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

Plans for a three-strikes-and-your-out approach to water companies that spill sewage in England and Wales

were blocked on Friday the 28th of March.

What would Margaret Thatcher do is unlikely to win favour

as a slogan among left-wing Labour MPs.

And when Clive Lewis introduced his plans to shake up the water industry,

he complained that the former Prime Minister's privatisation plans

had cast a long shadow.

But...

One thing is undeniable.

She proved the world can be made differently.

And if it can be made differently once, it can be made differently again.

He wanted to change the law, so that the government was required to set out a water strategy,

create a commission

to look at water ownership and value for money, and set up a citizens' assembly on water ownership.

Clive Lewis said his bill would put the final nail in the coffin of what he called a sorry chapter.

Under this bill, if a water company breaches the terms of its license with a major

sewage discharge, it can forget shareholder payouts and piling on more debt. Do it twice,

and you're in the last chance, salute. Three strikes and you're out. License terminated, on your

bike, and those price gouging, asset stripping, river-killing,

vulture capitalist outfits, they'll be rolled into the sunset without a penny in compensation.

...