Liv Garfield means well.
Her email to other utility bosses, reported here today, suggests a sincere attempt to make the failing utility sector work better for everyone.
She may have spread her net a little too widely from a distribution point of view, otherwise her pleas for the work not to be forwarded wouldn’t have reached us.
Not every recipient, (coughs), was delighted to be asked to act as if the particular woes of the water sector apply to them.
Energy companies may not be perfect, but they aren’t pumping raw sewage into our rivers. Telecom companies, after years of poor performance, are lately getting their act together.
So at some levels, her attempt to persuade other bosses that they are all in it together smacks of collusion, not a serious attempt to make Britain better.
In person, Garfield is entirely charming. But this all seems rather calculating; a bid to get the likely incoming government not to do anything too drastic that could hurt investors, God forbid, or jeopardise the pay of the very top dogs in a sector full of mutts.
What Garfield is suggesting here are secret meetings of top CEOs to influence policy on companies whose actions clearly affect the public (bills, sewage, hosepipe bans etc) and that are under considerable scrutiny due to questions as to whether they are fit for purpose.
The email is confidential seemingly only because it would be uncomfortable for the public to know about it, rather than it containing a commercial secret, which is why we are publishing it.
