The Government Fails to Listen to the Public on Water

We may pay for the whole of the water industry, but we have no say in

  • what we get for our money,
  • the future of the water sector,

and no mechanism to make sure we have enough water in the future as we face climate change and increasing industry and population demand.

Even after the elections last week, where the public expressed how fed up we are with being left out, ignored, and patronised; we are still facing a government Clean Water Bill that ignores public opinion and shackles us to privatised water, lets failing companies off the hook with the promise of suspended fines whilst they ‘recover’ their finances, does not enforce existing laws to stop illegal pollution and where it does find water companies criminally guilty lets them get away with paltry fines, and donations to charities.

Given the shocking state of the water industry and the lack of national strategy in the face of real challenges to our water security – we need real decisions, and a water bill that will conserve and protect water now and for the future.  That means the government must listen to the public and the vast number of MPs now speaking up and properly investigate Public Ownership to see if a modern bespoke public ownership model can pave the way out of the current disaster, where the only known predictable trajectory is higher bills, higher debt payments to overseas owners, more people in water poverty, little progress on pollution and no plan to make sure we have a resilient water system.

Whilst the People’s Commission on the Water Sector found that the fundamental cause of the crisis in the water sector was the failure of privatisation, further exposed in Dirty Business, the government refuses to countenance even investigating the cost/benefits of other models including public ownership. It digs its heals in on spurious and discredited claims that public ownership of water is too expensive whilst at the same time DEFRA has said it hasn’t even looked at the costs, whilst the People’s Commission has reported that water is cleaner, cheaper and fairer in public ownerships across the world.

Meanwhile across the country campaign groups valiantly apply for Bathing Status as the only real route to getting our rivers cleaned up, using the status to secure weekly testing, signposts to warn people paddling playing and swimming that the water is polluted, and holding regulators and agencies to account to meet the criteria of no more than 10 untreated sewage discharges in a year.  This gets us nationally on average 12 new stretches of river of no more than 1 mile at a time, which will at sometime in the future be fit for people to paddle in under current regulations, most of which ignore the massive array of chemicals now being discharged into our river unmonitored.

In Ilkley we used Bathing Status to secure a clean up badged by the agencies and Yorkshire Water as ‘new investment’. What they are actually doing is making sure there is capacity in Ilkley to treat our sewage – that in our books is maintenance! Yorkshire Water has had to face up to the fact the pipes were crumbling (the burst manholes along the river bank) and the sewage works did not have the capacity fit for the population of Ilkley and Addingham. The infrastructure going in, whilst welcomed, just ensures that Yorkshire Water complies with the law (which says untreated sewage must not be discharged outside exceptional weather) and treat our sewage. The fact that local people have had to campaign, lobby, pressure, pester for 8 years to get a compliant treatment system is ridiculous, as is the whole Bathing Status system that requires the public to apply for Bathing Status in order to get the regulators and government to make the water companies do what they are legally required to do. Its just madness. Not only that but we find that there is a new bureaucracy springing up with Yorkshire Water now putting in place a Yorkshire Bathing Water Partnership which we will pay for from our bills, but excludes the very campaigners and local people who are trying to secure clean rivers  – except through a promised ‘independent stakeholder representative’ which we doubt will be one of us.

So what now? This is what you can do

  1. Sign our Petition calling for a Referendum to bring water into public ownership. The point of this petition is to get a national debate with the public having a real say in the future of our water.  Currently at 120,000 signatures the government has to consider this for a debate in the House of Parliament. You can see how many people in your constituency have already signed by looking on the map here – looking along the Wharfe so far 400 in Ilkley, 291 in Shipley, 410 in Leeds North West.
  2. Email your MP – you can find a letter here
  3. If you want to hold a screening of Dirty Business and hold your MP and Cllrs to account then we have clips you can use. Fill in the form here

Oh and just to show how crazy the arguments are getting, Defra’s latest is that “getting freshwater to meet bathing standards is harder than at coastal locations as the sea benefits from the natural disinfection of saltwater” – tell that to the thousands of holiday makers this summer being told not to swim in the sea because of local pollution alerts. Oh and by the way, if the regulators and government applied the law our freshwaters wouldn’t be being polluted by untreated sewage in the first place…. What is Defra thinking?

Footnote Local MPs and Elected officials speaking out for the government to investigate public ownership : Anna Dixon MP, Alex Sobel MP, Tracy Brabin WY Mayor