This is not a good augury for the water companies

Burnham on Thursday said he was angry and that water customers were not a “bottomless source of funding” after 13 companies were allowed to increase bills to fund extra projects.

If people desire a better - cleaner, greener, say - water system then the people are going to have to pay for that. It could be through water charges, it could be through general taxation but the people are still going to have to pay. Who manages it - government or capitalists - doesn’t change that.

The major driver of the original privatisation was that government would not invest the necessary sums to upgrade the system. Privatisation did lead to a massive increase in investment and thus improvement of the systems. It is not - to be milquetoast mild about it - obvious that any form of nationalisation will overcome this point. Government could, obviously, direct hundreds of billions - about the amount required to wholly divide the sewage from the rain overflow system - into system investment but it won’t. On the basis that it didn’t when it could so why would it now?

That the PM is already bleating about bills does, rather, show that making water bills a direct responsibility of government itself is unlikely to increase the revenues to fund investment now, doesn’t it?

Still, democracy is the system whereby the voters get what they want, good and hard.

Tim Worstall