You might think it next to impossible to mismanage water quite so grossly in a nation surrounded by seas, running with rivers and notorious for its wet climate.
But that is precisely what our water companies and successive governments have done for decades, outrageously turning the ‘stuff of life’ into a massive polluter and danger to health.
Yesterday ministers finally – and belatedly – swore to end this national disgrace, pronouncing what Environment Secretary Steve Reed described as ‘the start of a water revolution’ and the biggest shake-up of the water industry since privatisation.
Reed certainly produced the right kind of rhetoric – wisely so, you might think, given the vast public anger at what we see, and smell, around us.
Water companies have been ‘allowed to profit at the expense of the British people’, while soaring bills hit families.
Vital infrastructure has been left to crumble while rivers, lakes and seas ‘are polluted with record levels of sewage’.
The water industry, said the minister, is ‘broken’. Most of us could have told him that.
From fouled beaches to rapacious foreign owners who profit so mercilessly, this is one of the greatest and most enduring scandals of British public life. The question is how things will ever change.
Yesterday. Environment Secretary Steve Reed described as ‘the start of a water revolution’ and the biggest shake-up of the water industry since privatisation
Not a single river in England is now officially rated as in ‘good’ condition. Pictured: the River Avon in Warwick
Detailed reforms are to be set out in a Government white paper, succeeded by legislation, following a dry, 464-page report published yesterday.
Sir Jon Cunliffe, the author, calls this a ‘Great Stink moment’ after the stench that pervaded Parliament in 1858, motivating politicians to tackle sewage in the Thames.
Reed pledged to halve sewage spills within five years, to make British waterways ‘the cleanest since records began’, and ensure families ‘never again’ face huge increases in water bills. We’ll see. There is abundant reason to be sceptical. Promises to clean up the country’s rivers stretch back more than 50 years. Yet waters have continued to get filthier and are at their worst ever.
Incredibly, not a single river in England is now officially rated as in ‘good’ condition.
Anti-pollution activists are understandably suspicious. James Wallace, chief executive of River Action, calls the report’s recommendations ‘vague policy nudges’ squandering ‘a once-in-a-generation opportunity to reset a broken and corrupted system’.
Surfers Against Sewage agrees, saying: ‘This is not transformational reform; this is putting lipstick on a pig.’
A giant porker at that. Just last Friday, a report showed the most serious sewage spills, damaging water life and threatening human health, rose by 60 per cent last year.
Sewage works released untreated waste into rivers and seas 550,000 times in those 12 months, while 14,500 sewerage overflows, only supposed to operate in emergencies, discharged for an unprecedented 3.6 million hours.
Meanwhile, hosepipe bans are being imposed around the country even though more than three billion litres of water are being lost from leaky pipes every day. At their present rate of investment, water companies would take 700 years to fix them.
Instead of investing, the companies have been ripping us off. Since privatisation, their owners have taken out more than £77billion in dividends while building up debts of more than £64billion.
Critics say this means they have paid themselves everything they borrowed, and more besides. A Greenwich University report concluded: ‘Since privatisation, shareholders have literally invested less than nothing.’
Company executives have been no less assiduous in filling their boots. Only last week, Southern Water defied ministers’ attempts to ban undeserved bonuses in the industry – by almost doubling its CEO’s pay to £1.4million.
More disgracefully, this followed the company imposing a devastating 53 per cent price increase on its 4.7million customers. If not quite at that level, the industry’s average increase is still an extortionate 26 per cent. Prices are due to rise by more than another 30 per cent over the next five years, exacerbating the escalating cost of living.
The pollution scandal – and unfulfilled government promises – dates back decades.
In 1972, I cut my journalistic teeth on the Yorkshire Post with an investigation into the county’s worst river polluters. In the ensuing furore the environment minister promised Britain’s rivers would be clean within five years. Today, the official clean-up date is 2063.
Then, some 35 years ago, I covered water privatisation, which ministers again assured us would slash pollution.
We have been here before. To some of us, the shameful state of the industry today was entirely predictable.
Privatisation was always a tricky proposition. Water can’t be moved easily so consumers have no choice about who will supply them. The new companies were necessarily monopolies in their areas.
Nevertheless, Michael Howard, the minister in charge, vowed privatisation would let the new companies launch ‘the biggest programme of sustained investment’ in the industry’s history.
To help, the government charged them less than the market value of the businesses they were acquiring. The debts of their nationalised predecessors’ debts were written off by the taxpayer to the tune of £6.5billion.
For a while investment did increase, but things soon started – like water – to go downhill. At privatisation, ministers had insisted they would stay in British hands.
But before long, most were bought by wealthy foreign entities, often with their own agendas – most notoriously Macquarie, the Australian investment fund dubbed the ‘vampire kangaroo’. They rapidly, and rightly, became extremely unpopular. The key point in yesterday’s shake-up is ending a complicated and clearly inadequate regulatory system which Mr Reed says has let the water companies ‘get away with it’.
Ofwat, the Environment Agency, Natural England and the Drinking Water Inspectorate have all been involved in attempting – and failing –to protect us from the ravages of the water industry.
The first two have come under heavy criticism: Ofwat for failing to ensure enough investment and for approving excessive price increases; the Environment Agency for not adequately curbing pollution.
These four are to be replaced with a single agency which, says Mr Reed, ‘will prevent the abuses of the past’.
The report recommended a water ombudsman, ending the dodgy system whereby companies largely monitor their own pollution, tighter oversight of ownership and better environmental and economic regulation.
Critics are angry the report did not call for a cap on executive pay and did not consider renationalising water. And they doubt that ministers will see achieve change.
I hope they are proved wrong – we all do. But for that to happen, the new regulator will have to be very tough and, above all, well resourced. The Environment Agency’s failures are largely down to lack of money: over the past 15 years, its funds have been cut by two thirds.
It is encouraging that a record 81 criminal investigations have been launched against English water companies in the past year. Their bosses could be jailed for up to five years, and the companies fined hundreds of millions of pounds – here, I see at least one potential way out of this grotesque mess.
They have shrugged off huge fines in the past, but a few top executives going to jail would be a different matter. It would be almost unheard of in a country where punishment tends to be pushed to the most junior level possible.
Without such a shock it is hard to see the water industry – or the rest of us, the victims in all this – climbing, literally, out of the sh**.
