‘Public water, local power’

The clarion call of the Burnham premiership has been a blistering condemnation of decades in which the state stepped back and wrung its hands as the foundations of a decent life were eroded.

The cost of the things we cannot live without spiralled in tandem with the hollowing out of services and communities. Bills marched relentlessly upwards while what we got for our money got worse.

The solution? A remontada (a dramatic comeback) for the public realm so it’s no longer an outsourcer, but an enabler. Or, as some have coined it, a ‘Productive State’ that takes back control of delivering the essential services and infrastructure on which a decent life depends.

So when you heat your home, you’re paying for the energy you need, not swelling the super-profits of energy giants. And when you have a shower, you won’t be paying through the nose to Thames Water.

READ MORE: Labour conference motion calling for public ownership of water ruled out of scope

The diagnosis and the antidote apply to many of the drivers underpinning the cost-of-living crisis. Water is a case in point, where the consequences of elevating profit over need have been unforgivable. It is little short of a national disgrace that even during a summer of drought the routine pumping of sewage into our rivers didn’t cease.

And all the while, the British public are swindled for the privilege of witnessing the vandalism of the iconic waterways that crisscross our country, as rivers are extracted until they run dry or treated as open sewers until ecosystems die. Even precious chalk streams like Pix Brook, the Rib, Beane and Ivel in my constituency are not spared this vandalism.

If that wasn’t bad enough, ludicrously, in a country as wet as ours, we are on course for a water deficit of more than 6 billion litres every single day in 30 years’ time. New reservoirs are only set to make a tiny dent in this terrifying shortfall and there is currently no realistic prospect of water companies hitting the efficiency targets they have signed up to, either. All of this before the proliferation of data centres claim their thirsty share of our dwindling resources.

Water scarcity brings all the inadequacies of the privatised model into sharper focus. The question of whose interest decisions are taken in, on who gets what, and at what price become unavoidable: do households keep their taps running or will the unwanted local data centre get priority to keep churning out AI slop? The solution is public ownership, that much is self-evident.

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The proposed introduction of Regional Water Authorities can be a positive step towards public control. Their success will depend on whether RWA’s become democratic institutions with real teeth and power to make the polluters pay, or if they are just another quango – talking shops repeating the failures of previous attempts at regulation. They must have the power to direct improvements across the water system, shape investment in services, keep down bills and steer the long-overdue restoration of our rivers.

RWAs are not a substitute for nationalisation, and I welcomed the Prime Minister’s announcement in his conference speech of abolishing the Thatcher era ban on public ownership of water companies. What RWAs could and should become is a decentralising influence that complements and precedes democratic control of the water network. This makes pragmatic, some might say even commercial, sense. Take river restoration, an RWA could set and enforce restoration targets and bring together local farmers to reduce agricultural pollution and industry to tackle chemical waste together with a public water operator playing a vital role in banging stakeholder heads together to undo the harm of years of fragmentation and neglect.

Done right, RWAs can also introduce democratic accountability at a local level to the water system, whether redistributing control from the present model in the immediate term or providing a democratic check on a public operator. This can ensure nationalisation doesn’t become bureaucratisation, creating a connection with local communities so services respond to need, and driving improvement through democratic accountability.

This democratic function can be deepened further still by integrating elements of workers’ control, drawing on the thousands of years of combined knowledge held by the engineers, treatment plant workers, maintenance crews and other staff They have been let down by a broken model that won’t work no matter how much sweat goes in – they must be front and centre of a better future.

Critics of the privatised water system shouldn’t make the perfect the enemy of the good by shunning RWAs, nor should we be satisfied until water is in public hands. Regional Water Authorities can be an important step on a longer journey, putting democratic accountability at the heart of the water system and decentralising power away from Westminster. Which, as it happens, sounds rather like the raison d’être of a recently elected Labour MP…

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