Water Companies: Sewage Discharge

Rebecca Long Bailey Excerpts

Monday 15th November 2021 Westminster Hall

[Rebecca Long Bailey (Salford and Eccles) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Paisley. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi) for introducing this important debate and for her speech, which I very much agree with.

The Rivers Trust has shown that there have been multiple sewer storm overflow incidents in the city of Salford, centring on the River Irwell and the Manchester ship canal. Last year, as we have heard, water companies dumped raw sewage into England’s rivers and seas 400,000 times, so it will take more than regulation to fix the problem. Indeed, the water industry has been regulated since it was privatised in 1989, and fining many water companies millions of pounds has demonstrably not affected their behaviour. Yorkshire Water and United Utilities have even tried to claim in court that they are not public authorities and should not have to publish data on sewage.

As a result of privatisation in 1989, our water and sewage are now run by nine regional private monopolies that are owned mostly by private equity. Since privatisation, water bills have increased by 40% in real terms. Eye-watering new research from the University of Greenwich shows that the water and sewage companies have paid shareholders a total of nearly £17 billion in dividends from 2010 to ’21—an average of £1.4 billion a year.

Over the three decades since privatisation, the privatised English water companies are estimated to have paid out £57 billion in dividends to shareholders. That is almost half as much as the money they have spent on upgrading and maintaining water and sewage systems. Worse, six water companies were found to be avoiding millions in tax, and the Financial Times has reported on the huge debt piling up in the water industry, which confirms that our water bills are rising to pay for huge shareholder pay-outs, not to invest in infrastructure. The truth is that privatisation of our water industry was wrong, and it has been a complete failure for the British public.

The good news, however, is that bringing water into public ownership would pay for itself within about seven years. After that, it would save the public purse £2.5 billion a year. That money could be invested in infrastructure to stop sewage pouring into our rivers, lakes and seas, as well to reduce leaks to save water and cut bills. The new public water companies could be democratically controlled, transparent and given a duty of care to take care of our environment, to clean up our rivers and seas, and to do everything they can to tackle the climate crisis. There is no excuse not to do this.

In Scotland, water is already in public ownership. In Wales, it is not for profit. In the past 15 years, 235 cities in 37 countries have taken their water into public ownership. I am sure we all agree that it is unacceptable for raw sewage to flow into our rivers and seas. If we are serious about tackling that ecological scandal, I stress that we must bring England’s water companies into public hands.