“Water is essential to life” was the moral centre of this emphatic Yes victory, which drew more than four in five votes on this platform. The winning side treated water as a public necessity rather than an ordinary market, with the argument the floor rated highest insisting that “No private monopoly should profit excessively”.
Yes voters tied that principle to bills, sewage, dividends and neglected infrastructure. Their sharpest practical case was that “the profits made should then be put back into building reservoir & fixing leaks”, while other voices called for gradual renationalisation, tighter public control and protection from foreign ownership.
No voters did not lack a case, but they offered a less settled reply to the question. One of the room’s most-respected No arguments asked, “Government run a company ?”, while another said simply: “Ownership is not the issue; it's regulation.” Their contention was that public management could be costlier and no better run, and that Ofwat’s failures—not private ownership itself—had allowed Thames Water and the wider system to deteriorate.
That left the two sides talking past each other. Yes voters saw a natural monopoly whose social purpose had been displaced by debt, executive pay and shareholder returns; No voters saw an infrastructure problem that would survive a change of title, with one Yes voice nevertheless conceding that “Civil Service cannot run a whelk stall” and calling for competent management rather than ownership alone.
The wider argument is over whether essential infrastructure should be organised around public obligation or private discipline, with regulation the unresolved bridge between them. The floor’s verdict was clear on ownership, but its arguments showed that the harder question is what public control would have to do differently.
29 Opinions
It's clear the companies are wholly unsuited to running such a serious and essential function of our country. The service needs to be consolidated into the care of a serious governmental body.
Ownership will make no difference when the problem is regulation and funding. Nothing was learned from Network Rail.
Yes yes yes! Sick of hearing how much head guy pays himself and trustees etc. sick of hearing about pollution of our waters, and how costs going up to fix the systems which should have been ongoing throughout the period they were privatised instead of high pay given to board. Then there was Australian company who took all money out of their water company and went back to oz. Then I heard Coca Cola pays £6000 odd to extract millions of litres making them billions of profit!
Given the huge cost to taxpayers and pensioners there should be a formula for gradual renationslistion of water companies using cash flow from those acquired to purchase those further down the list. Start with Thames Water.
Yes but. This simplistic & biased question ignores a sobering reality that Civil Service cannot run a whelk stall. Whether it should have been privatised deserves a good argument but particularly addressing the cold fact that where Treasury is involved funds will be denied or misapplied. It needs good private sector management with transparency & obligations that if not performed hurt failing Civil Servants & Treasury. Thatcher had Golden Shares. Labour sold them. Nuff said
Apart from the abject failure,mismanagement and constant transfer of public money to private shareholders- how can you have a free market when there is no real choice ? The same pipes for the water have to be used. It was a pretend privatisation, same as railways and their infrastructure
Changing ownership won't change the bill for upgrading Victorian sewers. But of course Thames Water should have been better supervised by OfWat. Horse, stable door...
Utilities vital to our homeland security like water and power should not be controlled by foreign governments or subject to the vagaries of global capitalism. We have now proven that under the privatised model, money flows out, investment is minimised as much as possible, services deteriorate and cost more & more, and the environment is disregarded. We need to bring back these services under the control of the government &the people that they serve.
YES There's a clue in the name .... Water is a PUBLIC utility. Yes the public need to pay for it to be delivered to their taps BUT the profits made should then be put back into building reservoir & fixing leaks not filling inventor bank accounts. Nor should water be about loading companies with debt to pay extortionate CEO salaries & dividends to the shareholders
Government run a company ? Think they are bad now. Had a monopoly rail ,phone,gas,etc and still run them down. Unions rubbing hands!