Water Industry (Financial Assistance) Bill

In my area, a large number of households run bed-and-breakfast facilities, guest houses and other businesses, and they are businesses for the purposes of South West Water's billing structure. However, there are also many wealthy second home owners who have water meters and pay virtually nothing towards the very expensive costs of getting water to their properties, which are often very remote—on cliffs and so on—and taking away their sewage. Often, they let their properties at very expensive prices and make a lot of money, but they are not considered to be businesses and so they will get the benefit of the reduction of £50 per household. That clear and evident unfairness is one of many, but I shall not bore the House with a raft of examples regarding this issue of how households should be defined. If we are addressing issues of vulnerability and affordability amongst water rate payers, we need to be very careful how we define households. The £50 per household reduction is a rather blunt instrument. Yes, it is efficient and it means that the administrative costs will, one hopes, be less than would have been the case with a more elegant and sophisticated measure for targeting vulnerable households. However, because of the problems with adopting a WaterSure system across the south-west and because of the evident unwillingness of water rate payers in the south-west to make any further contribution to a scheme that would benefit vulnerable households, it is unlikely that those households will be able to benefit from any application of a regionally based WaterSure system. I therefore urge my hon. Friend the Minister to look again at whether we can resurrect any form of a national WaterSure system. Clearly, we will go back to South West Water and talk to it again about how it might address the issue of particularly vulnerable households. A number of matters need to be addressed and I am sorry that I have not addressed those concerning London, but I know they will be addressed by many other people. I look forward to hearing my hon. Friend's reply and his responses to the questions that have been raised.