New Clause 6
Greater London Authority Bill
4:45 pm
Tom Brake (Shadow Minister, Department for Communities and Local Government; Carshalton and Wallington, Liberal Democrat)
I hope that, with new clauses 6 and 7, I will be on firmer ground, albeit we will be discussing water. We had a debate earlier today on the importance of climate change, of the Mayor having a strategy that addresses it and of providing him with the flexibility he needs to take on that very important and serious agenda. The new clauses, which relate to water and the utilities, are very much in the vein of providing the Mayor with greater control and say over water and, in relation to new clause 7, sewerage. The provision and use of water will be central to the Mayor’s strategy on climate change, and the new clauses would provide him with an opportunity to gain greater control over the provision of water in London.
I think that most hon. Members would agree that in many respects Londoners have not been particularly well served by some companies that one could mention. I would not necessarily include in that list my own local supplier, Sutton and East Surrey Water, which does a reasonable job, but clearly others get regular headlines for their inability to tackle very significant leakage rates when—apart from the weather that we have had in the last few days—water is in relatively short supply. Certainly, discussions with the local water supplier indicate that in Surrey in particular, where a lot of water is stored in bore holes, the water in the bore holes is at historically low levels.