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Public Ownership of Water Best Serves Scotland's Interests
A House of Lords committee has slammed the UK water industry for the poor state of the UK water sector.[1]Except that the ‘UK’ doesn’t include Scotland or Northern Ireland, where water is publicly owned, or Wales where it is run by a non-profit, but just England where ten private water companies provide dirty and expensive water to consumers.
Water is essential for life, so why was it privatised under Thatcher? Never mind that she would have privatised her grandmother if she’d had the chance, did water privatisation deliver, as promised, a cheaper product more efficiently? No. Household bills are higher in England than in rUK; private equity firms and foreign governments feature prominently in the ownership profile; high profits and big shareholder pay-outs are common; the English companies are carrying a rising amount of debt, leaks are rife and they are routinely dumping live sewage into English waterways.[2]
The clean-up costs required to rectify this sorry state of affairs most likely will be dumped onto consumers.
Now look at Scotland. Water is a publicly owned utility, answerable to the Scottish Parliament. Scottish Water has invested a record amount in infrastructure so that bills are lower than all the English companies and the water from the taps in Scottish waterways is far healthier and cleaner.[3]
Of these two alternative ways of providing a public good like water, which is preferable?
It’s not hard to extrapolate from this example that public ownership and regulation of other public goods such as energy, health, education, and transport, best serve the people’s interest, not the English model that enriches an international financial elite.
Leah Gunn Barrett
26/03/21
[1] https://www.ft.com/content/25be1fcf-84c9-439f-9aaa-991c81322edb
[2] https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/water-in-uk-public-versus-private/
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