Cleo Sharp, Liverpool North Socialist Party
One consequences of privatisation of utilities, started by Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s, is massively inflated utility bills, which are becoming utterly unaffordable for many working-class households. All the while, profits soar.
Another consequence is deregulation, crumbling infrastructure and pollution. Despite his talk of ‘greater public control’ over the water industry. Burnham is backtracking on renationalisation, a policy supported by the overwhelming majority of the population.
An independent investigation from Watershed Investigations, the Guardian and the campaigning organisation River Action has revealed that negligence in the oversight of wastewater treatment has led to it being improperly cleaned.
Profit-seeking companies are allowing industrial chemicals into our rivers, seas and farmland at a rate of 608 billion litres per year. For the water companies, this has brought in £340 million through giving out permits to businesses to get their industrial wastewater treated. The ‘treatment’, however, leaves in toxic chemicals such as flame retardants, solvents and pharmaceuticals.
Pollution in the UK is already out of control, with every river in the UK already containing forever chemicals and now industrial chemicals potentially ending up in farmland.
We are denied democratic control over the utility companies because they remain in the hands of the profiteering bosses.
As the first catastrophic symptoms of climate collapse begin rearing their heads across the world, we can no longer wait to get pollution under control. The Socialist Party fights for nationalisation of utilities, to be put under direct democratic control of the working class, so that such dangerous disregard can never be allowed to happen again.
Rather than companies competing for profit, nationalised water would be able to be planned, with investment to stop pollution and waste, and to lower bills.
