‘He’s f****** me’: Trump fumed to aides about Netanyahu after Israeli strike on Qatar

President Donald Trump fumed “He’s f***ing me” in a conversation about Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu after the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) launched airstrikes on US ally Qatar earlier this month, according to a report.

The US president has remained firm in his support for Israel’s military action in Gaza, but was said to be furious after Mr Netanyahu authorised strikes on Hamas leaders in Doha, The Wall Street Journal reported.

In the aftermath of the strikes, Trump said he was “not happy” with Israel and that the operation “does not advance Israel or America’s goals”.

But sources told the WSJ that Trump flew into a rage on receiving news of the strikes, and told close aides, including US secretary of state Marco Rubio: “Netanyahu is f***ing me.”

Previous reports suggested that the US president had rebuked Mr Netanyahu and complained that he had not been informed of the plan to hit Doha. He is said to have called the Israeli PM following the strikes to ask if they had been a success, and to have been unhappy on being told that they had not.

The prime minister of Qatar, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani, said in response to the attacks: “The time has come for the international community to stop using double standards and to punish Israel for all the crimes it has committed.”

Ahead of Mr Rubio’s state visit to Israel, Mr Trump had urged the Israeli leader to act with caution, saying: “My message is that they have to be very, very careful. They have to do something about Hamas, but Qatar has been a great ally to the United States.”

But recent evidence suggests that Mr Netanyahu has not heeded Mr Trump’s warnings, and that Israel has become increasingly belligerent about striking countries in the Middle East, including Washington’s allies.

“I’m mystified and so are many other Israelis,” Itamar Rabinovich, a former Israeli ambassador to the US, told the WSJ after the strikes. “The only thing that’s really working for [Netanyahu] is Trump’s support.”

“Netanyahu knows that while the White House may grumble a bit, there really is no downside to an ‘ask forgiveness, not permission’ approach,” said Damian Murphy, a former staff director for the Democrats on the Senate foreign relations committee.

The Independent has contacted the White House and the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office for comment.

Mr Netanyahu told Mr Rubio during his state visit that the relationship between their respective countries was “as strong, as durable as the stones in the Western Wall that we just touched” as the pair wrote prayers on pieces of paper and placed them between the bricks.

The US president emphasised his commitment to Israel and its military campaign during a state visit to the UK. He backslapped Sir Keir Starmer as the British prime minister said that Hamas must have “no future” in Gaza.

Mr Netanyahu is subject to an arrest warrant by the International Criminal Court and has been criticised by international leaders, human rights groups, and the United Nations, which recently concluded that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Israel vehemently denies the claims.

Hodgkinson returns as Lyles and Jefferson-Wooden go for 200m gold

Olympic 800m champion Keely Hodgkinson continues her bid for a maiden world title on day seven of the World Athletics Championships after winning her heat with ease on Thursday.

Compatriot and training partner Georgia Hunter Bell also won her heat to progress to the semi-finals, but Jemma Reekie missed out on a spot in the next round.

Another Briton, world indoor 400m champion Amber Anning, ran a season’s best time but could only manage fifth in a thrilling women’s 400m final. All eight finalists ran sub-50 seconds time but the star of the show was the history-chasing American great Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone, who won in a championship record time of 47.78 – the second-fastest time in history.

And although Daryll Neita missed out, Dina Asher-Smith and Amy Hunt capped off a fine day for team GB as they qualified for the women’s 200m final, with Hunt running a personal best to qualify third-quickest behind defending champion Shericka Jackson and newly-crowned 100m champion Melissa Jefferson-Wooden.

Both the women and men contest the 200m medals on another action-packed day in Tokyo, with Noah Lyles laying down a marker in the semi-finals with a world-leading 19.51s.

Why King Charles can’t forget his relationship with Nixon’s daughter

At last night’s state banquet, Trump talked from the heart – he waxed lyrical about the “priceless and eternal” kinship between the UK and the USA, doubled down on the King as his “friend” and wrapped the special relationship in a florid package of “history, fate, love and language”. But it was the more scripted King who penetrated deepest into what might have been a really “special relationship”, alluding to that once-upon-a-time moment when Charles admitted, “I myself might have been married off within the Nixon family!”

The attendees tittered gingerly, most none the wiser as to what the old King was talking about. But beneath her sapphire tiara you can be sure the Queen knew precisely what Charles was alluding to. That same fated summer of 1970, when a gauche Prince of Wales first met the impossibly English and pricelessly confident Camilla at a polo match, there was another woman in the frame.

When the world’s most “unlikely sex symbol” (cue a very green, 21-year-old Charles) was bumped from Canada to America on a two-day stopover, all eyes were on the prince and President Nixon’s pocket-sized eldest daughter, Tricia. Confident, blonde and crucially, a smidgeon older than Charles, here was a Transatlantic version of Camilla: a young woman with peaches-and-cream sex appeal and political pedigree; small wonder the prince looks terrified in all the footage.

That summer, President Nixon had his eye on the main chance; knee-deep in the quagmire of the Vietnam war and always susceptible to old-school imaging, by all accounts he was “unusually excited about the royals” and hosted a programme of events that threw the prince into constant contact with Tricia. These included a Washington Senators baseball game at RFK Stadium, where the couple sat side by side, engaging in giggling conversation, and a 700-strong dinner-dance at the White House.

That same summer, Tricia graced America’s TV cameras with a tour of the upper floor of the White House. Standing on the Harold Truman balcony in a startling white lace minidress, her interview is coquettish yet assured, its style a salient reminder of just how much the American presidential system borrows from Britain’s constitutional monarchy. Often referred to as an elective kingship, arguably the only magic ingredient the USA lacks is the transcendent glamour of the hereditary principle. This was a way of getting the best of both worlds.

Decades later, with Tricia safely married to a Harvard lawyer, Charles conceded, “That was quite amusing… they were trying to marry me off to Tricia Nixon.” In America at the time, there was little doubt that this was a special relationship that could seal the real deal. According to one columnist, “Nixon was so infatuated” because he “lacked what Charles and Anne had in abundance”. The article goes on to mock the parvenu president and his “intense but vain search for the magic which the prince … carried along so casually”. Which is one way of describing Charles’s unsure gait and untamed fop of dark hair.

In the end, the media dubbed them “the match that didn’t take”, and Nixon’s wide-eyed wonder at the immutable appeal of monarchy was nothing new. For all the king-bashing during the American Revolution (neatly alluded to at the royal state banquet), Thomas Jefferson admitted of royalty in 1789 that “some of us retain that idolatry still”. Stateside, the later wealth-generating 19th century coincided with the growing popularity of Britain’s monarchy under Victoria.

America’s vulgar plutocracy couldn’t get enough of our ancient families and titles, in an era when marrying an impoverished English lord became a well-trodden path, most famously modelled by the 9th Duke of Marlborough and his miserable American bride Consuelo Vanderbilt-Balsan. Jennie Jerome, later Lady Randolph Churchill, was an altogether more successful (if less rich) import. Today, Keir Starmer’s reveal of the Churchill archives at Chequers works on more than one level. As President Trump is always keen to remind us: “seen from American eyes, the word ‘special’ does not begin to do … justice” to the relationship between the two countries.

Perhaps not, but if in 2025 Britain is prepared to flaunt all its old-school glory (including a “so beautiful” Kate wrapped in a gold frock coat, strategically located next to a puffed-up Donald) in the vain hope of better trading terms, we can only wonder where a Nixon in Buckingham Palace might have left us.

Presumably, as a single woman from America’s first family, Tricia would have avoided the more vicious criticism and snobbishness that plagued Wallis Simpson (although the Watergate scandal may well have upended the Windsors’ claim to political impartiality). As for the twice-married woman from Baltimore who snared Edward VIII, Mrs Simpson didn’t have a hope in hell of winning the snooty British public round. JohnTravolta dancing with Prince Diana in 1985 was far nearer the mark – sufficiently fleeting and Hollywood-performative for everyone to feel like a winner (Charles long since forgotten as the star attraction of Windsor PLC).

Nearly a century on from Mrs Simpson, Meghan’s marriage to Prince Harry suggests that little Britain’s capacity to deliver a latent sneer lives on. Meanwhile, over in California, Meghan’s limpet-like commitment to her duchess title has done little to allay UK fears of being used.

As for Trump, the man who has it all except a crown, his version of America does not recognise the Meghan Markles of this world. This 47th president, of Scottish protestant descent and the son of a keen monarchist, clearly feels much closer to the British royal family than to a mixed-race princess from his own country. His lavish praise went in one direction only, as he pointedly insisted the king had raised a “remarkable son, His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales”, who Trump assured us would have “unbelievable success in the future”.

Prince Harry and his choice of an American bride were the unspoken elephant in the room – a reminder that only half of America backs this controversial president whom Starmer’s Britain has set upon the highest pedestal. It speaks to the perversions of a world divided as never before, led by Donald Trump, who encourages those divisions, and in which the current rupture at the centre of our own royal family has actually proved something of a diplomatic asset during this unprecedented second state visit.

As to whether Queen Camilla appreciated being reminded of her blonde rival from over 50 years ago, a little light diplomacy behind closed doors may be required…

Tessa Dunlop is the author of ‘Elizabeth and Philip, The Story of Young Love, Marriage and Monarchy’

Family of heiress who died after ‘insect bite’ planning legal action

A Greek heiress who was found dead a day after her family claims she was sent home from a London hospital, sent messages to a friend saying “nobody is checking up on me, nobody is coming” before she was discharged.

Marissa Laimou had been rushed to University College London Hospital (UCLH) by ambulance after she had visited a clinic on 10 September, complaining of dizziness, itching and a high temperature, relatives have said.

When she arrived at the hospital, tests were carried out on her by nurses, but four hours later, she was discharged with antibiotics, a family friend claimed.

However, the following day, her housekeeper found her lifeless in her bed at the townhouse she lived in with her parents in Knightsbridge, central London.

The coroner is investigating her death, but her family has said the official diagnosis given by doctors was “toxic effect of venom” caused by an “animal or insect bite”.

The family has now accused UCLH of failing in its care for the 30-year-old.

A relative told MailOnline: “No doctor examined Marissa. Only the nurses saw her and did the blood tests, and passed the test to the doctor, and the doctor said you can be discharged, that’s all.

“They should not have let her go, definitely. If it was not so urgent, her oncologist would not have sent her in an ambulance, they would have said go in an Uber or go later. It was urgent. They didn’t address it with the serious way they should have done.”

The family friend, also speaking to MailOnline, revealed the messages sent by Ms Laimou while she was at UCLH, where she had blood tests and was given a drip with fluids.

They said: “She was waiting, she sent some messages to her friend saying: ‘Nobody is checking up on me, nobody is coming, I don’t know where they are, I’m still itching, I feel dizzy, I don’t feel well’.”

As reported earlier this week, following her death, Ms Laimou, also known as Lemos, had earlier survived breast cancer. It has since emerged, according to family, that the clinic she went to on 10 September was Leaders in Oncology Care, where she had previously had chemotherapy.

Although born in the UK, she is part of the wealthy Lemos family, one of the biggest families in the Greek shipping industry. They are reportedly now planning to take legal action following the sudden death.

The tragic circumstances began after Ms Laimou had recently returned from a summer holiday with her family on the Greek resort island of Porto Cheli, it has been reported.

She first started feeling unwell and recorded a high fever of 39C on the night of 9 September, but despite calling for an ambulance, she decided she would wait till the morning to seek further medical help.

The next day, still feeling unwell, she went to LOC, where medics, after taking blood tests, sent her to UCLH, the family say. After being discharged at 6.30pm on 10 September, she was found dead the next day, it is said.

Ms Laimou was involved in theatre production after studying musical theatre in New York and going to the University of Arizona.

Earlier this year, she had played a leading role in a production of Romeo and Juliet in London and was reportedly preparing for a new production of Oliver.

Marissa’s great-aunt Chrysanthi told Parapolitika: “The entire family is shocked by the sudden death of the daughter of Diamantis and Bessie Laimou. She was a very kind girl, quiet, educated, cultured, modest and simple. She loved art and theatre, she was involved in theatre.”

The Inner West London Coroner’s Court confirmed to The Independent that the death of Ms Lemos had been referred to the court. An inquest has yet to be opened.

The Independent has contacted UCLH and LOC for comment.

Forcing Brigitte Macron to prove she’s a woman shows how mad conspiracists have become

Please excuse me if you’ve only just recovered from Wednesday’s conspiracy theories. Then, social media was abuzz with the suggestion that Melania Trump had been temporarily replaced by a stand-in during her visit to Windsor Castle due to her hat obscuring her face. Now, it’s all about President Macron’s wife, Brigitte, being a trans woman, and, more specifically, also her brother.

But this time, the conspiracy theory will be tested in a court of law.

In July, the Macrons filed a defamation suit against rent-a-view influencer Candace Owens, who has long claimed – with no evidence – that Brigitte was born a man. Extraordinarily, Brigitte will now be presenting evidence to a court in Delaware to prove that she is indeed a woman.

The rumours embraced and amplified by Owens, formerly an anti-Trump blogger until clocking how lucrative being on his team could be, have been around for a while. In 2017, a blogger named Natacha Rey or sometimes Nathalie Rey, claimed in a YouTube video that Brigitte was in fact her brother, Jean-Michel Trogneux, who had, she said, changed gender and used the name. This claim went viral before the French presidential election in 2022, due to a 2021 video in which Rey was interviewed on YouTube by a spiritual medium.

In another time, this would have been dismissed with an eye-roll and shrug. But we are living in a different – and more dangerous – era. The “evidence” that Rey claimed was a picture of Jean-Michel as a child, looking similar to Brigitte now. Watching the rumours escalate online, Brigitte and Emmanuel Macron denied the claims and sued Rey and her medium Delphine Jegousse, known as “Amandine Roy”, for defamation at the Paris Judicial Court, where they were found guilty in September 2024.

The court made them pay Brigitte and her brother – now 80 and still living in the northern town where he and Brigitte grew up, and who attended Emmanuel Macron’s inauguration ceremonies – $8,000 and $5,000 in damages, respectively. The Paris Court of Appeal then overturned the verdict in July 2025, on the grounds that the allegations were made “in good faith” and therefore did not constitute defamation.

In court, Jegousse said that she had not met Rey before their video and simply wanted to give a platform to a story that she argued was being ignored by the mainstream. While Jegousse’s video interviewing Rey is no longer on her channel, clones of it are on YouTube. Natacha Rey is not seen in the video with Jegousse – she is interviewed with her camera off. Nor did Rey appear in court, pleading illness. Curiously, Natacha Rey has no website or online presence – unthinkable for a blogger, let alone a self-described “journalist” at the centre of a global news story. Any further comments have come through her lawyer, François Danglehant, also referred to online as Francois Dangléan. Moreover, Rey’s name is used interchangeably with “Nathalie Rey”, depending on the news outlet, and this individual again has no digital footprint. Cue counter-conspiracies over whether she exists at all.

But the fact is that we are here and the wife of the president of France is now in the ludicrous – and hurtful – position of having to prove to a court of law that she is a woman. How did we get here?

Candace Owens’ campaign against the Macrons leans into an alarming right-wing conspiracy subculture rooted in transphobia called transvestigation, which targets people with fake claims that they are trans, usually trans women. They then take it on themselves to “investigate” the truth to expose celebrities as being “secretly transgender”. This can include analysing their bone structure, gait and limb length and then circulating this information to try and “work out” if they are male or female.

According to the American LGBT+ organisation GLAAD, “The practice maliciously targets cisgender public figures from Madonna to Melania Trump to Olympic boxer Imane Khelif to Kyle Rittenhouse and then ‘investigates’ them, offering fake pseudo-scientific ‘evidence’ that they are transgender, with the underlying bigoted and ignorant implication that being a transgender person is a bad thing.”

When I appeared on the BBC Two quiz show Only Connect in 2022, I felt a small fraction of what this is like. I was clocked as a trans woman by someone tweeting along to the show. In fact, I’m actually a very tall Alto 2 who was born with my dad’s jawline. I didn’t mind being described as a trans woman, but this just showed that you cannot “tell” at a glance.

In the wake of the Supreme Court ruling on sex earlier this year, butch lesbians and post-mastectomy women have shared stories of being confronted for being exactly where they’re supposed to be. Caz Coronel described her experience in The Guardian, saying that she only managed to stop a man shouting at her by bluntly asking him if he wanted to see her breasts as proof. A lot of this is done under the guise of protecting “safe spaces” for women, although arguably, being shouted at in a loo queue is not safety. For conspiracy theorists, however, chaos is the aim.

It’s telling that the Macrons’ actual scandal – they first met when Brigitte was a teacher at his school, and her daughter was his classmate, and married 14 years later – was not deemed lurid enough to be their focus, not least because France had shrugged and moved on from what many would consider an inappropriate relationship.

But what is more revealing is that the Macrons are addressing Owens’ campaign rather than ignoring it, as so many public figures have had to over the years. And this is where it becomes even more alarming. Owens has the ear of the US government through her podcast, YouTube channel, and her willingness to make outlandish, headline-grabbing claims.

Since her abrupt turn from Trump naysayer in 2015, she has said and done the most contrary and appalling things – many about Black people – which have led to her being embraced by the right, although Trump has apparently distanced herself from her, as she claimed in a podcast that he asked her to stop talking about the Macrons.

What is particularly grim about the Macron court case is that Owens’ lawyer has even asked for proof that Brigitte was pregnant and raised the three children – now in their forties and fifties – she had with her first husband, banker André-Louis Auzière. The trial starts later this week, and I am concerned about them having to roll out proof of each child in turn, family photo albums, and perhaps even Jean-Michel Trogneux himself for such a ridiculous case.

In an interview with Paris Match last month, President Macron said the suit was “a question of having the truth respected”.

“This has become such a big issue in the United States that we had to respond,” he said. He added that Owens’ right to free speech didn’t give her the right to spread “nonsense”.

The Macrons’ lawyer, Tom Clare, said that attempts had been made to engage with Owens over the past year, “request after request after request that she just simply do the right thing,” but she had not replied. The suit claims that Owens doubled down on this claim to “promote her independent platform, gain notoriety, and make money.”

After the lawsuit was filed, Owens said: “I am fully prepared to take on this battle. On behalf of the entire world, I will see you in court.”

And there lies the problem with conspiracies – taking them on becomes a lose-lose situation. In the topsy-turvy brain of a conspiracist, if their victims ignore it, it’s “proof of it being true”, and if they deny it and prove claims aren’t true this becomes new evidence of a deep-state “cover-up”.

The insane, the unbelievable and the incredible are merely the 21st-century equivalent of UFOs and Area 91 multiplied by the intrusive claims of “free speech”. People love a conspiracy theory, and simply cannot comprehend something as dull as a famous person’s sibling not having a trackable digital footprint.

The insanity is the point, of course. Since Trumpism took hold in the mid-2010s, the world has effectively been living in an extended retelling of “The Emperor’s New Clothes”. Whether emperor, president, or Tommy Robinson bully boy, the far-right has moved entirely away from anything approaching fact in favour of shouting loudly, often on X.

However, conspiracy theories are by no means limited to the right – rumours are whizzing around about everything from whether Trump was really shot to the validity of Tyler Robinson’s text messages to his roommate over the killing of Charlie Kirk. An analysis of a photo posted by the author JK Rowling on X last year led to gleeful commentary by X progressives saying that her house was troubled by black mould and was therefore turning her mad.

However, it is the right’s conspiracy theories that have the most significant impact on the world at large: the riots of 6 January. Banned books. Hillary Clinton’s “emails” and pizza. The “birther” conspiracy over Barack Obama’s birth certificate. The dedication of people on social media, often encouraged by algorithms powered by Elon Musk and other tech bros to rally behind these lies, leads to bemused confusion by anyone who isn’t 100 per cent digitally literate.

No photos or scientific proof from the Macrons will make any difference to the outcome. The conspiracy theorists will rummage through the Macrons’ personal lives with delight before throwing them on the floor behind them, just as the “doxxers” of the right-wing GamerGate movement did in the mid-2010s by sharing the addresses and contact details of high-profile figures, and just as did the men behind the leaks of celebrity nudes. That chaos and feeling it creates is the important thing.

Those fuelling these wild theories, from bots to bad actors, and even some politicians, want to see faith in our institutions wobble. Not being able to believe anything anyone tells you is part of that. Anything that someone doesn’t like can be dismissed as “fake news”. We have seen Trump doing this for years.

But the Macron court case is necessary because the West has become timid of consequences. It has long relied on public shaming to subdue a wrongdoer into resigning, apologising, or otherwise stepping away. That simply does not happen now. If – when – Candace Owens loses this case, she too has a playbook to follow. It’s the same one the president of the United States followed after the 2020 election. Never apologise, never explain, and cling to the BIG lie at all costs.

Another grift will be along in a minute. There’s always a spot at the table for an ambitious person who believes in nothing and will say anything.

How Macmillan Cancer Support built a movement that reaches everyone

Tsunami warnings after 7.8 earthquake jolts Russia’s Kamchatka

A powerful 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck near the east coast of Russia’s Kamchatka region, the US Geological Survey said.

The major earthquake triggered a brief tsunami warning, the second-highest alert level, across the region and as far away as Alaska, though no damage was reported. It was lifted about two hours later.

The earthquake struck at 6.58am local time on Friday with its epicentre 127km east of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, a city of just 165,000 people, according to the agency.

The temblor happened at a depth of 19.5km and caused a series of aftershocks of up to 5.8 magnitude.

It also triggered a tsunami warning for parts of Kamchatka and the Kuril Islands, north of Japan. Authorities reported waves between 30 and 62cm (1 to 2ft) along the Kamchatka coast.

Russia’s emergencies ministry said the quake had a magnitude of 7.2.

Governor Vladimir Solodov said all emergency services had been placed in a state of high readiness, but no damage had been reported.

“This morning is once again testing the resilience of Kamchatka residents,” Mr Solodov wrote on the Telegram messaging app. “Immediately after the earthquake, we began a rapid inspection of social institutions and residential buildings.”

Videos shared online showed light fixtures and kitchen furniture swaying, while small groups of residents gathered outside buildings.

In late July, the remote Kamchatka region was hit by an 8.8-magnitude quake, one of the strongest ever recorded, setting off tsunami waves that reached as far away as Hawaii and California.

The current quake comes a week after a magnitude 7.4 earthquake struck near the east coast of the Kamchatka peninsula. The US Tsunami warning system issued a threat following the quake, but it was later called off. Earthquakes occur when the planet’s rocky tectonic plates, floating on magma, rub against each other, releasing massive amounts of energy.

Dubbed the “land of fire and ice”, Kamchatka, in the easternmost part of Russia, is one of the most active volcanic regions on Earth and is known for its wilderness and lack of communication links.

It has about 300 volcanoes, with 29 of them still active, according to Nasa’s Earth Observatory. Quakes and tsunamis regularly strike the peninsula that lies close to an ocean trench where two tectonic plates meet.

Water boss warns hosepipe ban could continue into 2026

Bosses at Yorkshire Water have warned that the current hosepipe ban could continue into 2026.

There is a chance residents could remain under the ban despite recent heavy rainfall, the company’s director Dave Kaye told the BBC.

He said that rain would have to fall persistently for the rest of the year if the ban were to be lifted, though he added that reservoir levels in the area had risen.

“I would anticipate it would be towards the back end of this year or early next year,” he told the broadcaster.

Yorkshire became the first region to enact a hosepipe ban in July this year after England suffered its driest spring in more than a century.

Households in Yorkshire are barred from using hosepipes to water gardens, wash cars, fill hot tubs and paddling pools, and clean outdoor surfaces.

Anyone caught breaching the ban, which is legally enforceable, may be fined £1,000.

Yorkshire Water said the region had both the driest and warmest spring on record this year, receiving just 15cm of rainfall between February and June – less than half the level expected in an average year.

When Mr Kaye was asked by the BBC if customers would receive a refund, he said: “No, because people can use watering cans… there’s plenty of sources.”

However, the water company has faced criticism after it was reported that its chief executive, Nicola Shaw, had received £1.3 million of undisclosed extra pay via an offshore parent company.

Water regulator Ofwat is examining whether payments made to Ms Shaw via the Jersey-incorporated company Kelda Holdings between April 2023 and March 2025 complied with rules banning bonuses for water company bosses.

Mr Kaye told the BBC: “Of course I can understand why people are frustrated. Our chief executive declined her bonus because of the poor performance we’ve had in Yorkshire.”

Mr Kaye added that the money “was a fee”, rather than a bonus, for work she did for stakeholders. The company told the BBC that the payments made by its parent company were noted in annual reports, but said it should have been “more transparent”.

He also defended the company’s record on fixing leaks, saying: “We try to get out and fix leaks as quickly as we possibly can. We focus on big leaks that lose a lot of water and we try and focus on the visible leaks.

“We’ve reduced leakage by 15 per cent over the last five years. We are going to do much more in the next five years as well.”