The longer a scandal rolls on, the harder it is to keep in perspective. It now seems almost normal that we live in a country that pours raw sewage into waterways on a daily basis. When we first heard water companies were releasing filth into rivers and the sea — killing fish and giving bathers ecoli, it did come as a bit of a shock. Now those stories are routine.
Last week we heard Thames water discharged sewage some 300 times in just 48 hours after heavy rain — in some places sewage was pumped out for over ten hours. This week an annual wildlife survey in Cornwall was cancelled because the researchers found themselves swimming in effluent. A parasite crisis in Devon meanwhile cost some £16 million after the water was contaminated.
Campaigners demand urgent action, but a listlessness seems to have crept in to the way this crisis is being handled. It has rolled on too long. It keeps rolling.
Thames Water is a morality tale. The worst performing of the water companies, it is a symbol of everything that can go wrong when public services are nationalised — investors stripping monopoly utilities to the bones, ripping off customers and damaging the environment.
It is hard to argue that the principle of privatisation works with water services
What way out of the mess? The company is failing and in drastic amounts of debt. One idea is that costs should be passed to the customer by a huge increase in bills, but this would send a very bad signal — to the industry and the public — that a company can behave this recklessly and ask us to clean up the debt. What little credibility the regulator has would go altogether.
Instead the Government should allow Thames Water to go bust, and start again with new investors — or better yet, nationalise it. It is hard to argue that the principle of privatisation works with water services, in which competition is impossible. You cannot expect owners of businesses who are after all not elected to automatically work in the public interest where they are not particularly incentivised to do so.
Deadlines loom Thames Water’s credit ratings were slashed to junk status. It’s time to make a decision.
And if you are going to pay dividends to shareholders rather than, say, spend it shoring up the service itself, your management better be vastly more brilliant than it would be in government hands. Scottish Water stayed public and it is better run and lower priced by far.
