THIRTY years ago today, Margaret Thatcher sold off our water. It was one of her most blatant transfers of public assets into private hands: 10 publicly owned water authorities were taken out of the public sector and gifted to private companies.

What followed has been nothing short of a legalised scam.
Our bills have risen by 40 per cent in real terms, and shareholders have sucked £18 billion out of our water over a decade. Water companies have been pumping sewage into our rivers, while their bosses have pocketed £70 million in just six years.

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what is happening. All you have to do is follow the stream of money to see what’s going on. Ordinary people, who are captive to their water company, are paying more and more while bosses and shareholders kick back and reap the reward.

This is bad enough when looking at the private water industry in general. But it looks even worse when you zoom in on specific companies.

Take Southern Water, for example. It’s headed up by Ian McAuley, who received a £500,000 bonus in 2018. It’s not clear what he did to deserve such a sum, but under his watch, the company was recently forced to pay £126 million for allowing sewage to pollute our environment and trying to cover it up for seven years.

Southern aren’t the only bad guys though. The rest of the privatised water companies are at it too.

Severn Trent’s boss Liv Garfield is clearly even more valued than Mr McAuley. She pocketed over £2 million in 2018. The unlucky folks from the Midlands who have the misfortune of paying Garfield’s salary should probably know that Severn Trent loses 431.6 million litres of water every day through leaks.

In 2017, Thames Water was fined after being caught pumping 1.4 billion litres of sewage into the River Thames. The fine? £20 million. How much did shareholders take in dividends between 2013 and 2017? £392 million.

Such practices are the norm in the water industry, which has enjoyed a bill-payer funded gravy train for 30 long years.
As the Financial Times recently highlighted, just 14 per cent of our rivers meet the minimum standards set by the Environment Agency. That could have something to do with the more than 17,000 sewage overflow points across the country where water companies pour untreated sewage into our rivers.

It doesn’t have to be like this. There is another way. In fact, England is the only country in the world to have completely privatised its water sector. You only have to peek over the Scottish border to see how things could be done better.

Scotland resisted Thatcher’s privatisation of water in England and Wales. It has maintained a publicly owned water company — Scottish Water.

And, lo and behold, Scots pay around £40 a year less in their water bills. Scottish Water has also invested 35 per cent more per household than England’s private water companies, upgrading infrastructure and preventing leaks. It’s worked too. They’ve cut leaks in half since 2006.

England’s southern neighbours have worked this out too. In 2010, Paris took its water into public ownership. The results? An 8 per cent reduction in water tariffs, 97 per cent customer satisfaction, and €35 million in profits which — instead of lining the pockets of CEOs and shareholders — is invested right back into the service itself.

This isn’t rocket science. It’s plain for all to see. And it’s no wonder that according to polling from the Legatum Institute, 83 per cent of the British public want to see water in public hands.

So that’s why today, We Own It has organised public demonstrations outside the major private water company HQs.
For 30 years, the private companies have got away with ripping us off, polluting our environment and creaming off the profits. Thirty years of water privatisation is thirty years too long.
The system clearly isn’t working. It’s harming people and it’s damaging the planet.

It’s time we brought an end to Thatcher’s disastrous legacy. It’s time we brought our water into public ownership.

Ellen Lees is campaigns officer for We Own It www.weownit.org.uk.