Speeches by Olney.

“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir John. I congratulate the hon. Member for Hertford and Stortford (Josh Dean) on his work to secure this debate and his excellent opening remarks. The decline of high street services has been an ongoing issue in the UK, with banks and other essential services disappe…”

“I cannot remember whether it was you or Mr Walters who said earlier that close to 50% of customers are now on the PSR. However, in the event of an outage, how can you use the PSR to identify those people most immediately in urgent need? I am thinking of somebody on a dialysis machine or something like that, who would u…”

“The same question to Chris: given the way the PSR is structured, with the needs codes, are you confident that in the event of an outage—you have had quite a bit of experience of those recently—the right people are getting the right support at the right time?”

“What are you doing to ensure that you have consistent application of PSR across energy companies?”

“Tim, I want to ask you some similar questions about how the PSRs work in the energy sector. What lessons has Ofgem learned about operating the PSRs?”

“That’s interesting, but do you find that Ofgem’s advice to energy companies around the PSR is focused on vulnerability in the event of an outage?”

“Will there be penalties if you think that they are not doing enough?”

“In your earlier answer, you said that only one in three customers who were in arrears were on a repayment plan, and that, where customers are on a repayment plan, their arrears are lower. What are you doing to work with the water companies to make sure that more people get on to those repayment plans, and does the regu…”

“Are you expecting further significant rises this year?”

“I will stick with you, Chris. I have a few questions about the priority services register. We know from the Report that there are 30 “needs codes” describing characteristics that would “make a customer eligible” to go on the register. What lessons have you learned about the PSR process on customers with extra communica…”

“Chris, I was interested to see in the Report that Ofwat has not been monitoring for very long at all the amount that customers owe to water companies—only since 2023-24. Yet by 2025, customer debt to water companies totalled £2.9 billion, which is an extremely significant sum. Just over 4 million household accounts wer…”

“Specifically the use of AI, or how they are responding more broadly?”

“My question was about what causes customers to get into debt with their water companies.”

“I am here; I came in at the right time. From the cases you encounter, Ali, what are the most prominent barriers that consumers in vulnerable circumstances face when they are engaging with water, energy and broadband services?”

“Anne, what do you think the regulators can do to encourage the utilities to bring down barriers for their vulnerable customers?”

“So there is no water-specific reason?”

“Can I give a particular example of an incident that we heard about in our pre-panel. I am sure that I need not remind you that a big water outage occurred in Tunbridge Wells before Christmas. We heard about water companies delivering water, presumably in large plastic bottles, to people in vulnerable situations and on …”

“Sorry to interrupt you, but you mentioned earlier that you have issued guidance to water companies about PSRs. Does that particular example highlighted to us go against the guidance that you have issued?”

“T4. One in 50 Londoners, including one in 21 children, are homeless and living in temporary accommodation. London boroughs are spending £5 million a day on temporary accommodation. Although housing costs have skyrocketed in the past 15 years, the temporary accommodation subsidy gap has remained frozen since 2011. Some …”

“In this place, we have recently changed the voting system for metropolitan mayors. Can the Minister comment on whether the voting system for the London Mayor will be changed before the 2028 London mayoral election?”