The hon. Gentleman indicated that he is looking forward to serving on the Bill Committee, so we can discuss the matter further there. I refer him to the Select Committee’s report. The estimate of the first decade of competition in Scotland is that it will save the public sector £100 million. I think that the Department has produced figures for the savings in England, but the key point is that competition must be introduced properly.
Clearly, a range of important issues will require greater scrutiny and debate in Committee. The Bill is contentious not because of what it proposes—after all, the coalition has taken three and a half years to introduce measures that Labour developed in government—but because of what it does not deal with. It contains nothing on helping households struggling to pay their bills, nothing to make water companies pay their fair share of taxes, nothing to give the regulator real teeth to take on the fat cats, and nothing on reforming water abstraction.
I can assure the House that we will table amendments in Committee that will help households, give the regulators new powers, tackle tax avoidance and protect our natural environment. In conclusion, we will work constructively with the Government, and in that spirit, we will vote the Bill on Second Reading.
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