debts

Troubled Thames Water reveals ballooning debts and losses for the past year

Spread the love

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/troubled-thames-water-reveals-ballooning-debts-and-losses-past-year

 A tanker pumps out excess sewage from the Lightlands Lane sewage pumping station in Cookham, Berskhire, January 10, 2024

THAMES WATER’s debts have ballooned to £16.8 billion and it made a loss of £1.65bn in the year to March, the company revealed today, sparking fresh calls for renationalisation.

Appearing before the Commons environment committee, chief executive Chris Weston admitted that the company was “extremely stressed” and would take “at least a decade to turn around.”

Britain’s largest water supplier also revealed a sharp increase in pollution incidents over the past year.

Gary Carter, a national officer at water industry union GMB, said: “Thames Water is drowning under a mountain of debt.

“Hiking customer bills has led to a rise in operating profit, money that should go on investment but is being swallowed up by monstrous loans needed to keep the company afloat.

“While Thames lurches from crisis to crisis, the solution is clear: it must be taken back into public ownership, with workers’ terms, conditions and pensions protected.”

…

Article continues at https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/troubled-thames-water-reveals-ballooning-debts-and-losses-past-year

Continue ReadingTroubled Thames Water reveals ballooning debts and losses for the past year

Morning Star Editorial: Public services can’t wear further cuts – Reeves must be stopped

Spread the love

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/editorial-public-services-cant-wear-further-cuts-reeves-must-be-stopped

Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves arrives to meet students on the carpentry course during a visit to Bury College in Greater Manchester, March 20, 2025

…

Fourteen years of Tory rule have cut services to the bone. The notion that “efficiency savings” can slice off further billions without worsening already degraded services is absurd.

Ironically, the cuts are intended to fund increased military spending — though if there is a department renowned for waste it is the Ministry of Defence. The MoD is repeatedly excoriated by the public accounts committee for the huge sums squandered on projects that end up delayed by years or not delivered at all.

Current Defence Secretary John Healey, when in the shadow cabinet, published a report identifying billions it had overspent on projects and billions more paid for cancelled contracts with its often extortionate suppliers. The report noted that the MoD had even been fined £32.6 million by the Treasury for its “poor accounting practices.” Yet it is this department which is having more billions thrown its way.

As for extortionate suppliers, the evidence is plain that besides tying institutions from hospitals to schools into contracts forcing them to repay PFI debts worth multiples of the original loans, many such agreements also tie them into inflexible and costly servicing contracts.

Outsourcing services is massively inefficient, yet remains the norm, despite Reeves’s one-time promise to deliver “the biggest wave of insourcing in a generation.”

As the Prison Officers Association (POA) points out of outsourced prison maintenance, we end up paying through the nose for “crumbling cells, compromised safety and rodent-infested jails.”

“We do not for one minute accept that the privatised model of prison maintenance is more cost effective than insourcing … it is completely delusional to claim it provides best value for the taxpayer,” POA general secretary Steve Gillan observes.

Clearly value for money is not Reeves’s priority — corporate profits are, including at the Treasury’s expense.

…

Read the original article at https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/editorial-public-services-cant-wear-further-cuts-reeves-must-be-stopped

Keir Starmer commits to play the caretaker role for Capitalism through the "hard times".
Keir Starmer commits to play the caretaker role for Capitalism through the “hard times”.
Keir Starmer explains the moral case for cutting disability benefits. He says work will set you free.
Keir Starmer explains the moral case for cutting disability benefits. He says work will set you free.
Continue ReadingMorning Star Editorial: Public services can’t wear further cuts – Reeves must be stopped