Water Industry (Financial Assistance) Bill

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. The Bill offers opportunities for other parts of the country in that if the Secretary of State felt subsequently that measures should be put in place to look after the interests of water bill payers—or sewage bill payers—in other regions, the Bill would allow them to do that. That is very welcome to all parties. Let me return to my point about privatisation in the south-west. I do not have the figures to hand about whether much of a receipt was realised at the time, but, clearly, the liabilities companies were being asked to take on were quite high. I suspect that some income was coming into the Treasury at the time of privatisation and a small ““green dowry””, as it was called, was provided to the south-west to deal with the recognised cost of clearing up the woeful underinvestment in sewage treatment around a very long peninsula. If a fairer assessment of the real picture had been undertaken at that time, bill payers in the south-west could have been spared a great deal of hardship. It is worth putting on the record that more account could have been taken of the situation at the time. Rather than everything being rushed through, there could have been a better deal at that point that more fairly reflected the burden being placed on my constituents and those of other hon. Members in Devon and Cornwall. Members from other parts of the country have said to me, ““Well, you live in that wonderful part of the world and have that coastline. You enjoy it, so you've got to pay for it.”” They should try saying that to a young person living with their family in the ward in which I live and in which I spent the early part of my life, St Mary's ward in Bodmin, which is one of the most deprived wards in the south-west. I would venture to suggest that a young person growing up in that ward might well spend far less time on the beaches of Cornwall than people from other constituencies who come down and visit, or than those who are fortunate enough to own a second home in my constituency that is very close to the beach. My hon. Friend the Member for St Ives (Andrew George) has already discussed the costs sometimes involved in connecting water and sewerage systems to isolated and remote properties, which may be unoccupied and have low water bills because they are on meters. Those costs are borne by people living inland, on the peninsula, who probably do not get the benefit of going to the coast very often.