You’ve been lied to, you’ve been misled, you’ve been extorted, you’ve been cheated, and you’ve been abused. For the last 35 years, you have been subject to nothing more than possibly the greatest organised ripoff perpetrated on the British people, and you have had little in return apart from greed, profiteering, financial engineering, political failure and regulatory incompetency. You’ve been had.
Thirty-five years after we were promised a utopian, market-driven vision of greatness, a future in which we would glory in the delights of an unlimited supply of clean water; in which our sewage would be quietly, efficiently collected, treated and disposed of, while our rivers, lakes and seas would teem with an abundant, diverse array of flora and fauna; and to top it all off we would have the cheapest water bills on Earth.
But in reality, this Thatcherite-envisioned theme park has delivered nothing but pain, sorrow and anger. Water bills, which have gone up by 40% since privatisation, are scheduled to increase by an average of 21% by 2030 (factor in inflation and this could mean increases of up to 60% for some). Today every single river in England is polluted, a whole village has been poisoned and, between January 2020 and December 2023, pipes were dumping sewage into our rivers and on to our beaches for a total of 12,216,693 hours.
And helping guide this trail of tragedy is a regulatory system so dysfunctional and so deeply fractured that it has become indifferent to its own failure and incompetence.
A system that is infected by another great scourge of the 20th century, the Chicago School of Economics. Regulations distort the operation of free markets, apparently, and the market will provide, apparently. Its disciples, like many senior figures within the water industry’s regulator, Ofwat, have become blinkered, blinded – nay, obsessed by what they see as the highest of all intellectual high altars.
They truly believe that instead of regulating the water companies, simply naming and shaming those involved will somehow trigger a sense of human decency and accountability buried deep within even the darkest souls of water industry executives. The truth is, these executives are driven by nothing more than greed, pay, bonuses, self-interest and shareholder value.
Indeed, it is the wanton obsession with non-interventionism that has triggered this travesty; a travesty of such a scale and proportion that it not only blights every river in the country but diminishes the lives of the more than 60 million people living in England and Wales affected by Ofwat’s woefully ineffective decision-making processes.
Make no mistake, whatever rhetoric you might hear – “we’re sorry”, “we apologise”, “we’re taking action” – the industry and regulators are now demanding that you will pay a second time for a sewage service that you have already paid for and that you simply never got.
Not forgetting that while all of that has been going on, water companies have ram raided your bank accounts for the £78bn they have paid shareholders in dividends since privatisation and the £100m they have paid out to fat-cat bosses in salaries and benefits in the past 10 years.
In an ideal world, if the boards of Ofwat and the Environment Agency understood anything about honour, chivalry or principle, they would have resigned – and certainly should do so today, en masse.
And do not think for one second that our political lords and masters have served us any better. Sections of the River Spey in Scotland, what should be one of the finest salmon rivers in the world, are failing, and that majestic emblem of Northern Ireland, Lough Neagh, has been poisoned. A toxic cocktail of human effluent, agricultural waste and God knows what else has been allowed to pollute most of our treasured bodies of water. In fact, what we are witnessing right now is nothing short of wholesale environmental ecocide following decades of governmental negligence.
After years of pointless, ineffectual meetings, round tables, consultations, yet more consultations and yet more round tables, of greenwashing and window dressing, it is time to take action.
What is needed now is brave, incisive judgment, coupled with the vision and determination to succeed and deliver; what is needed in this quagmire of sewage corruption is a complete root and branch review, the restructuring of an industry that has spectacularly failed customers and the environment, and for the government to enforce the law and to end pollution for profit. We need, and should demand, leadership and urgency.
It is now time to flood the streets with your rage, your anger, and your disappointment. It is time to say it stops here, it stops now and it stops today. Become part of the coalition of the concerned: join me to help get the UK’s waters off life-support; join me as I march to Parliament Square on 26 October for clean water; join me as I march for the future for our rivers, lakes and seas; join me to help create a future for our children, our children’s children and the children of our children’s children.
Flood the streets – we’ve had enough. Turn your outrage into action.
Feargal Sharkey is a campaigner and former lead singer of the Undertones
