I will come on to that point in just one moment. As my hon. Friend the Member for South Shields mentioned, the latest figures show that more than 80,000 households have sought advice from citizens advice bureaux about water bill debts in the past year, which is almost exactly the same as the figure for how many sought help because they could not pay their energy bills.
The hon. Gentleman asks what the previous Government did. As we have heard today, we took decisive action to help families. We were the only Government to have forced a real-term cut in a price review. He joined the House in 2005, which is interesting because it was the previous price review in which there was a real-term cut. The previous Government introduced WaterSure—the first social tariff scheme.