The hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Thomas Docherty) has proposed a number of new clauses, which I shall address before dealing with the lead new clause 3, tabled by the Select Committee Chairman.
New clause 7 would place a requirement on the Government to introduce through secondary legislation what is described as “a National Affordability Scheme”. The details of the scheme are not entirely clear. We debated in Committee an identical clause tabled by the hon. Gentleman, but at that point, the funding was not made clear. He said today that it would be funded specifically from the profits of the water companies rather than from other bill payers in a cross-subsidy approach.