The most striking thing here is not the closeness of the score but the incoherence of the age pattern beneath it. The 25-34s backed the plan three to one and the 45-54s went two to one for it, yet the 35-44s and 55-64s — voters with the most exposure to pension savings and the least appetite for having them redirected into gas pipes and reservoirs — turned against it just as hard. That is not a generational story so much as a life-stage one: it is precisely the cohorts staring hardest at their own pension statements who flinched from the funding mechanism, even where they might sympathise with the underlying case for public ownership.
That fault line goes to the heart of why this idea, however popular renationalisation itself has become since the sewage scandals and dividend rows of the privatised era, struggles as policy: voters can hate what shareholders have done to water and rail without agreeing to underwrite the alternative with their own retirement savings. It echoes a broader post-2008 suspicion of any scheme that treats "trillions in pension assets" as a spare national piggy bank rather than money already owed to people.
The floor's argument tracked that split almost exactly. The top Yes case insisted the sector's problems are structural — "they will always priorities paying shareholders before customer (citizens) satisfaction" — and that debt-loaded firms should be let fail rather than propped up. The most-respected No voice didn't dispute the diagnosis so much as the cure, calling the pension-funded route "just a money grab to shore up failing, badly managed enterprises."
The chamber, in other words, agreed on the disease and split on whether this was the medicine or another dose of the same poison.
5 Opinions
There's a clue in the title PUBLIC utilities.. Public utilities 1st priority should always be customer service & satisfaction. Whilst they're private companies they will always priorities paying shareholders before customer (citizens) satisfaction! The simple answer is to let all these utility companies that have loaded themselves with debt to service payouts to shareholders go into bankruptcy & then the government can/should then buy them for a £1 & start again!
It’s been proven that private companies are out to benefit those who have investments within them. Rather than ensuring the service is maintained and well run. We tried and we failed now instead of borrowing money why not use the money that’s sat around doing nothing, invest it and return the funds when it’s suitable to do so? If the rich can borrow off their assets why can’t the government use those funds and assets in the same way.
Regulate them more punitativly
I do think the utilities should be nationalised, but not via pension funds. That is private money, not public money. Nationalising should be done by strictly enforcing regulation and taking failing ones. The shareholders should take the hit, not the funds directly (of course, that may be the same in many cases)
This is just a money grab to shore up failing, badly managed enterprises. If it improves, maybe I'd be willing to invest, but not before.