| | Hi, Marion's Phil. |
| | I like to talk about politics and usually the big political issues are things like the economy, the NHS, education, housing, you know, things like that. |
| | Water quality, not traditionally a hot-button issue. |
| | Until, that is, the Tories began to allow an already failing privatised public service to dump biblical plague levels of pollution into our waterways to save on the costs which were mounting up in order to feed their debt and dividend habit. |
| | So, the Environment Secretary, Steve Reid, has been updating Express readers on progress and what's coming next. |
| | It's worth reviewing, therefore, what has happened so far and how Labour are making sure that come the next election, river pollution is back to not being a major political issue. |
| | But first, for daily news and commentary, please hit the subscribe button to stay notified. |
| | So, before getting to Reid's article, which, you know, being written for The Express means it's mostly in crayon, let's look at what Labour promised and have so far delivered. |
| | So, in the Labour manifesto, there's like a general promise to force water companies to clean up the rivers. |
| | Specific policies included boosting the power of regulator to block payments of bonuses to water company executives who carry on polluting waters and to bring criminal charges against those who keep breaking the law. |
| | So, the first piece of legislation was passed earlier this year. |
| | There is now a legal duty on water companies and those named individuals in senior roles to prioritise water quality. |
| | Because one of the big issues we have, you can set laws for like companies, but if no individuals have to take responsibility themselves, personal responsibility, then nothing really happens. |
| | You just keep changing the staff. |
| | Whereas now, if any executives, I mean, if they want to be really awkward, and if they go as far as deliberately trying to deceive regulators from this point, they can find themselves in prison. |
| | In reality, we're not going to see any executives going to prison, because that would be an act of gross stupidity on their part. |
| | Instead, what we will see is the intended effect of more treatment taking place in cleaner waters. |
| | Reid cited the case of athletes throwing up before the Oxford Cambridge boat race last year. |
| | There's been lots of other cases of sports being affected with competitors becoming seriously ill. We've had triathlon competitions, for example. |
| | Sometimes hospitalised in some cases. |
| | Such are the levels of pollution. |
| | Sometimes you'll get one or two cases. |
| | Sure, that happens now and then. |
| | But we're getting it as a regular occurrence. |
| | The law now requires water companies to come up with a plan for tackling pollution, which includes making sure outlets are monitored, and independently monitored as well, and for executives to face criminal prosecution if they drag their feet. |
| | So we should see the results of that within a year or two. |
| | Now, your plan sort of takes a year, then there's another year to judge it. |
| | So it could be a couple of years before we see major changes. |
| | But that is now in place. |
| | However, that is just the initial legal side of things. |
| | That is the stick, so to speak. |
| | So one of the reasons for the pollution, remember, is the fact that when Maggie Thatcher sold off the water companies, we were promised they would modernise their infrastructure. |
| | You will be shocked to learn this did not occur. |
| | In fact, a few years ago, when the pollution was massively increasing, they were going, oh, it's not our fault. |
| | It's the crumbling Victoria infrastructure. |
| | What would that be? |
| | The crumbling Victoria infrastructure you promised to update when you were privatised. |
| | So in the roughly 35 years since privatisation, these private water companies did not build a single new reservoir. |
| | In all the time we've had privatised water, there's been one new reservoir, but that was put into motion before they were privatised. |
| | So there's been no privatised new reservoirs. |
| | Now, nine new ones are going to be built. |
| | So just to show the difference it makes when you finally have a government that decides it's going to clear the mess up. |
| | Which brings me on to the cost. |
| | Now, obviously, the increases in water bills are not going to down at all well with the public. |
| | After all, we're now going to have to pay more for what is clearly a much worse service than it used to be. |
| | Even Conservatives cannot defend having to pay more for less if they're going to be true to their economic principles. |
| | But of course, the infrastructure still needs modernising. |
| | Decades later, and that costs money. |
| | And there's no point in saying, well, the water companies should pay for it. |
| | They don't have the money. |
| | All disappeared off to Dubai. |
| | It was all legal. |
| | There's no recourse to clawing money back as we're doing over Covid fraud. |
| | The way water was privatised was effectively the legal theft of public assets. |
| | And the public would have to pay for these improvements. |
| | Whether or not we allow the water companies to remain private or take them into public hands makes no difference. |
| | We're still paying. |
| | And as Reid explains in his Express article, it absolutely makes no difference in this case. |
| | The extra money which customers are now paying for these news reservoirs, at long last, another improvement, is going to be ring-fenced. |
| | So the money, if you're thinking to yourself, oh, this extra money is just going to end up going into the pockets of the shareholders and executives. |
| | It's not. |
| | It's going to be spent on upgrades. |
| | And if there's anything left over, it must be returned to customers. |
| | It will not be spent on dividends or bonuses. |
| | So at least the new money is not to be spent on further corporate greed. |
| | And indeed, in terms of established budgets for bonuses, by the way. |
| | Remember that by law now, those executives are not getting their bonuses if they are breaking the law in terms of levels of pollution. |
| | So if they don't start to prioritise cleaning the water up, they're not going to get bonuses anyway. |
| | As for the future of water companies in general, so their licence to print money really needs to end. |
| | It'll be interesting to see what happens. |
| | So if they can't extract enough profit out of the system when they're forced to do their jobs properly for the first time ever, then you could imagine this could go the way of steel and will have to be ultimately taken over by the government. |
| | There is a third option. |
| | So the government have ordered a review into how the water industry in England should run long term. |
| | That report should be out this summer. |
| | Now, one idea that I know they have been considering is the way Wales run their water. |
| | Now, it's not technically government run, but it's also not for profit. |
| | Welsh water has no shareholders, which has a couple of clear advantages. |
| | First, there's no obvious conflicts between profit and service. |
| | You still need to meet budgets, of course, but within that framework, you don't have to squeeze that budget for everything you can get out of it in order to maximise the reward for shareholders because there aren't any. |
| | Second, it's better value for money because you get the service you need with money left over being used to invest for the future. |
| | It means all of the money, 100% of the money, is spent on the service and bills can be kept lower. |
| | However, it does still run the same problem we had with NHS England. |
| | The day-to-day running is not undertaken by ministers, and yet ministers are still going to be held responsible for the results. |
| | That being said, if the main problem with the English water companies right now is profit, this option does satisfy a lot of people. |
| | I certainly do not think we should let water companies continue to make profit. |
| | That model, do you know what? |
| | It's been given decades to prove itself and demonstrably failed. |
| | The only reason we're getting some reservoirs built now and pollution being addressed is why? |
| | Because the government stepped in. |
| | If a private company cannot run the service properly without a minister breathing down their neck, what's the bloody point of a private water company? |
| | But I do accept the government's argument that legislation to nationalise would be very time-consuming. |
| | We're going to see the truth of that with British Steel at some point, and quite soon potentially. |
| | And that's just one company who values themselves as being basically worth nothing. |
| | There are over a dozen water companies in England, and they are likely to resist. |
| | Then there's the issue of debt. |
| | So we really shouldn't be taking those on. |
| | There was no excuse for racking those debts up. |
| | We didn't... Like, you could understand it borrowing for investment, and then market conditions meant that servicing the debt became a bit tricky. |
| | But we didn't get the investment. |
| | You know, I mean, it may well have been done with the permission of successive governments. |
| | As I say, it wasn't fraud. |
| | Governments allowed it. |
| | But that doesn't mean that we should have it as a public liability. |
| | We shouldn't accept the blame ourselves. |
| | So personally, I would accept as a compromise making water companies not-for-profit. |
| | They will still have to manage those debts. |
| | But without the pressure of having to maximise dividends, more of the money raised from customers will go into delivering the service. |
| | And in time, the debt will diminish and go away. |
| | No doubt just in time for a future Conservative government to sell it all off again. |
| | But there's not a lot we can do about that if people have short-term memories. |
| | Although that might be another benefit of making them not-for-profit. |
| | See, in public hands, the debts become public liabilities. |
| | And the Tories can go on about inefficient, inefficient, put it in the private sector. |
| | I can see a future Tory government selling these companies off without the debt, not loading the debt onto them. |
| | We keep the debt. |
| | And then they claim that that debt is Labour's fault for the next 10 years. |
| | Whereas if we make it a not-for-profit, it's sort of like a private company. |
| | Well, it is a private company. |
| | So they can't argue that we need to sell it off to harness the efficiencies of the private sector. |
| | Because it technically will be in the private sector. |
| | There just won't be any shareholders there. |
| | So that would make it more difficult for the Tories to sell it off. |
| | And also solves the problem of greed trumping service and value without adding debts to the state balance sheet. |
| | But anyway, that's where we are right now. |
| | The action has been coming and it's been coming quickly. |
| | And the results should be noticeable long before the next election. |
| | But there we are. |
| | Those are my thoughts. |
| | Let me know yours in the comments below. |
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| | Thanks for watching. |
| | And until next time, I'll see you later. |