George Monbiot is, as always, spot-on with his analysis of the brutal outcomes of water privatisation (How the overseas owners of England’s water companies clean up by polluting our rivers, 26 April). We, the people, were robbed by Margaret Thatcher’s heist, never consulted or asked if we wanted to sell our prized publicly owned assets. Water and the other utilities were hoovered up by new owners slavering at the prospect of extracting all the cash from the companies – “leveraging” to give it a technical term, straightforward legalised money laundering in popular parlance.
The post-Brexit sewage crisis highlighted by people like Monbiot and Feargal Sharkey is the most visible result of the great stinking turd of water privatisation. Ofwat is pointless, just going through the regulatory motions while allowing the pollution to continue. Thatcher achieved privatisation with the stroke of a pen and a large majority. Keir Starmer will have the same circumstances to rectify this miscarriage after the election. I hope he has the guts to do it.
Peter Timberlake
Chichester
• George Monbiot’s indignation about the water industry in England and Wales can’t be faulted. However, I would caution against rushing to bring water companies into public ownership. There are many models for their ownership and operation, whether public, private or mixed. It is possible to find good and bad examples of each. Ultimately all are monopolies, and a core need is for much more effective regulation to protect consumers and the environment from private-sector greed or a parsimonious public sector – both of which lead to underinvestment in assets, resulting in their declining condition and performance.
It’s time to start a broader debate about sectoral reform, covering a full range of institutional, technical, financial and regulatory issues. This might include reconsidering the size of the companies, which are based on an outdated model of integrated river basin management. Regardless, public ownership alone is not going to help us.
Bill Kingdom
Oxford
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