“Private interests have run the water system into the ground, incurring vast debts to cream off dividends for shareholders – all while 75% of our rivers and waterways were pushed into poor ecological health.”
Sam Browse, Labour Assembly Against Austerity, explains why CLPs should send the motion for public ownership of the water companies to Labour Party conference this year.
This summer, water companies once more proposed hikes to bills even as Ofwat, the water regulator, handed record fines to water companies for continued sewage dumping. As we approach Labour Party conference, it’s vital we keep this issue on the agenda and argue for a real solution to the problem – the public ownership of water, run in the interests of people not profit.
The water companies claim the price hikes are necessary to upgrade the creaking infrastructure responsible for the dumping. It’s true that it needs investment. The spills are a feature, not a bug, of our Victorian sewer system; they’re caused by overload, with excess water and sewage expelled into storm overflows which is then dumped into our rivers and seas.
But while we need an upgrade, it’s not bill payers who should bare the cost. Since water was privatised in 1989, water companies have made £53bn in profits while sinking into £60.3bn debt – without having invested any substantial sum in the infrastructure. Private interests have run the system into the ground, incurring vast debts to cream off dividends for shareholders – all while 75% of our rivers and waterways were pushed into poor ecological health by their profiteering. The uncertainty over the future of Thames Water – which is groaning under the weight of its own extractivist business model – is just the latest example of how unsustainable the status quo is.
The Government’s solution to the sewage crisis is to call for harsher penalties on water companies. But this won’t address the fundamental structural problems with the system, especially when fines are priced into the profit-making models of the water bosses.
What’s needed isn’t more fines and piecemeal upgrades, while bills increase and profits continue, unabated; it’s a business model that removes the profit incentive altogether and ensures every penny taken from bill payers is put back into the system. That means public ownership of the water companies, and an end to the rank profiteering that is the cause of both the sewage crisis and rising bills.
That’s why the Labour Assembly Against Austerity has drafted – with the support of the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy – the model motion to Labour Party conference, below, to end the sewage scandal and bring water companies into public ownership. The deadline for motions is 12th September – so make sure you get it submitted before then. Let’s keep fighting to end corporate greed and the ecological destruction of our rivers and seas – and put people, planet, and public services first.
You can read the text of the model motion below:
End the sewage scandal – bring water companies under public ownership
Conference notes that
1. On 11 July 2024, Ofwat announced an average increase of water bills by 21%.
2. On 6 August 2024, Ofwat announced £168m combined fines for water companies guilty of sewage spills.
3. Sewage spills in England’s waterways and seas more than doubled in 2023 from 2022.
4. Recent citizen testing of rivers found that 75% of rivers in Britain are in poor ecological health.
5. Sewage spills are a consequence of significant under-investment in our Victorian sewage infrastructure.
6. Between privatisation in 1989 and 2023, water companies accrued £60.3bn debts while paying out £53bn in dividends.
Conference believes that
1. Cleaning up our waterways and seas is crucial for tackling the climate and nature crisis.
2. Profiteering by private companies has created a sewage crisis.
3. Bill payers should not be forced to shoulder the burden of irresponsible under-investment in the sewage system.
4. Water companies should be run to provide services to people, not create profits for shareholders.
Conference calls on the Government to
1. Take the water companies back into public ownership, ensuring that water bills are held down while profits are re-invested in upgrading the sewage system.
- Follow the Labour Assembly Against Austerity on Twitter/X and Facebook.
- Rules and deadlines for Contemporary Motions for 2024 can be found here. If you wish to submit a motion on behalf of your organisation please do this before 5pm, Thursday 12 September.
You are absolutely right. All the money has been given as bonuses and salaries to the fat cats . Now they want us to pay their fines. Enough