Public ownership of water companies is the way forward - Yorkshire Post Letters

In a recent Times Radio interview, DEFRA Minister Steve Reed made several misleading claims defending the continued privatisation of water.

He said: “Scotland has nationalised water and pollution is worse there than in England.”

Yet SEPA data shows 66 per cent of Scotland’s water bodies are rated “good” or better - compared to just 16 per cent in England. He’s simply wrong. Yes Scotland is far from perfect but this is just an exaggeration.

He also claimed that nationalising water would cost “around £100bn”. Again, plain wrong. That figure stems from a discredited 2018 Social Market Foundation report. Moody’s estimated the actual equity value of water companies at £14.5bn. If allowed to fail, as Thames Water clearly has done, equity drops again to close to zero.

Reed argues nationalisation would hinder investment. Yet over the next five years, private companies are expecting to pay out around £22bn in dividends, £30–35bn in debt interest, and over £100m in executive pay - much of which could be going into infrastructure instead under public ownership.

What’s the point of raising investment and bills just to spend it like this? The water companies have cheated the public time and again and cannot be trusted.

He ignores the fact that England is the only country in the world with fully privatised water, and the UK’s sewage dumping is among the worst globally. Countries like France have re-nationalised water with strong public support and rapid quality improvements. Why can’t we do the same?

Even Nigel Farage now supports public ownership. So why isn’t Labour? I support Steve Reed’s call for a water revolution, but manipulating facts to defend a broken system undermines that goal. Public ownership must be back on the table. On this Steve Reed is plain wrong.