Water Industry (Financial Assistance) Bill

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Cornwall has been at the bottom of the earnings league table pretty much since records began. It has significantly higher water bills than anywhere else in the country, high levels of unemployment in some parts, as well as dependants on benefit, pensioner households and so on, and if we add to that the low average incomes across the households in the area, it is inevitable that in many households people will pay more than 3% of their income to meet their water bills. As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said earlier, the problem is partly caused by a lower level of infrastructure at the time of privatisation in the early '90s and by the fact that the south-west has been significantly more burdened by the costs of the bathing water directive than any other region in the country. I have drawn the same parallel as others. The bathing waters around the Cornish and south-west coast are a national asset yet only 3% of the population must pay for the cost of cleaning up. The cost is very expensive, because many outfalls must all be dealt with very expensively, which is the primary cause of the excessive bills across the south-west. The general populace enjoy other national assets, such as the museums and galleries of London, and it is the general taxpayer who pays for them. We do not ask just London taxpayers to pay for the National Gallery, the British Museum and the other museums—we, as a country, contribute and that is an important parallel. There has been a long-standing campaign and the Anna Walker review was rather belated but at least welcome and took us a long way down that road. I congratulate the previous Government for that and pay tribute, as other hon. Members have, to Linda Gilroy, a former Member of this House who contributed a great deal towards advancing the case for fairness in the billing of water customers, particularly in the south-west. I also congratulate the hon. Member for Plymouth, Moor View (Alison Seabeck) for calling a debate on 14 June 2010, which can be found at column 710 of Hansard, and my hon. Friend the Member for Torbay (Mr Sanders) for doing so on 9 March 2011. There are issues that need to be addressed. To sum up—I am aware that I have taken as much time as the previous speakers—I hope the Minister will address my questions. Clause 1(3) concerns the discretion of the Secretary of State in determining which customers within any particular water company area might benefit from the intervention of the Secretary of State to vary the bills or make a contribution, and my question, which relates back to the announcement of the payment of £50 per household in last year's autumn statement, concerns how a household will be defined.