‘Hold Southern Water to account’ Eastleigh MP tells Prime Minister

Eastleigh’s Liberal Democrat MP, Liz Jarvis, has raised her constituent’s disgust at Southern Water in the wake of a 46.7% bill hike implemented this month at Prime Minister’s Questions this afternoon. Ms Jarvis has been a vocal advocate for reform of the water system after years of sewage dumping and water outages suffered in her constituency.

The Government’s own data has revealed that over 3.6 million hours of sewage was pumped into waterways in 2024. Liberal Democrat analysis revealed that the longest sewage spill of 2024 was by water company, South West Water, from one outlet dumping into Salcombe Regis Stream for 366 days - thanks to the leap year.

This came a week after Labour and Conservative MPs blocked a Lib Dem motion that would have created a new Blue Flag status for rivers and chalk streams with measures to guarantee the river clean and safe to swim in. This forms part of the Party’s ‘blue corridor’ programme to clean up our waterways. A YouGov poll revealed that the Liberal Democrats policy on blue flag status for rivers was the most popular policy at the last general election amongst voters.

The Liberal Democrats have also called on the Government to replace Ofwat with a new regulator to bring the environmental and financial regulation of water companies together.

Commenting, Liz Jarvis, MP for Eastleigh said: 

“It is a scandal that water companies have been allowed to blight beautiful rivers and waterways across Eastleigh with filthy pollution. For too long, water companies – aided and abetted by a lax regulator and a negligent Conservative Party – have polluted our rivers whilst charging customers more and more for the privilege.

“I’ve been inundated from constituents who are disgusted by the service they have received from Southern Water. After the outages at Christmas that impacted areas of Eastleigh, Southampton, Romsey and Chandler’s Ford, they deserve so much better.

“Liberal Democrats will keep standing up for swimmers, for our wildlife and for bill payers - holding water companies to account for their environmental vandalism. I will keep fighting to ensure my constituents get a better deal and value for money.”

You can view Ms Jarvis' question here at 12:20:12