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Yesterday in Parliament

Yesterday In Parliament 14 May 2025

Yesterday in Parliament

BBC

News

4.310 Ratings

🗓️ 14 May 2025

⏱️ 5 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The boss of Thames Water tells MPs his company is prepared for a drought this summer

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts.

0:05.0

Hello, I'm Sean Curran, and this is yesterday in Parliament from BBC Radio 4.

0:10.6

Millions of us could face host pipe bands this summer after the driest spring on record.

0:16.1

But when he appeared before MPs on Tuesday the 13th of May,

0:27.8

the chief executive of Thames Water, Chris Weston, said his company was prepared for more dry weather.

0:33.3

The Environment Agency has issued a warning that there's a medium risk of a drought this summer. When he appeared in front of MPs on the Environment Committee, Chris Weston told them

0:37.9

Thames Water had learned lessons from 2022 when it came close to running out of water

0:43.8

and was making sure its reservoirs were as full as possible.

0:47.9

I'm confident we won't run out of water. I'm not confident yet. I'm not confident that we

0:53.4

won't have to restrict usage because that

0:55.1

will depend on what the weather does and what rainfall happens between now and the summer.

1:00.5

The cross-examination of senior figures from Thames Water came just hours before the release

1:05.6

of the latest annual survey from the Consumer Council for Water. It suggests that trust in water companies has fallen

1:13.2

to a new low. And Chris Weston conceded that Thameswater had, as he put it, lost direction a bit.

1:20.7

I think I was the fifth CEO in five years, three CFOs and 26 members of the executive had been through the company.

1:30.2

And that creates a confusion for people in the company.

1:34.6

The Liberal Democrat who chairs the committee, Alistair Carmichael,

1:37.9

pointed out that Mr Weston was on a total pay package of £2.3 million.

1:43.7

Three months in, you accepted a bonus of £195,000. That's three months into your tenure.

1:53.5

With hindsight, was that a wise thing to do?

1:57.5

Chris Weston said the pay deal was agreed before he joined the company

2:00.8

and told the MPEs that the crisis at Thames Water had been decades in the making.

...

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