When Britain’s water and sewage industry was privatised in 1989, the promise was that private investment would result in a massive expansion of the infrastructure to overcome some of the problems with droughts and leakage that had emerged in the 1970s.
The real reason for privatisation – based on the actual outcome – was to fuel the Thatcher government’s addiction to hawking public assets to fund tax cuts and corporate welfare kickbacks to their wealthy supporters. Most obviously, Britain has never had a water grid to allow surplus water in the mountainous, Atlantic-facing west to be pumped to the drought-prone and over-populated southeast. Nor was government in the 1980s prepared to even consider such a network. And the private regional water companies after 1989 had no interest in funding such a large infrastructure project. Indeed, even in the wet – and often flood prone – west, there has been no investment in new reservoirs to capture some of that water, despite a growing risk of drought even in those regions in hot and dry summers such as 2020 and 2025.
It turned out that, even as the privatisation bill was passing through parliament, Britain’s last reservoir was being constructed. The Carsington dam in the Peak district was completed in 1992. But subsequent proposals for new infrastructure have fallen foul of political opposition and restrictive planning regulations, together with the increased cost of construction in a country that has largely forgotten how to build infrastructure.
This is not to suggest that no infrastructure improvements occurred after privatisation. In a monopolistic quasi-market system, even private companies are subject to a degree of state oversight. And regulators had to justify their existence by insisting on a minimum improvement of Britain’s Victorian era water pipes and sewage processing systems. Moreover, European legislation insisted that Britain end its practice of dumping raw sewage into rivers and inshore waters. Much of this improvement though, was funded by a raft of borrowing which has been rolled-over but never repaid ever since. And almost all of the money people paid for their water was doled out as dividends to shareholders. With the result that as the now floundering water companies face liquidation, one way or another, the state will have to step in (even the neoliberals are not so insane as to leave London without water) leaving a beleaguered public to pick up the tab.
Read more: The Consciousness of Sheep
