Water White Paper: Reform or Rearranging the Deckchairs?

Today, the Government published its long-awaited Water White Paper. For communities that have spent years watching their rivers, streams, and coastlines polluted, this should have been a turning point. Instead, it feels like another missed opportunity.

Across the country, people are simply fed up with empty promises while water companies continue to pollute with impunity. In places like West Berkshire, sewage discharges aren’t abstract statistics; they affect local rivers, wildlife, businesses, and public health.

The Government promised fundamental reform of a broken system. What we have instead is a White Paper that does not go far enough to guarantee the change that was promised. Tweaking the regulator and creating a new executive role, including a Chief Engineer, simply doesn’t address the root of the problem.

The truth is that the current model is failing. Water companies have been allowed to prioritise debt, dividends, and bonuses over investment, infrastructure, and environmental protection. That isn’t an accident – it’s the result of how the system is designed.

That’s why the Liberal Democrats are calling for a complete overhaul of how water companies are run. We want to see a new ownership model, with water companies mutually owned by their customers and professionally managed, so that the focus is finally on long-term resilience, clean water, and environmental responsibility.

The Government must also end the sewage cover-up. It is not enough for companies to publish how long spills last. They must be forced to publish the actual volume of sewage they dump into our waterways, so the public can see the true scale of the problem, and regulators can act properly.

We need a serious refit of the water sector, one that puts communities, customers and the environment first. This White Paper isn’t it, and I will keep pressing the Government to go further and faster.