We can clean up the water industry within this Parliament
Southern Water prioritises profit over public health and ecological protection. As a private company 82% owned by an Australian investment firm, this should be no surprise to anyone. It’s a similar story right across the country. While the profits are privatised, the losses are very much left to the public to suffer from in the form of sewage dumping and ecological damage.
It is both a public health and ecological issue to have sewage and other pollution pouring into our rivers. In Winchester, a chalk stream, the River Itchen, goes right through the heart of the city. Chalk streams are very rare, with fewer than 210 of them in the entire world, and 85% of them are in southern England. Their ecosystems and biodiversity are unique. Chalk streams have taken millions of years to form, and they can be destroyed in just a few decades by companies that are either breaking the law or working within the law but, because there is such a lack of regulation, causing great environmental damage. That is bad for public health, consumers, prices and the environment.
We know that these ecosystems are struggling, with only 17% of chalk streams rated as having good ecological health. That is partly because of over-abstraction, partly because of pollution, and partly because of water companies dumping sewage in them. That not only destroys biodiversity but makes people who swim in it sick.
It is also worth acknowledging that a fifth of water is lost to leaks. Southern Water is in discussions with a company in Norway potentially to provide water to be tanked over from Norwegian fjords to deal with future droughts and water shortages. Over a long period, that is an absolute failure to plan, to invest in infrastructure and to provide the new reservoirs needed to meet future demand and help mitigate the impact climate change is having on our water security. It is also clearly a failure of regulation as there were no measures requiring the companies to invest in climate mitigation. Without proper regulation in place, private water company bosses correctly assumed the public would pick up the pieces and pay the price when things went wrong.
Trying to renationalise the entire water industry is one approach. I am sympathetic to the economic principle of keeping essential public utilities under public control, and were the water industry to be currently in public hands, I certainly would not be amongst those trying to privatise it. The crux of the problem however is urgency. The decades of underinvestment and acute sewage problem is here and it is now. We need solutions that can fix the mess within years, not another decade.
It’s for that reason I and my Liberal Democrat colleagues have been proposing a series of pragmatic solutions that could really make a difference quickly without the need for huge public investment. Firstly, banning water bosses of failing companies from receiving bonuses, a measure I'm pleased to see the government is taking up. Secondly, abolishing and replacing Ofwat with a Clean Water Authority, a regulator actually given the powers needed to hold companies accountable for sewage dumping and enforcing a sewage victims compensations scheme. And finally - to reform water companies into Public Interest companies, so that they are legally required to meet higher service standards. Under such provisions, the companies would be required to have environmental experts on their boards, ensuring they meet their minimum environmental standards before they are allowed to make any profits.
Putting social and environmental good at the heart of what water companies do is absolutely necessary to ensure that we are not still talking about how we are struggling with pollution, leaks and a lack of investment in 30 years’ time.
Dr Danny Chambers is the Liberal Democrat MP for Winchester and currently undertakes the role of Liberal Democrat Spokesperson (Mental Health).
