The future ownership of the water industry should be decided by a citizens’ assembly to remove decision-making from boardrooms and impose democracy on the sector, a private member’s bill is to argue.
Labour MP Clive Lewis, who in the past has called for water to be put back into public ownership, will introduce his bill on the future of water ownership and management later today.
Lewis said he wanted to create an open conversation in parliament and involve the public in water management through a citizens’ assembly as well as push the debate beyond “simplistic and unhelpful narratives of privatisation v nationalisation”.
Lewis’s bill says the conversation about future ownership of water must be held openly. He said: “This bill puts the conversation about the future management of water where it should be – in the hands of parliament and the public.
“This is a conversation that must take place in broad daylight, not behind the closed doors of boardrooms or through opaque industry lobbying. Water belongs to all of us, so how it is managed is a question of economic democracy. This should not be difficult for any government to grasp.”
Steve Reed, the environment secretary, held an investors’ summit in September to attract private money to the water industry, which critics said amounted to the reprivatisation of the sector. Reed has so far refused calls for the industry to be returned to public ownership.
Guardian research shows how three decades after privatisation, foreign investment firms, private equity, pension funds and businesses lodged in tax havens own more than 70% of the water industry in England.
Since the water companies were privatised under Margaret Thatcher, firms have paid more than £57bn in dividends to shareholders while customer bills have increased by 360%.
Lewis said his bill would have a clear aim to stop water mismanagement. He said: “The answers do not lie in failed regulators or tinkering. We must have the courage to change the rules and create a new political reality. This is, to some degree, already happening in other areas, whether that is rail or energy.
“Let this bill be the starting point for a national and democratic conversation about water, and how this integral part of our commons is managed in the 21st century, with all the democratic, climate and ecological challenges that lie ahead.”
Other private member’s bills on the environment to be debated include one on compulsory solar panels on new-build homes, and the return of a bill proposing binding climate targets.
Lib Dem MP Max Wilkinson’s “sunshine bill” would make it compulsory to put solar photovoltaic energy generation equipment on all new-build homes. Many Lib Dems have previously campaigned locally against solar farms, arguing that solar panels on new builds would be more effective than using agricultural land.
Fellow Lib Dem Roz Savage’s climate and nature bill revives the efforts to pass a radical climate focused bill that was previously presented by the former Green party leader Caroline Lucas and Labour MPs Olivia Blake and Alex Sobel. It has been championed by the campaign group Zero Hour.
Savage said it would introduce new binding targets so government action must contribute towards limiting the global mean temperature increase to 1.5C, halt all oil and gas exploration and imports and reverse nature decline to show that it is “visibly and measurably on the path to recovery”.
The three are among the five top bills selected from backbench MPs to present private members’ bills. A private member’s bill can be submitted by 20 MPs who come top of the ballot drawn at the beginning of the parliament, but in practice only the top seven will be given a full sitting Friday for debate.
Labour MP, Kim Leadbeater, who is first on the ballot, has said she will present a bill on assisted dying. The government has signalled it wants to give time for Leadbeater’s bill to be given a clear path through the Commons to its final stages, where MPs will be given a free vote on the potential law.
Fellow Labour MP, Josh MacAlister, who is fifth on the list, said he will table a safer phones bill with a series of measures for young teens, including a statutory ban on phones in schools, and powers to force social media to exclude young teens from data collection that feeds algorithms in a bid to make content less addictive for under-16s.
It would also commit the government to a review of the sale of phones to teenagers, including a review of whether additional technological safeguards should be on phones sold to under-16s.
Although private members’ bills rarely pass in their original form, measures in the bills are regularly adopted by the government if there is widespread backing.
