Green Party MP for Brighton Pavilion Siân Berry. Image by Kelly Hill, Wikimedia CC BY-SA 4.0.
Responding to the publication of OFWAT’s a draft verdict on water companies’ five-year spending plans and bill increases to 2030, Green Party MP, Siân Berry said:
“We’re today calling on Prime Minister Keir Starmer to put all water companies into public hands.
“The provision of such a basic human right should not be based on profit.
“The idea that water companies will hike bills while so many people are struggling to get to the end of the month is horrific. Meanwhile, some companies, like Thames Water, are still paying shareholder dividends, which is deplorable.
“Public ownership is a matter of both social and environmental principle. But, as today’s verdict from OFWAT shows, it is also a pragmatic necessity.
“Why not take decisive action and show real leadership by saying that all water companies should be in public hands?
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer (centre front) next to Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner (front row, third from left) and Chancellor Rachel Reeves (front row, fourth from right) stand with Labour Party MPs, some of whom won seats in the 2024 General Election, at Church House in Westminster, central London, July 8, 2024
CHANCELLOR Rachel Reeves is right to say that steep increases in our water bills are a “bitter pill to swallow” — especially since her government could stop them if it wanted to.
Maybe its reluctance to take the obvious step — nationalisation — is linked to the lucrative rewards waiting for former ministers who play ball. After all, Water UK, the trade association lobbying for still steeper rises, is headed by former Labour minister Ruth Kelly.
Water UK slams Ofwat’s refusal to endorse its own proposed increases as “the biggest-ever cut in investment.”
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No other country has surrendered its water to private companies in this way and it is unlikely that any will, given that the outcome here has been poisoned waterways, sewage-strewn beaches and soaring bills. Earlier this year, over half the people polled said the sewage scandal would affect their vote. It may well have driven the Tory collapse across swathes of southern and coastal England. An even higher proportion, 69 per cent, want water back in public hands.
Labour says the cost of renationalisation is prohibitive and lands the public with private-sector debt.
From nationalising public services, taxes on the rich, dropping tuition fees to green investment, the new PM’s abandoned promises raise doubts about Labour’s real commitment to its promises for ‘change,’ writes PETER KENWORTHY
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And the new PM, Labour’s Keir Starmer, has also done his fair share of U-turning. Starmer, among other things, pledged and promised to “increase income tax for the top 5 per cent earners” in 2020, during the Labour leadership election — “I will maintain our radical values [ … ] no stepping back from our core principles” as he added in the pledges. Only for him to back away from tax rises.
“We are in a different situation now, because obviously I think we’ve got the highest tax burden since World War II,” he told the BBC in May, when asked about this policy pledge.
Starmer has also essentially abandoned several other pledges, such as to nationalise public services like mail and water companies and the abolition of university tuition fees, among other of his 10 pledges from 2020.
“We are likely to move on from that commitment, because we do find ourselves in a different financial situation,” he told the BBC when asked about tuition fees.
More cake
Labour’s so-called “missions” for Britain (a “long-term plan to get Britain’s future back” that “will drive forward a Labour government”) instead include sticking “tough fiscal rules with economic stability at their heart.”
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If the new PM really wants to turn Britain around and keep his political momentum, he will need more than economic stability, growing cakes and political dilly dallying, however. He will need to improve the lives of ordinary people, as well as keep his promises, principles and integrity.
But Labour’s election manifesto does not even contain the sort of spending plans needed to protect public services from future cuts, the Institute for Fiscal Studies says in a response to the manifesto.
“Delivering genuine change will almost certainly also require putting actual resources on the table. And Labour’s manifesto offers no indication that there is a plan for where the money would come from to finance this,” the IFS adds.
Privatised water companies discharged raw sewage into rivers and the sea around England and Wales for 3.6 million hours in 2023 – double the previous year’s total. For a sense of how bad the problem is today, check this map of the south-east of the UK which shows how much sewage water companies are dumping right now and for how long.
As a water researcher, I am happy to see water quality high on the political agenda but aggrieved that it is because of the sewage scandal that has engulfed the UK, and especially England and Wales, in the past couple of years.
Companies have discharged more raw sewage than they are legally allowed to and the Environment Agency, as responsible regulator in England, has been unable to monitor and control offenders as its environmental protection budget was halved between 2010 and 2020. Water firms have neglected to invest in new and enlarged wastewater treatment works for decades and so the ageing system is struggling to meet demand.
An angry public demands cleaner water and changes to how water companies are regulated and run. All major political parties have at least something to say about it in their pitch to voters ahead of July 4 general election.
No clear blue water between Tories and Labour
The Conservative party doesn’t mention the word “sewage” in its manifesto. The party instead highlights what it sees as the government’s achievements in reducing leaks from water pipes, preventing supply interruptions and raising the proportion of designated bathing water sites classified as “good” or “excellent” from 76% in 2010 to 90% in 2023.
These “achievements” are misleading, however. Most of the 451 designated bathing water sites are around the coast, not rivers. Bathing sites only occupy a small stretch of a river (of which many are rated poorly) and most sewage dumpings take place elsewhere along the river, which is not accounted for in the statistics the Tories present.
The party would ban executive bonuses if companies commit a serious criminal breach (dumping sewage, for example) and use fines to invest in river restoration. The Tories evidently expect pollution to keep increasing. Forget working on the cause of the problem and preventing “serious criminal breaches” from happening in the first place.
The Labour party has said it will force water companies to “clean up our rivers” by putting them under “special measures” but does not explain what this means. Like the Conservatives, Labour wants to impose fines on water companies, block the bonuses of executives and improve independent monitoring. Again, Labour offers no further detail on what that would entail.
This is in stark contrast to election campaigns fought under Jeremy Corbyn, when Labour argued for renationalising the water industry.
Both Labour and the Tories propose fines which have proven to be no deterrent. The Environment Agency fined Southern Water – the company that provides water and wastewater services to more than four million people across Hampshire, Sussex and Kent – a record £90 million in 2021, yet illegal sewage discharges by water companies have only increased since then.
Ultimately, fines are a capitulation before the real problem of preventing illegal sewage discharges.
Lib Dems a bit bolder
Banning water companies from dumping raw sewage into rivers and giving them a duty to protect the environment is the goal of the Liberal Democrats.
The Lib Dems want to transform water companies into public benefit companies (but there’s no explanation of how these would differ from their present privatised form) and would ban bonuses for water company executives until rivers are clean (but there’s no definition of “clean”).
Ofwat, the economic regulator for the water industry, would be replaced with a new regulator with powers to prevent sewage dumping. The party also wants a sewage tax on water company profits to enforce existing regulations more effectively, set legally binding targets on the reduction of sewage dumping, create wetlands to stymie flooding and strengthen local authorities monitoring water quality – it’s unclear how this would meld with a “tough new regulator”, though.
Greens are pro-nationalisation
The Green party wants to bring water services back into public ownership along with Britain’s big five energy companies.
The Greens are the only ones putting numbers to the problem. The party estimates renationalisation would cost £5 billion and investment into water and sewage infrastructure a further £12 billion.
The experiment of privatisation has failed, they argue, and water should be treated as a public good.
Reform’s 50% offer
Reform UK does not mention the sewage scandal directly, but its manifesto proposes bringing 50% of each utility back into public hands. According to the party, this would save £5 billion across all utilities over five years.
Welsh water for Wales
Plaid Cymru wants more public control of Welsh resources, including water.
Lots of water stored in Welsh reservoirs goes to England, especially Birmingham and Liverpool. Plaid Cymru would align legislative competence over water with the geographical boundaries of Wales. In other words, Wales wants to fully take care of its water and improve its quality.
The SNP does not mention freshwater in its manifesto. Sewage dumping appears to be less common in Scotland, where the water industry is publicly owned. However, reports suggest official estimates are too low.
Northern Ireland’s Sinn Féin does not discuss water in its manifesto. The DUP acknowledges pollution in the UK’s largest inland lake, Lough Neagh, and asks for a concerted effort to preserve its water quality.
Watered down
The smaller parties have my sympathies for bringing forward bolder plans for water management in the UK. Unfortunately, both the Conservatives and Labour are very uninspiring in their hesitance to prevent pollution.
If better regulation, monitoring and enforcement is the most a new UK government will do then this will require a bigger budget for the Environment Agency, at least. Measuring the volume and composition of sewage outflows, not just the duration of pollution events, would also provide more accurate information.
Ofwat, the economic regulator for the water industry, needs reform too. The UK water industry is slow to innovate and misses opportunities to do so. As I have written before, the UK water industry is a small sector with a revolving door that leads former regulators to join the regulated, and vice versa. This creates obvious conflicts of interest and stymies change.
The experience of England and Wales implies that privatised water utilities are a bad idea. Margaret Thatcher believed this model would find admirers globally, but since the late 1980s, no other country has followed suit. In fact, the opposite has tended to happen: after a failed privatisation, Paris returned its water supply services to public hands.
Privatisation has excluded the public from discussing water management in the past 35 years. It is time to reconnect people with the very resource we all need to survive. Capping a CEO’s bonus does not go far enough.
Social movements and trade unions in France are rallying behind the New Popular Front, which promises a genuine alternative to the far-right and liberal health policies
Trade unions and activists warn that a National Rally victory would spell disaster for public healthcare in France. If the far-right wins the upcoming election, as polls currently predict, changes would come at the expense of sexual and reproductive health services and migrant health, among other things.
Marine Le Pen’s party recently dominated the European Parliament elections, prompting President Emmanuel Macron to call for a snap election, hoping to mobilize voters against the far-right. According to analysts, Macron gambled that the people of France would go to great lengths to keep the National Rally out of power, perhaps even reaffirming his mandate.
However, Macron’s policies, including privatization and commodification of health services, have fueled the far-right’s growth. His administration has caused closures of local hospitals, creating health deserts, and continues to push for more privatization, causing patient suffering. Despite the failures of this approach, liberals continue to pursue the same strategy in the current campaign, advocating for a more profit-driven logic in healthcare. The Trade Union of Health Centers’ Physicians (USMCS) stated: “We are experiencing the consequences of this policy on a daily basis. Patients suffer. We want no more of it.”
The far-right is expected to continue liberalizing the sector while introducing intolerance and xenophobia by prioritizing French citizens and marginalizing other residents. “If implemented, the [far-right policies] will pose a major risk to public health, not only for these ‘excluded’ individuals but also for the population as a whole,” USMCS warned.
“Abandoning the values of solidarity and universalism that underpin our healthcare system, a right-wing program will worsen social and territorial inequalities. We reject any program that proposes a healthcare policy based on exclusion and discrimination.”
Trade unions and organizations, united under the Tour de France pour la Santé, are backing the New Popular Front (NFP), a left-wing coalition opposing Macron’s policies as much as the far-right. The NFP plans to retract the controversial pension reform, curb living costs, and rebuild the healthcare system by recruiting healthcare workers, increasing incomes, and regulating the private sector. For example, the program states that new private clinics will only be allowed if they provide guarantees that patients will not face any out-of-pocket costs.
The USMCS emphasized that the NFP’s program is the only one to offer real prospects for healthcare reform. To support this, the Tour de France pour la Santé announced a series of actions during the election campaign, starting with an assembly in Lille on June 27, where activists will discuss the importance of resisting the far-right. Speakers will include Françoise Nay from the People’s Health Movement (PHM) France and Ramon Vila from the trade union SUD Santé Sociaux.
“Confronted with the threat of the extreme right, now more than ever, we urge citizens, trade unions, associations, mutual insurance societies, and progressive parties to unite in defending the right to health for all,” the platform said in its press release.
Ahead of the first round of the election on June 30, the National Rally leads with approximately 35% in polls, followed by the NFP at more than 29%, and Macron’s party at 19.5%. Bridging the gap between the far-right and the progressives might be possible with strong social movement support.
People’s Health Dispatchis a fortnightly bulletin published by thePeople’s Health Movementand Peoples Dispatch. For more articles and subscription to People’s Health Dispatch, clickhere.
