Water companies preying on benefits through the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) deductions regime are compounding poverty amongst their most vulnerable customers.

Amid soaring bills, rampant pollution, and rank profiteering, privatised water firms are getting away with this at welfare claimants’ expense.

And notably, it’s all within the context of layers of DWP-facilitated debt deductions that are leaving claimants unable to afford the bare necessities.

DWP and water companies entrenching destitution

The DWP enables private companies to chase people who owe them money via the welfare system. In August 2025 for instance, the department facilitated £24m in ‘third party’ deductions. These so-called third parties include landlords, energy companies, and local authorities (for council tax).

Water and sewerage companies can also do this. When an individual is in arrears to their water supplier, the company can apply to the DWP to deduct directly from their welfare payments. And as it stands, despite their appalling performance and rampant pollution, there are no restrictions on this.

Research has shown that the majority of Universal Credit claimants experiencing debt are in arrears with multiple parties. Notably, a report the previous Conservative government suppressed revealed in 2024 that nine in ten claimants with debt have more than one source of it. On average, they have four sources of debt. As many as half owe money to five or more different sources.

This is significant — because water bills are low on the pecking order for deductions. Notably, the DWP operates third party deductions on a priority list. It’s based on what the department determines poses a greater risk to claimants when they’re unable to pay. It puts water bills sixth, behind payments like rent arrears and gas and electricity bills.

Compounding layers of debt

As the Canary previously revealed, across an 18-month period, water companies have preyed on £32.4m in claimants’ Universal Credit. For the most recent twelve months (between September 2024 to August 2025), they’d nabbed £21.7m.

In that same 12-month period, the DWP and government were also making deductions to around three-quarters of households with third party deductions.

DWP data doesn’t provide an indication of how many households have multiple third party deductions. However, it’s safe to say that water company deductions would rarely come in isolation.

In other words, water firms are stripping vital social security from people who are likely among those with multiple oppressive debts.

Pilfering profits from the welfare system

The same suppressed DWP report also identified that more than two-thirds of Universal Credit claimants with debt had gone without food and essential items. Some claimants felt “so helpless” that they had considered suicide.

And water poverty statistics from Citizens Advice in September 2025 chimed with this. It found that companies had forced 42% of households to forego groceries and reduce their energy usage within the last year. Skyrocketing water costs caused more than a third to ration water during this time.

Of course, water firms continuing to ratchet up customer bills is driving all this. The report identified that more than a fifth got into debt with their supplier. Obviously, for welfare claimants, this is when the DWP’s relentless debt chasing mechanism can kick into gear.

So in applying Universal Credit deductions, water companies will only be making all this worse. However, it’s a cycle greedy utility firms are only too happy to maintain. Because at the end of the day, pilfering profits out of a public good is the privatised water industry in a nutshell.

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Speaking about the accolade during a recent appearance on TalkSport, Noel quipped: “I haven’t written a song for two years. I’m not sure how I’ve got away with that one but I’ll take it.”

Defending his new award, Noel pointed out that the 2025 Oasis tour led to a resurgence in streams for the band’s old material.

“I think the Brits is all based on record sales, and I’m not sure there was another single songwriter that sold [as much as me in 2025],” Noel continued. “I mean, we sold a million records last year. Didn’t even get off the couch and I’m not sure there’s a songwriter that can match that.”

He added: “You know, if anybody’s got a problem with it, meet me there. We’ll have it out on the red carpet.

“If any of those wet wipes songwriting teams – all 11 of them, want to write a song between the lot of them – want to have it out on the red carpet, I’m there.”

The 2026 Brit Awards are being held in Noel’s hometown of Manchester for the first time, with the ceremony taking place at the Co-Op Live Arena on Saturday 28 February.

However, a community note was added to his post pointing out: “Robert Jenrick was the housing secretary for more than two years in the previous Conservative government.”

Jenrick was in the role from July, 2019, until September, 2021, when he was axed by then prime minister Boris Johnson in a cabinet reshuffle.

Social media users were also quick to pick up on Jenrick’s attempt to whitewash the part he played in the nationwide shortage of houses.

On Sunday night, Gaga was a surprise guest during Bad Bunny’s Halftime Show, delivering a Salsa-fied remix of her hit single Die With A Smile in the middle of his set.

The following morning, the Grammy winner told her Instagram followers that it had been her “honour to be a part of Benito’s halftime show”.

She enthused: “Thank you Benito for inviting me and thank you to the entire cast for welcoming me onto your stage. I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

“I am so humbled to be a part of this moment,” the Abracadabra star added. “It’s all the more special because it was with you and your beautiful heart and music.”

Check out Gaga’s two Instagram posts for yourself here and here.

She later said: “I’m just so happy for him. What he means to people is so incredibly important. He’s a brilliant musician and human being. He’s so incredibly kind and I thought what he said was so incredibly important and inspiring.”

We hope you love the products we recommend! All of them were independently selected by our editors. Just so you know, HuffPost UK may collect a share of sales or other compensation from the links on this page if you decide to shop from them. Oh, and FYI – prices are accurate and items in stock as of time of publication.

Of all the holidays, there’s possibly the most pressure involved when it comes to getting your Valentine’s Day gifts just right.

Sure, Christmas is a big holiday, and birthdays are a huge deal too, but Valentine’s is all about being romantic, and about instinctively knowing what your partner enjoys as the most heartfelt, sexy, and/or fun gift – even if they haven’t thought of it themselves.

And getting it wrong? That’s not an option.

This year, instead of playing that dreaded guessing game, why not pick something you know you’ll both enjoy and can share together?

Here’s a list of inspiration for what to shop…

Brandon To is a Politics graduate from UCL and a Hong Kong BN(O) immigrant settled in Harrow

When Mark Hehir, a London bus driver, helped chase down a thief who had just snatched a passenger’s necklace, he probably assumed he was doing the right thing.

He was wrong. At least according to modern Britain.

Instead of thanks, Hehir was sacked by Metroline. His crime? “Excessive force” while stopping a fleeing robber.

Let’s be clear about what this means: Stopping a thief is now, apparently, too much.

So what is acceptable? A polite request? A strongly worded suggestion? Perhaps a hymn, sung gently, in the hope that divine intervention persuades the criminal to hand the necklace back?

This case would be funny if it weren’t so revealing.

A new chilling message is now being sent to the public: do not intervene. If you help, you may be punished. If you step in, you may lose your job. If you act decisively, you may be accused of doing more harm than the criminal himself.

Is it any wonder that bystanders look away?

TfL staff are told not to challenge fare evaders. Passers-by hesitate before helping victims. Even the police, in countless videos circulating online, appear reluctant to chase criminals, paralysed by the fear of complaints, and accusations that have little to do with justice.

Put it frankly, this is cowardice, dressed up as “compassion”.

Behind it lies a justice culture warped by liberal and “woke” ideology. In this worldview, criminals are endlessly contextualised, even sympathised with, as it’s always the “system” that failed them.

But who is there to sympathise with the victim? Or in this case, the hero who stood for them?

And heaven forbid if identity politics can be dragged into it. Suddenly, the act of stopping a thief is no longer about theft at all, but about race, systems, or abstract theories dreamed up in universities, far from the bus stop where the crime actually happened.

Against this backdrop, Kieran Mullan, the Shadow Justice Secretary, deserves credit for speaking up and standing with Mark Hehir. This is precisely what Conservatives should be doing — drawing a clear moral line and refusing to apologise for it.

But words are not enough.

If Conservatives are serious about restoring order, and about shedding the legacy of a government that was too weak and overly liberal on crime, then we must go further and be explicit about protection.

We should introduce clear legal safeguards for citizens who intervene, in good faith, to stop crime. If someone acts to prevent theft or violence, they should not later discover that the real punishment comes from their employer or a compliance department.

Employers who sack staff for intervening should be required to publicly justify their decision. Where dismissal occurs, it should be treated as a no-fault dismissal, with enhanced compensation. And if a company refuses to reinstate or explain itself, the state should step in. Not to micromanage, but to send a message: those who stand up for public order will never be abandoned.

This is how culture changes. Not through slogans, but through real actions.

At this point, defenders of the status quo raise a familiar objection: people don’t intervene because it’s dangerous. Criminals might be armed. It’s safer to do nothing.

But this argument collapses the moment one looks at reality.

Take the recently viral footage of thieves smashing a jewellery shop in Richmond in broad daylight. Dozens of people stood nearby. Not one intervened. Not one shouted. Not one tried to distract or deter. Most simply filmed.

I’m not suggesting reckless heroics. But shouting, calling the police, or trying to throw things at the thieves from a safe distance? Yes, they may not be immediately helpful, but at least we created pressure that might urge them to leave earlier. At least we tried hard, and fulfilled our civic responsibility.

The problem is not fear of weapons. The problem is a culture that has trained people to believe that any involvement is dangerous. That culture exists because, time and again, the heroes are punished.

Mark Hehir’s case lays this bare.

He should not be unemployed. He should be thanked. Better still, he should be held up as an example of civic responsibility, of what a noble Britishman should be like.

But of course, we won’t see a “good citizen” award from City Hall. Under a mayor like Sadiq Khan, we might have to be grateful that he’s not arresting Mark Hehir for “systematic injustice “, or whatever new jargons he and his team invented.

And Conservatives should not miss the moment.

This case exposes exactly what happens when a country becomes more afraid of offending criminals than protecting citizens. If stopping a thief is now “excessive”, then the system itself has become excessive. Excessive in weakness, and excessive in its contempt for common sense.

Britain deserves better. And Mark Hehir deserved a medal, not a dismissal.

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