supplied by Affinity Water, I think the problem is broader than just our area. Will she urgently review the resilience and availability of water supply, and in particular the impact that new house building will have on supply over the coming years?

On resilience, one of the things that we want to introduce for the first time is asset standards for water company assets. At the moment, those do not exist; there is no rule or criterion for the standard to which water companies need to maintain their water treatment work, waste water treatment work or pipes, or for how much leakage is acceptable. With the new regulator, we want to introduce those asset standards, which say that companies have to maintain their assets to a certain standard. That should help change things and basically build against what we have seen—admittedly not on this occasion; on this occasion, the company ran out of water—in other cases where infrastructure falls over because it is not adequately maintained and looked after. That is why the no-notice inspections matter; with those MOT-style inspections, as I refer to them, people from the Environment Agency can go in with no notice, check the assets, mark the water company on them and then give it an enforcement notice to say that it has to improve its assets up to a certain standard. The situation will not be fixed overnight, but having that goal for where we need to get to will help to prevent infrastructure from falling over because it is not properly looked after.

South East Water is one of a number of privatised water companies that are responsible for selling off 35 reservoirs since 2017, and those companies have not built a single one since privatisation that is complete. We understand that this Government are committed to a regulatory approach to dealing with this issue, but that is akin to putting a complaints box on the Titanic. It is a nice idea, but I do not think it will work. Ultimately, private water companies’ first priority is private shareholders—many of them overseas—who do not give a damn about our constituents. This situation will keep happening until water is put back under public control, in public hands, and owned by the public.

I know how passionately my hon. Friend cares about this issue, and I genuinely pay tribute to him for championing this issue and for the work he has done in Parliament to bring people together. As I have mentioned, the White Paper talks about setting up a transparent process to look at whether a company should transition to a different model, including a not-for-profit, if that was what it wished to do.

Mr Speaker, as an Essex MP, may I endorse your lovely tribute at PMQs to Sir Alan Haselhurst? He will be much missed, even though he did achieve a respectable innings of 88 years in his time on this earth. I strongly endorse the suggestion of my right hon. Friend from across the Thames, the Member for Herne Bay and Sandwich (Sir Roger Gale), about making water companies statutory consultees for planning applications. When there is an application for a large number of houses, the implications can be severe not just for fresh water, but for foul water and in particular for sewage. In my constituency, our sewage capacity is very nearly maxed out, and the implications of getting that wrong are frighteningly obvious. I can see that the Minister is helpfully nodding. Can we please change the law to make water companies statutory consultees, so that they can give expert advice on whether new planning proposals are feasible in reality?

The right hon. Gentleman is right to point out the consequences of getting it wrong. Just to reassure him, we are looking at using tools such as the water delivery taskforce where we have shortages, to see what we can do. That is for not just water, but waste water capacity too, because both are crucial. We want to see homes being built—people want somewhere to live, and first-time buyers in particular are finding it incredibly difficult—but we are taking a sensible approach. We are identifying where we have shortages in waste water or water to see what we can do to address the amount available, as well as what can be done to reduce demand in that area, including retrofitting, building standards and various other measures.

The Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee has extensively investigated South East Water; what I found particularly shocking was the fact that so many warnings and concerns were raised but were simply ignored. Despite a high risk of water supply failure, the lack of preparedness was plain to see. Will the regulatory reforms that the Government are looking at have real consequences when those concerns are raised, but are ignored by the water companies?

I thank my hon. Friend and all members of the EFRA Committee for their excellent report, which was forensic in looking into the failures of South East Water. It was a brilliant, useful document. He is right that tough consequences are needed if concerns are raised and ignored; that cannot be allowed to continue to happen. That is exactly why we want to create a new regulator with strong powers and teeth to be able to take action. It is also why we are looking at introducing this performance improvement regime for water companies so that, if we identify failure in a water company, the regulator has proper oversight to turn that company around and make it improve, with consequences if it does not.

I thank the Minister for her praise of the EFRA Committee’s report. I speak as a member of that Committee; we are doing extensive work on the water industry and we are following this matter carefully. As has been said, the key issue with the South East Water disruption was the lack of communication, something that applied equally to Anglian Water with the outage that occurred at exactly the same time in South Northamptonshire. I was not told about the outage, and residents report not knowing what was going on for 12 or 24 hours, and the water delivery was inconsistent. What more can the Government do to send a clear message to the water companies that this lack of communication is not acceptable?

I thank the hon. Lady for her work on the EFRA Committee. She is entirely right: it is unacceptable. I feel that I am a fair-minded person. I know that water companies cannot control the weather, and I know that they cannot build a reservoir overnight. However, they certainly can contact their Members of Parliament, contact their councils, get in touch with their local resilience forums and make sure that they communicate with their customers, as an absolute bare minimum, and that is exactly the conversation that I will be having with each and every one of them.

Alongside the failures in the south-east, during the recent heatwave there was a widespread disruption of water supply across swathes of my constituency, in Buntingford, Cottered, Ardeley and Throcking. In a country as wet as ours it should take a true organising genius to create disruptions in water supply, but we are on track for a water deficit of 6 billion litres in our country in the coming decades, and on top of that, AI data centres estimate that water consumption will reach up to half a trillion cubic metres every year. Does the Minister—whom I deeply respect—accept that if we are to prevent water supply disruptions from recurring year in year out, we cannot continue to have infinite increases in demand on our already vastly overstretched water resources?

My hon. Friend is right. It is astonishing that although, owing to climate change, we will experience wetter and wetter winters and drier and drier summers, we have no capacity to store water in the winter and use it in the summer. That seems to me to be absolute nonsense. As for the issue of data centres, there is one possibility that I am keen to look into, and I touched on it in an earlier answer. Under the current legislation, water that is supplied by a water company must be of drinking-water standard. It strikes me as logical and sensible to say, “If water is being used for cooling purposes rather than for drinking purposes in people’s homes, could it not be of a different standard? Why does it need to be of drinking-water quality?” Where, for instance, we want to use water for data centres, for growth, why do we not—in a closed-loop system—use waste water? We have some legislation that has been drafted for the right purposes and sounds great—of course, a water company must produce water of drinking-water standard—but does it need to be of drinking-water standard if it is being used to cool machinery?

South East Water has openly and publicly admitted that it cannot supply drinking water for all the future homes that are planned for Kent. What is the Minister’s response to that specific concern, and is she having conversations with her colleagues in the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government?

The short answer is yes. The previous chief executive of South East Water—or rather the current chief executive, who has not gone yet—met members of the water delivery taskforce a few weeks ago, with some of the councillors from the area, to discuss exactly that issue of how both water supply and housing demands can be met. I sit on the taskforce along with representatives of the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, so we are all having the conversation together about how we build the homes that are needed without having an impact on the people already living in the area, yet also ensuring that new homes have the water that they require. We have been assessing what is likely to happen over the next five, 10 or 15 years. What are the various water supplies that will be coming in? What impact will that have on house building? How can homes be built to a more water-efficient design? Those conversations are happening now, across Government. We need to achieve the right balance between ensuring that everyone has a home to live in and, at the same time, preventing a water crisis?