Speeches by Kirkham.

“In Cornwall, we do not have big urban centres; we have towns with populations of about 20,000. That is why the UK town of culture competition is one that a large rural area such as Cornwall can get involved in. I am taking it as a good example of the Government’s commitment to, and awareness of, the rural parts of the …”

“I agree that communities must have a say, but they must also benefit, and that is one of the things that the Government will ensure. Another type of security is food security. We had a very difficult decade under the Conservatives. Brexit caused real problems at the border, which our sanitary and phytosanitary EU agree…”

“That is the problem, isn’t it—some of them just won’t be able to.”

“You said there were 5,000 customers who were vulnerable on this list, so how many of those had to wait more than 12 hours for that water supply?”

“Did they have to apply to go on that, or was that people on social tariffs? How did you check that people were not left off that?”

“I was coming on to the vulnerable households and how you identified them. Did they have to come to you? How did you work out who was vulnerable and needed that delivery?”

“So the council had to do it. How long did that take?”

“How long did it take for the first walk-in water station within Tunbridge Wells to be opened?”

“Good morning and thank you for coming. I used to live in Tunbridge Wells, in a previous life, so I know the area a little bit, from a long time ago. The borough council told us that it took a day for the bottled-water station to be opened, and that it was in Tonbridge, which is a different town and quite difficult to g…”

“Tonbridge is not Tunbridge Wells though, is it?”

“Henry has covered pretty much all that I wanted to ask. There is just one small thing about the weaknesses in the supply chain. I was reading about the availability of sodium hypochlorite to disinfect drinking water. Do you see the availability of these things in the supply chain as a weakness? Do you think that needs …”

“My last question is about the statutory compensation. Now, I may have got this wrong. I was reading the papers earlier, and they said that on 8 December—so after the incident—some of those customers were offered a £50 advance credit. Do you think that is sufficient, given the impact of the outage?”

“It could be considered almost a national security issue, then.”

“But you ended up having to use the fire service because you did not have capacity?”

“So it would be a bit more complicated than that. Thank you.”

“Could they have used that money, for example, to travel to a bottled water station or would it just have been a credit on their bill?”

“It sounds like they did not get water for a period of time, because some of those things could only have happened if they had not had water.”

“What happened to the dialysis centre?”

“We have read about some really quite sad situations—people struggling with dialysis, dialysis not working and medical interventions needed because people were unable to receive dialysis. Incontinent people with bowel cancer were left struggling without water. Some of those care homes, the dialysis centre, the doctors, …”

“Had that happened in Tunbridge Wells?”