Many people across our community are rightly angry that a basic human necessity like water has been treated as a cashcow for private shareholders and creditors while our rivers are polluted and our infrastructure crumbles.
The current proposal from Thames Water’s creditors is an insult to every household in the region. To suggest that a company should be allowed to bypass environmental laws and pollute our waterways for another fifteen years, just to protect the profits of lenders, is a clear example of why the current system is fundamentally broken. I have long argued that the privatisation of our water industry has been a multi-billion pound heist. Since 1989, we have seen massive sums extracted in dividends while the public is left with the bill for cleaning up the mess.
In June I asked the Secretary of State, “Would it not be better to bring it [Thames Water] into public ownership and set a share price based on the costs of pollution and on the exorbitant executive pay and bonuses, so that the public as a whole can control their water supply and no longer be left to the vagaries of the private sector, with all the devastation and damage it has caused over the past 30 years?”
We need a system that puts the environment and public health first, and that means ending the failed experiment of water privatisation once and for all. I will continue to work toward this aim.