Water firm ‘profiteering’ slammed over news of ‘outrageous’ plans to raise bills by 40%
England’s private water firms are under fire once again today, after reports that they could be set to raise bills by as much as 40%. The touted rise comes as the water industry faces significant pressure to tackle the scandal of sewage being pumped into waterways.
Private companies currently operate thousands of sewer overflows which are used to discharge raw sewage into Britain’s rivers and seas. Last year, private water companies released raw sewage into rivers and seas in England for more than 1.75 million hours, with an average of 825 sewage spills per day.
Critics of the water companies argue that they have prioritised providing returns for shareholders, rather than investment in infrastructure that would have tackled the sewage crisis. Since privatisation in 1989, water companies have paid out more than £70 billion to shareholders.
Anti-privatisation campaign group We Own It has branded reports of major bill rises ‘outrageous’, and has called for water to be taken into public ownership. The group’s director Cat Hobbs told Left Foot Forward: “It’s outrageous. We’ve seen decades of underinvestment in our water system, and now we’re expected to foot the bill for infrastructure improvements.
“What have private companies been doing with their enormous profits for the last 34 years? They’ve paid out £72bn in dividends to shareholders. That’s money that could have been reinvested into our infrastructure to prevent the mess we’re in now. Publicly-owned Scottish water spends £72 more per household per year on tackling infrastructure problems.
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Just stop the need for Just Stop Oil, says climate adviser
A scathing report from the independent Climate Change Committee has condemned government’s slow progress.
Lord Deben, the outgoing chairman of the UK’s climate advisory board, is not a personal fan of the protest group Just Stop Oil. “I do not think it promotes the cause which we all have,” he said this week. But as his Climate Change Committee (CCC) released its new report, he called on the government to listen to the group’s demands and remove the need for protest in the first place.
“Governments and oppositions ought to recognise why it happens,” he said. “It happens because a very, very large number of people, many of them young, really do feel that their whole lives are threatened because governments are not leading, not taking up the challenge, not moving fast enough, not keeping [a 1.5C limit to global warming] within possibility, not, in other words, doing what they ought to do if they are to meet the needs of our population and the population of the world.”
Deben was speaking at a press briefing for the CCC’s latest progress report, released on Wednesday (28 June). The statutory document says that the current Conservative government is failing to make sufficient progress towards the UK’s legally binding net-zero goals. Energy and climate experts described its findings as “damning”.
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Eye-watering cost of sending each migrant to Rwanda revealed
https://leftfootforward.org/2023/06/eye-watering-cost-of-sending-each-migrant-to-rwanda-revealed/
If the government wants to break even on the Rwanda scheme, it would need to deter about 37% of people from crossing the Channel
It will cost the government £169,000 per person to send illegal migrants to countries such as Rwanda, according to new analysis.
An economic impact assessment of the controversial scheme published yesterday, also revealed that the government’s asylum system could cost £32 million a day by the end of 2026 if recent trends continue without the reduction of hotel usage.
And the analysis also estimates that if the government wants to break even on the Rwanda scheme, it would need to deter about 37% of people from crossing the Channel. The government has already given Rwanda £120million in initial investment even though no one has made the journey there.
The £169,000 cost can be broken down into the following. A £105,000 per person payment to third countries such as Rwanda, the Home Office £18,000, costs for flying and escorting would be £22,000, costs for detention would be £7,000 and costs to the Ministry of Justice would be £1,000.
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https://leftfootforward.org/2023/06/eye-watering-cost-of-sending-each-migrant-to-rwanda-revealed/