Image: Steve Forrest
UNISON’s water, environment and transport conference, held in Brighton on Sunday, was dominated by an examination of the failures of privatisation in the water industry.
The conference came during renewed media scrutiny of water companies after a new report came to light highlighting thousands of instances of sewage being discharged into waterways in dry weather in 2022, in “illegal spills”.
On this note, one motion took aim at the situation calling the current prohibitions against the illegal dumping of sewage into rivers “woefully inadequate” and highlighted that, even with historic levels of sewage discharge, company bosses are pocketing millions in bonuses while wanting to increase bills by an extra £156 a year.
Image: Steve Forrest
Speaking in the debate, Natalie Mladenovich-Haigh (pictured above), chair of UNISON’s water industry sector committee, noted that “Sewage spills and illegal discharges into England’s waterways have doubled in the past year”.
She went on to highlight that this represented not only a disaster for the environment, but also for water staff and “our members within the sector who are facing an increase in attacks, both verbally and physically, from members of the public who are angry with the increase in both bills and sewage discharge”.
Another speaker from Yorkshire Water said: “We’re told now – don’t wear any ID outside of work. I ‘no longer work in Yorkshire Water’, ‘I work in IT’.”
The motion called on the SGE to monitor the impact of public abuse on employees, to lobby government to cease and reverse cuts made to the Environment Agency, and to work with Labour Link to positively campaign on finding a lasting solution to raw sewage discharges.
Image: Steve Forrest
Outside of main conference business, delegates also heard from Cat Hobbs, director of We Own It, in the key-note speech and in a fringe alongside authors of UNISON’s new report Clean Water, a case for public ownership, which was released the same day.
In her speech, Ms Hobbs noted that public ownership is a popular concept among the public, particularly in regard to water.
She highlighted the failures over 30 years of the England’s privatised water system, arguing that it has led to inadequate regulation due to a “revolving door” culture between companies and the regulator Ofwat.
Furthermore, she noted the stark difference in levels of investment, with Scotland seeing 35% more investment into their water infrastructure through its public water company compared to the English privately owned companies – equating to £72 per household more investment.
Image: Steve Forrest
At the fringe, authors of Clean Water, David Hall (pictured above) and Emanuele Lobina gave a detailed overview of the report from the historical context of privatisation of water in England through to its consequences and its solutions.
Mr Hall guided delegates through the research, comparing the UK’s performance against other countries whose water provision is publicly owned. He concluded that “the total contribution of the private owners of these companies over the years is to take out £85bn”, and citing the extraordinary figure that the dividends paid out by the companies are “equivalent to 69% of their pay bill on average.”
Mr Lobina then followed up by explaining the consequences for users, noting that that around 30% of households in the UK are in ‘water poverty’ which is where households spend more than 3% of their total expenditure on water.
He finished by examining ways in which the sector and government could solve the issues, chief among them was moving water back into public ownership.
The article WET conference examines failure of privatisation first appeared on the UNISON National site.
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