Thames Water – the UK’s biggest water distributor, serving 15 million households – is facing imminent collapse.
The company is in the throes of a scandalous debt crisis, after its biggest shareholders, the Macquarie investment group, left it laden with £14 billion in debt, all while pocketing juicy dividends.
After sucking the company dry, shareholders are now pulling the plug on further funding, complaining that investment is no longer profitable.
Thames Water has until next year to find new investors. After that, the company is sailing into uncharted waters.
Outrageously, Thames bosses have said that bills must be hiked up by 40%, in order to keep the company afloat and pay for much-needed improvements. Another firm, Southern Water, has forecast for bills to go up by 70%!
In other words, the working class will be made to foot the bill for the shareholders’ reckless mismanagement and pillaging, squeezing ordinary households’ living standards even further.
Pollution catastrophe
All of this occurs while a water pollution catastrophe is unfolding throughout Britain.
Raw sewage discharges in UK waterways have hit a record level of 464,056 spills in 2023 – up by 54% from 2022.
Various sites have been spilling sewage almost every day of the year. Southern Water alone has dumped sewage overflows for a continuous 273 days.
Swimming and water sports are now off-limits in many places, due to effluent in rivers and coastal areas. Figures reveal that hospital admissions for waterborne diseases like dysentery have increased by 60% since 2010.
At the same time, ‘rainy’ Britain is at risk of another hot and dry summer, driven by the climate crisis. With water infrastructure literally crumbling apart, leaking thousands of gallons every day, another water shortage is on the horizon.
This chaos is down to one thing: the chronic underinvestment and mismanagement of Britain’s water infrastructure – a disastrous outcome of Thatcher’s privatisations in the 1980s, and a reflection of British capitalism’s senile decay.
Clean up your own mess!
Given the extent of this carnage, the Environment Agency has called on the government to declare a ‘national environmental emergency’ and take action.
But the only thing that the establishment parties can come up with is banning bonuses for the water bosses.
These slaps on the wrist and impotent regulations have become par for the course in the water industry. Investors are making a killing, knowing full-well that they can ignore the consequences.
With collapse looming, the Tories are coming under increasing public pressure to renationalise Thames Water, and bring it under ‘special administration’.
But such measures are just another way to make the public pay for the bosses’ crisis. As soon as the company gets back on its feet, it’ll be sold off to the next gang of profiteers. As ever, it’ll be a case of nationalising the losses, and privatising the profits.
Instead of handing out more blank cheques to the fat cats, the labour movement must fight for nationalisation without a penny in compensation. To properly fund much-needed investment in utilities, we should seize the wealth of the billionaires and bankers.
Neither the Tories nor Labour are interested in improving Britain’s infrastructure or easing the burden on working-class households. They only care about the bottom line of the bosses.
What’s more, the crisis of Thames Water is far from an isolated case. The total debt of the water industry stands at around £60 billion, with four other companies also facing dire straits. None of the main parties have a clue how to deal with this mess.
In one of the wealthiest economies in the world, dependable clean water is becoming a privilege rather than a right. This represents nothing short of economic and environmental vandalism at the hands of the profiteers.
We say:
- No to water bill hikes! Make the bosses pay for their mess!
- Reverse privatisation! Nationalise the water industry – without compensation and under workers’ control!
- Expropriate the super-rich to invest in quality infrastructure and utilities!
