Thames Water’s previous owner, investment bank Macquarie, is proud of its record managing the privatised utility. During its ownership and since, billions of pounds of debt was laden onto the water company, now stumbling from financial crisis to crisis. No wonder Macquarie is proud of its record – in the same time Thames Water paid out dividends worth £2.6 billion. Macquarie is proud of looking after its balance sheets, while we pay the price for decades of underinvestment and higher bills while private profiteers siphoned money away.
Meanwhile, water companies continue to pump sewage into our waterways. Water companies are responsible for monitoring their own pollution, so it’s no wonder the body representing them has warned it is undermining the public’s trust in them. While they’re marking their own homework, big water bosses are worried that working-class people won’t put up with their polluting profiteering much longer and the profit taps will be turned off. Instead of just setting up a new independent (and likely toothless) regulator to measure sewage spills, the whole water industry should be brought back into democratic public ownership. Starmer’s Labour government took over Scunthorpe steelworks in one day, saying it had to take drastic action due to how important steel is to the economy. Well, what about our water supply! Let’s kick out the fat cats, with compensation paid only on the basis of proven need – they’ve had years getting rich from our behalf. And put working-class people in charge to democratically plan how to make our water system fit for purpose for us, bring down our sky-high bills and protect the environment
