Shrewsbury MP demands urgent action on UK’s water industry
Urgent action to transform and improve Britain’s core services – and especially the performance of the water industry – has been demanded by a Shropshire MP in an address to Parliament.
And this week Shrewsbury MP Julia Buckley said that if water companies continue to behave as they have been doing, “nationalisation of the water industry could be on the cards.”
Mrs Buckley told the House of Commons that failure to take such transformative action to improve services across power, energy, connectivity and water infrastructure “has been holding back growth.”
And she told MPs that the public are “rightly angry” over asset-stripping of water companies, and a failure over decades to invest in drainage and sewage infrastructure.
Mrs Buckley, speaking in a debate on the Government’s new legislative programme, said that – in the face of climate change – the country needed to adapt and improve quickly, and that it was time to “unlock better planning, co-ordination and investment in core services.”
Nowhere, she said, was action more urgently needed than in the water sector “where we have witnessed the abject failure of privatisation in the industry, leaving us with dangerously polluted water, inadequate sewage management and increasingly expensive water bills.”
She said “The public, as we know, are rightly angry.”
“In my constituency of Shrewsbury, our beautiful town is enclosed by the loop of the River Severn. It is a beautiful historical natural asset, but one that has been allowed to fill with sewage, breach its banks, and pollute our homes, businesses and play areas.
“Bill payers are ready for change, and from an infrastructure perspective, we need assurances that our water assets are being considered holistically, from rainwater re-use to infrastructure upgrades and stronger oversight of what has become a very fragmented industry.”
Referencing the new Clean Water Bill that promises to shake up the industry, Mrs Buckley said: “We could say that it is a sequel to our first blockbuster – the Water (Special Measures) Act 2025, which introduced criminal liabilities for polluters and banned executive bonuses for water bosses guilty of environmental damage.”
She described the new Bill as a much-anticipated and ambitious programme. She added “It’s also the last throw of the dice before we move to nationalising the water sector.
“If the water industry continues to behave as it has been doing, nationalisation is surely on the cards.
