We need to turn the taps off on private water companies

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Ofwat seems to be toothless in preventing this obscene practice (PA)

England’s nine privatised water companies are, collectively, owned 71 per cent by foreign investors and by companies hidden in tax havens which received over £6.5bn in dividends in the five years to 2018.

GMB union published a report highlighting the extent to which foreign ownership is impacting our water companies and the huge amounts of money lost to overseas companies and banks.

This scandal of utility privatisation has not benefited Britain and has made little or no improvement of our water systems but simply increased the cost to the consumer and lined the pockets of already rich entities.

By comparison, the huge profits generated by the water companies have not changed much for the better. Recently water companies reported that they dumped millions of litres of raw sewage into our rivers and coastal waters. Many companies have been fined but still the practice continues.

Ofwat seems to be toothless in preventing this obscene practice. Many of our waterways are so contaminated that vegetation and fish cannot survive in them. With decades of privatisation and the profits water companies have done very little, and only when forced, to improve the situation.

With the huge profits already generated, what incentive do the directors and owners of the water companies have to spend their money on improving the water system, both drinking water and sewage? And why do they allow foreign bottled water companies to extract water from our depleting water reservoirs to sell abroad? Millions of litres leave this country and all profits generated benefit foreign companies.

The same is true of other privatised utilities trains and electricity: there has been little or no improvements or benefits for the consumer. Privatisation was never a good idea and now we see the folly of Mrs Thatcher’s decision, of selling off the utilities, coming home to roost. Hopefully the next Labour government will rectify this glaring historic mistake.

Keith Poole

Basingstoke

Is Nicola Sturgeon joking?

Ms Sturgeon has found a sense of humour. Expressing a strong desire for a separate Scotland to join Nato may not meet with unalloyed enthusiasm within the SNP, but it is her policy – along with joining the EU – for membership of which a separate Scotland would not be qualified.

She told an audience in Washington that her “independent” Scotland would play a key role in protecting the world’s seas against Russian aggression. Anyone familiar with the SNP administration’s record in commissioning ferries might well find that hilarious. Not to say ridiculous.

Jill Stephenson

Edinburgh

Linking trade deals to aid is cruel

Is Liz Truss now so desperate for post-Brexit trade deals, that incredibly she is suggesting linking foreign aid to trade deals?

When the most severely disadvantaged countries have only drought, starvation and misery to trade, what she is proposing appears staggeringly cruel. This appears to be (yet) another example of the Tory government running out of ideas, appealing to the basest instincts of their supporters and abandoning any pretence of humanity.

Alistair Vincent

London

For free speech until it suits them

So I thought Tory MPs were all for being anti woke and for freedom of speech, except it seems if one dares throw eggs at a statue or boo a royal! More evidence of the anti woke brigade’s pure hypocrisy.

Nigel Groom

Essex

Getting the work-life balance right

I must confess to having some sympathy with Boris Johnson’s position regarding getting people back into offices – rather than working from home – after all, it can be frightfully difficult to remain disciplined when one is working in one’s own domicile, which can be awash with distractions.

One minute you might be focused, intent on the day-to-day business of maintaining a smart and smooth-running operation, while the next there could be suitcases of wine, karaoke, canapes, cake and parties galore…

Julian Self

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Money for nothing?

I refer to yesterday’s editorial “The Bank of England is not to blame for high inflation”.

We are told that "In crude terms, inflation is the way that the country will pay for Covid and Brexit, with those able to protect their incomes coming out better than those with fixed incomes and weak bargaining power, who will experience a sharp decline in their real incomes and living standards. As usual with inflation, there will be an arbitrary process of income and wealth redistribution” and this is largely true.

The government could do little about the arrival of Covid, especially after negligently ignoring warnings of the likelihood of such an event, but Brexit is an entirely different matter. It is an act of self harm and it continues to harm unabated.

Let us take a look at the beneficiaries of the “arbitrary process of income and wealth redistribution”. Far from being arbitrary, the process is clearly directional. It will be massively beneficial to those whose incomes are not fixed and who do not need bargaining power. Could many of the beneficiaries also be the very same people who benefit from the iniquity and inequity of tax havens, a process the EU sought to curtail and, I suspect, a major driver of the Putin backed promoters of Brexit?

Is this a “good time” for Johnson to wheel out the sale of housing association assets and once again mug the "society" that the Tories deem non-existent in emulation of Thatcher’s council house fire sale?

David Nelmes

Newport