Water needs to be nationalised

The privatisation of the water industry has been an unmitigated disaster. This particular Thatcherite masterstroke was allegedly about bringing more money in the form of private investment into the water industry. A revived infrastructure serving all needs from investors to consumers. So much for the fantasy. The reality has seen more than 40 years of unscrupulous private investors asset stripping the sector. Investor dividends have been prioritised, whilst debt has piled up. Leaking pipes, building reservoirs and dealing with sewage outfall have all been put at the bottom of the priority list. The result is a water system that is an embarrassment to the country: sewage in the waterways, creaking infrastructure and higher bills. The system has been mismanaged, whilst some greedy people have got very rich at the expense of everyone else. Privatising public utilities has always been a nonsense. It does not bring competition and efficiency but private monopolies with licence to exploit vital public resources. The only way such privatisations would work is if they were so tightly regulated that little profit resulted. Then, those benevolent investors would not put their money in in the first place. Fortunately, things are beginning to change, with tighter regulation of water companies. Directors have been made personally responsible for resulting damage, whilst rewarding failure has been restricted by withholding bonuses. Though, in the longer term these vital public entities need to come back into public ownership. The process is now underway in the rail industry. Faltering water companies, like Thames Water, need to be taken into adminstration on the road to public ownership. No more bailouts or hitting the customer with higher bills. Neither should the model adopted with the banks in the crisis of 2008 be repeated. Then, these institutions were taken into public ownership, but once revived (at public expense) handed back to the privateers to probably do the same thing again. So, there are encouraging signs of change but the privatisation of water has created such chaos across our waterways that it will take time to resolve. The whole infrastructure needs renewal, with building reservoirs and fixing leaks, as well as dealing with sewage outfall all needing to be prioritised. Above all the industry needs to be run for the common good of all, not the benefits of a few.