Topics covered on this page:

• Fingleton Review (Nuclear Regulatory Review)
• Regulation of water companies and questions around public ownership
• Rewilding
• Sewage and water pollution

Fingleton Review (Nuclear Regulatory Review)

Last updated February 2026

To begin with, I appreciate that nuclear energy is a divisive topic, but to be upfront about my personal beliefs, I am of the opinion that nuclear energy must play a significant role in our future energy mix. We only have to look at France to see the reasons for this - sustained investment in nuclear has produced lower energy bills and more rapid decarbonisation in comparison to the UK.

A number of years ago, I acted on my support for decarbonising the energy system on a personal level - including, among other measures, installing solar panels. However, as vital as it is that we invest in solar and wind power across the country, a key benefit of nuclear energy is that provides an essential base-load. This is why I believe it has a vital role to play - crucially, alongside wind and solar.

Regarding the Review specifically, I know that this is a complicated and technical topic, so I have summarised the it in the graphic below - both the problems it identified with the process as it currently stands, as well as some of its suggested solutions

Regulation of water companies and questions around public ownership

Last updated March 2026

Since privatisation, water companies across the board have underinvested in new infrastructure. As a result, it takes far less for the system to be over capacity, and therefore for overflow discharges to begin. Alongside this, there has been a lack of regulation and oversight - water companies have been allowed to get away with polluting our waterways without consequence (or at the most a slap on the wrist).

The Water (Special Measures) Act introduced by the Government last year takes pragmatic action on both of these issues. On regulation and enforcement, water company bosses can now face imprisonment for lawbreaking. The water regulator, Ofwat, will be able to ban the payment of bonuses if environmental standards are not met, and there are powers to introduce automatic and severe fines against water companies. Water companies will also have to install real-time monitors at every sewage outlet, and they will be held accountable against a new code of conduct.

Meanwhile, action is being taken to force water companies to invest in infrastructure, preventing money being used for dividends or bonuses. Overall, following Ofwat negotiations, companies will be required to invest £104 billion over the next five years to build and upgrade infrastructure.

I discussed my position on this in greater detail, but I would like to take the opportunity to address the question of whether the industry should be renationalised - as the Government is doing with railways. I have no opposition at all to the principle of public ownership (I believe that privatising the sector in the first place was misguided), however I think there are compelling reasons why isn't a silver bullet, and why we should pursue other options in preference:

The first, and most significant, reason is the cost. The best estimates suggest that renationalising the water sector would cost around £100 billion. That's a lot of money that has to be spent before fixing the years of underinvestment. Surely the pragmatic step in the short term is to restrict bonuses and dividends and instead force companies to reinvest in infrastructure - as they should have being doing for years?

Secondly, bringing water companies back into public ownership now would also force the taxpayer to foot the bill for upgrades in infrastructure, rather than requiring water companies to redress decades of investment being sacrificed in favour of bosses' bonuses and shareholder dividends.

Finally, the Government's reforms to the water sector are still in progress. The Water White Paper, which follows on from the recommendations of the Independent Water Commission's report (including a stronger regulatory framework for the sector), will translate into a new Bill in the next parliamentary session. This will be a good opportunity for me to feed local issues and concerns into the legislative process.

Rewilding

Last updated March 2026

The UK is one of the most nature-depleted countries worldwide. This is not only a crisis for nature, but for people too - as I touched on above when discussing sewage, our environment underpins our economy and wellbeing, and when our environment thrives so do we. And yet, UK species have declined by around 19% since 1970, and nearly one in six (yes, one in six!) species are now threatened with extinction.

A few years ago, the previous Government created a national Environmental Improvement Plan (EIP). When the current Government came into office, it ordered a rapid review with the intention of making the plan more ambitious. Crucially, this plan aims to proactively restore our natural environment, not simply stem further decline. The updated plan includes interim targets for the next five years on air quality; water, terrestrial and marine biodiversity; and resource efficiency and waste reduction.

In practice, over the short term, this means creating 250,000 hectares (equivalent to the land area of 220 Warwicks, if you're looking for a tenuous locally-themed analogy) of new wildlife-rich habitat by 2030, reducing exposure to PM2.5 particles by nearly a third by 2030 compared to 2018 levels, investing at least £85 million into improving and restoring our peatlands and setting aside £1 billion for tree-planting, creating 167,000 hectares (or the land area of 147 Warwicks) of new forest.

This also comes on top of the plan to clean up our waterways that I discussed earlier in this newsletter.

I believe that the EIP is a good framework to guide our national response to the crisis of nature depletion, and over the coming years I will continue to monitor the situation to ensure we are on track to meet the targets.

You can read the full Environmental Improvement Plan via this link.

Sewage and water pollution

Last updated November 2025

It rains in England. It has done so for some time. And yet every year, I am dumbfounded that water companies are repeatedly unable to properly manage our sewage systems. During the recent stormy weather, raw sewage was discharged into our local rivers from several different combined sewage overflows.

This, I'm sure you'll agree, is totally unacceptable, and I used it as an opportunity to once again raise concerns with Severn Trent Water CEO Liv Garfield. It's also why I'm pleased that the Government has taken concrete action on this issue - for far too long, water companies have been allowed to get away with polluting our rivers without consequence. The previous Government weakened regulation, failed to invest in infrastructure and allowed water bosses to take massive bonuses while pumping record levels of sewage into our waters.

Through the Water (Special Measures) Act, the Government has given regulators new powers to block the payment of bonuses to executives who pollute our waterways and bring criminal charges against persistent law breakers, as well as to imposing automatic and severe fines for wrongdoing and ensuring independent monitoring of every outlet.

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Last updated Month 2026

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