Water Industry (Financial Assistance) Bill

I am happy to say that we will not vote against the Bill. If the hon. Gentleman waits, I will come on to some of the wider affordability issues and will, I hope, answer some of his questions on the wider issues. The next unanswered question is: why are we debating the Bill now? We know that the Government ran out of meaningful new legislative business about two months ago, and the House has been surviving on thin rations—a meagre diet of one-line-Whip business and Back-Bench business debates, valuable though they are. There was no new Government legislation, but suddenly—boom!—out of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, a Department whose Ministers are the embodiment of clout, grip and competence, spurted a sudden, short water Bill, born of the realisation that if the Department has lost its slot in May's Queen's Speech, it had better deliver on the Chancellor's promises to the south-west and his coalition partners. That happened just six short weeks before the end of one of the longest parliamentary Sessions ever held. Clearly, such a masterstroke of parliamentary planning and timing could have been confected only by the Department that brought us the forest sell-off. Labour in government corrected many of the injustices of water privatisation. As I said, in 2000 we banned water companies from cutting off the water supply of homes, schools and hospitals for non-payment. It is extraordinary to think that legislators would allow provisions that let hospitals—care-givers and providers of sanitation—be cut off for non-payment of bills. We allowed for compulsory metering in areas of scarcity, and a more muscular Ofwat, holding the water companies to account, has emerged in recent years.