Speeches by Bool.

“I am not quite sure, actually. If you are going to be aligning, we are going to lose power.”

“I appreciate that it is a letter, but a letter is not good enough in this day and age. It was taken off X as well. The post from the Government got taken down, so there is still more to do. On the SPS, I know that you are saying it is a very good agreement, but it now means that we will be subject to the European Court…”

“I pay tribute to that powerful contribution from the hon. Member for Knowsley (Anneliese Midgley). Our thoughts and prayers are with Liv’s family in the Gallery. I truly welcome the provision of better information for victims of crime. It is essential that victims are at the heart of justice. As Baroness Newlove has sa…”

“I am grateful to speak in this debate, and I will focus on three amendments: new clause 9 and amendments 51 and 38. To save time, so that other Members can speak, I will not take interventions. New clause 9, which is in my name, would essentially establish the standard of proof—namely, the degree of certainty and the a…”

“What time frame are you working to?”

“Is that your aim?”

“Just in terms of the gearing feature, you mentioned earlier that you think actually you are at around about 88%. I know that Ofwat always says that a company over 70% is in distress, so what is the target gearing figure that you are ultimately aiming for?”

“If you do actually go down this element of the senior creditors wanting to do this debt for equity swaps and if, as you said, that is a real possibility, are you happy about a distressed debt specialist taking ownership of a regulated water company?”

“Yes, because I understand that some other offers that were put forward were actually asking about significant credit haircuts, and then they were obviously talking about a debt for equity swap. Had you discussed that with Ofwat or the other regulators at this time?”

“If all that goes wrong and does not go to plan, what is the back-up and the timing for that, then?”

“Ofwat recommended that all this time you should basically continue talking to the other parties that had come in, along with KKR. Why did you not do that?”

“Looking forward on all this, I understand that you have this emergency loan for liquidity, but obviously you need to sort out the long term because it is clearly very complicated for everyone to manage. I understood that Thames Water hoped to secure new ownership by June: are you on track for that?”

“In mid-March, in my role as a vice chair of the EU-UK Parliamentary Partnership Assembly, I formed part of the delegation that headed out to Brussels for the assembly meeting ahead of the 19 May summit meeting. While it was a convivial affair, I came away with great concerns about the tone of the conversations and cont…”

“Again, you are cutting a bit too close and too fine to time for this. We cannot keep saying as an excuse that you are having other discussions. The market needs to know.”

“When will that come into place? Time is of the essence.”

“What is the feeling amongst the other Departments? You must have a feel or a steer at this moment in time as to whether it is likely or not. I know you may not want to commit outright.”

“You have the EU meetings on 19 May, then there will be further discussions. What is happening?”

“They have said that they have had no communication, and July is only eight weeks away. Are you going to postpone it again or not? It is fair to say that now you should know, and they deserve to have that certainty.”

“I just really wanted to make a push on that, because it is actually very unnerving that, eight weeks out, we do not know for definite. Everything you have said is, “We think”, or, “We believe”. You either have to make a decision now or postpone it again. You have had long enough. You have postponed it since January; it…”

“Perhaps you can report back to us and tell us if you see it.”