Utility Week

UTILITY WEEK | 24TH - 30TH MAY 2019 | 7 Interview A ngela Smith's first ever lesson about the perils of political interference in the utility market came one morning in the 1970s, when she found her Labour-supporting mother uncharacteristically cursing Tony Benn, the energy minister at the time in the Labour government. Mrs Smith senior had just opened her energy bill, and "was cursing him that morning because he had put her energy bills up", recalls her daughter. Fast forward four decades and Smith has recently quit Labour, a…er more than 40 years of membership, to become one of the founding MPs in the new Change UK political grouping. The new party, which this week faces its first electoral test at the European Parliament elections, has had a trou- bled birth. Its lead candidate for Scotland in the Euro- pean elections announced last week that he had switched his allegiance to the Liberal Democrats. The more estab- lished centre party has enjoyed a mini-revival in the local elections, putting itself in pole position to attract the Remain vote that Change UK is also seeking to woo. Smith herself came in for condemnation when a mumbled comment on BBC 2's Politics Live show in Feb- ruary was interpreted as racist – a lapse for which she apologised unreservedly within hours. However, the 57-year-old, who built up a strong rep- utation in water circles long before her TV gaffe, has regained her normal dry tone when she meets Utility Week in Portcullis House – a building full of MPs' offices, just over the road from parliament. A…er her election as a Labour MP to the House of Commons in 2005, Smith secured the role of water spokesperson in then Labour leader Ed Miliband's shadow ministerial team. Later, she served as shadow chief whip and then shadow deputy leader of the house before quitting the Labour front bench following Jeremy Corbyn's election in 2015, a move that foreshadowed her resignation from the party in February this year. Since giving up her frontbench duties, Smith has chaired the all-party parliamentary water group and has also served on the environment, food and rural affairs select committee. Water is an important issue in her constituency of Penistone and Stocksbridge, which straddles Sheffield and the surrounding south Yorkshire countryside, and contains no fewer than 15 reservoirs. "I've always had a strong understanding of the relationship between the natural environment, water management and the role of water companies," she says. "It's a fascinating area of public policy that is too o…en overlooked." The Grimsby native has now been handed the energy and environment portfolio in the frontbench team of the fledgling Change UK. It was over the issue of water nationalisation that Smith most clearly marked herself out as a dissident within Corbyn's Labour with a heavily critical speech last year of her then party's nationalisation policy. The policy is emblematic of Smith's broader dispute with Labour's le…ward turn, she says. "My problem with Labour eco- nomic policy is that it's quasi-Marxist. It wants to extend state control over large parts of the economy, and I have a problem with that." She also argues that nationalisation is a "red herring" in the context of the wider challenges the water indus- try faces – principally the increasing stresses on supply posed by climate change and a growing UK population. "This is a big set of challenges," she says. "The focus on who owns the water sector, rather than what it needs to do to face those challenges, is what makes it [nation- alisation] a red herring. The water ownership debate is completely pointless; it damages and detracts from real challenges facing the sector." Her critique extends to Labour's proposals to rena- tionalise large chunks of the energy sector. "We know we have to decarbonise; by focusing on ownership we run the danger of losing focus on the most important challenges," she explains. "That for me is irresponsible, really irresponsible. "I believe we can make the market work in energy. I'm more interested in working out how to do that rather than impose nationalisation, which won't necessarily improve outcomes for customers." Smith dismisses Labour protestations that its public ownership plans don't spell a return to the centralised, old school nationalisation of the post-war era. "[Shadow

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