'The right thing to do!' Steve Reed defends ban on water company bonuses as he declares the 'era of profiting from pollution ends today'

The ban affects Anglian Water, Southern Water, Thames Water, United Utilities, Wessex Water and Yorkshire Water, backdated to April 2024.

Thames Water, which serves approximately a quarter of the UK's population, was fined £122.7million last month for breaching rules on sewage spills and shareholder payouts, Ofwat's largest ever penalty.

Discussing the ban on GB News, Reed explained: "I think what we're doing is right, I think it's justified, and I don't know whether you know how much the water company bosses paid themselves in bonuses over the last ten years, but it's over £100million.

"That's just bonuses. In most people's minds you get a bonus because you've done a good job, these people were overseeing record levels of sewage dumped in our rivers and our lakes and our seas."

Declaring the ban is "promise made and promise delivered", Reed stated that the "era of profiting from pollution is over".

Reed said: "The regulator has announced a ban on the bonuses for those six water companies that you just named, that's two thirds of the entire sector.

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"We said before the general election, this is what we do. Promise made, promise delivered, and this is a big part of our reset of the water sector so we can finally clean up the sewage from our waterways."

Pressed by GB News host Anne Diamond on whether the ban would "actually do anything about sewage being pumped into our seas and rivers", Reed stood firm on the decision, vowing to also "strengthen enforcement" on the ban.

Reed said: "It's a part of the package, but it's not everything. So what we're looking at doing is how can we strengthen enforcement and increase the levels of investment and modernise the entire system.

"On enforcement, we've now launched 81 separate criminal investigations into the water companies so we can find out what they're doing and hold them to account over the levels of pollution on investment. We've secured £104billion of private sector money, that is the biggest investment ever into our water sector, and it means we can replace those broken sewage pipes and stop the flow of sewage into our rivers, our lakes and into our seas."

Questioned by Anne on where the money that would have been given as bonuses will now go, Reed claimed that the money should now be invested in improving Britain's waterways.

Reed concluded: "Over the last ten years, over £100million has been given out in bonuses, despite the levels of failure that we're all so very well aware of.

"If that money had been invested in upgrading some of those pipes and maintaining them, perhaps they wouldn't have crumbled to the extent that they did, perhaps we then wouldn't have seen so much sewage swilling into our into our waterways.

"We want to focus the water company bosses on fixing the problem with sewage, not just maximising their income with bonuses."

Water UK, representing the industry, said firms' independent committees that determine performance-related pay will comply with Government legislation.

The organisation highlighted that water companies are "focused on investing a record £104billion over the next five years to secure our water supplies, end sewage entering our rivers and seas and support economic growth".