I will run a few pieces on the other Opposition parties after my rare posting about the Conservatives.
One of the most distinctive policies the Lib Dems and Reform are adopting is more nationalisation.
Both parties think the taxpayer should run the water industry. LibDems want to convert the companies into public benefit concerns. Reform wants to buy a 50% stake in them with taxpayer money. The government says it would cost £100 bn to buy the whole industry or presumably around £50 bn for a half share. The Conservative Opposition and the government do not think this a good use of taxpayer money . They are against a big increase in government borrowing for this purpose when the state is already too much in debt.
The Lib Dems claim they do not need to nationalise. However, they want to put environmentalists on the boards, put the environment as a key aim, limit profits, control remuneration and returns to shareholders. This means removing shareholder rights and rewards under normal company law. Existing shareholders would expect compensation or buy out. Why would the private sector invest more in public projects if a government treats shareholders in that way?
Lib Dems and Reform support the renationalisation of rail being undertaken by government. Both wish to see Scunthorpe Steel renationalised. The government has not taken over the shares in steel but is starting an expensive intervention into the company.
If a government did buy out the Scunthorpe shares presumably for very little it would have to commit to large and continuing subsidies . In order to save new steel making it would need to shut the two ageing blast furnaces and reline with extensive maintenance probably quite soon. Maybe better to commit to building two modern blast furnaces and to allow MOD, rail and other state steel buyers access to the steel to provide some orders..
It is difficult to see the advantage of nationalising an old works when with less money you could co fund a new works with a partner that knows how to make and sell steel.
Both parties need to reconsider. Nationalised British Steel lost taxpayers a fortune and spent much of its time making people redundant and planning its next works closure. Nationalised water tipped plenty of sewage into rivers and the sea and did not even measure and time the discharges or tell us what it had done. Water quality and investment improved with privatisation.
July 22, 2025
Good morning.
Gets my vote !
In truth Sir John the ‘taxpayer’ will not be running the water industry. That is a play on words you really should not use. In truth, the water industry will be working for the taxpayer, putting any profits back into it.
As I have said here before. The water industry can be government owned but privately run. A max profit margin for running it could be around 5% on top of turnover and, any more could be reinvested. A properly managed industry telling the government how much was needed to be invested over say 10 years and how much of that would be covered by bills and any subsidies could be made.
Water is essential to life and good health. It should never have been sold, let alone sold to foreign interests who have fleeced a captive consumer.
Reply You duck the main issues of cost and whether this would be a good investment for taxpaers.
July 22, 2025
Something run by people like Starmer, Lammy, Reeves, Cooper Balls, Rayner, Phillips and the state sector unions – what could possibly go wrong? Then again they are hopeless at regulation of water, energy, rail, buses, schools, planning… too.
For some (virtual monopoly) state run industries see the dire NHS and state Schools. Maternity costs more in legal claims and compensation for gross negligence than they spend on maternity care!
When is Lucy Letby finally going to get her appeal for her clearly unsafe 14+ convictions? How does out justice system they manage to get 14 convictions wrong. The state monopoly two tier justice system in the UK is appalling too.
July 22, 2025
“How does out justice system they manage to get 14 convictions wrong”. It doesn’t. She’s guilty.
July 22, 2025
Well there was zero convincing evidence of that! Certainly nothing remotely approaching beyond reasonable doubt – even the (now shown to be bogus evidence) presented was totally unconvincing. Who killed the ones when she was not on duty?
July 22, 2025
Roy
I have no idea if she is guilty or not, I have no idea if some of the so called evidence is true or false.
I am aware that many people with legal experience are very concerned, about the verdict, so surely the most simple thing is to allow a proper review or an appeal.
Why such reluctance, when mistakes have been made in the past, think Post Office scandal, recently proven wrong convictions where people have spent 20-30 years in jail ?
The justice system is a mess, and quite honestly you only get justice if you can afford it !.
July 22, 2025
Exactly and the fact that they deny an appeal when clearly there are very substantial doubts and virtually zero serious evidence is surely appalling.
It is surely pure evil to do this and yet six judges have already denied the appeal twice. The BBC reported this as she has already “lost her appeal twice”!
July 23, 2025
If the premise is wrong the number of convictions based on it is irrelevant.
July 22, 2025
“UK government borrowing rose by more than expected last month following a big increase in debt interest payments. Borrowing – the difference between public spending and tax income – was £20.7bn in June, up £6.6bn from the same month last year, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said.”
Those Rachel Reeves tears and zero confidence in this deluded government is proving rather expensive.
You can increase tax rates but from the current position the more you do the more you kill the tax base and the less tax you get.
“More or less” radio 4 tried to explain why electricity costs in the UK are virtually the highest in the world 3-4 times those in the US. Being the BBC (a climate alarmist propaganda outfit) they tried to spin it but even they came to the conclusion it was drive. by renewable subsides, Net Zero lunacy, market rigging and over taxation.
They did however suggest that reducing CO2 for electricity was a benefit – it what was is that. Even if the UK hit net zero it would (all other climate things being the same – and they won’t be) they only “benefit” would be it might be 1/10,000 of a degree colder in 100 years time. Actually this would be s negative for most people! It would however not even be measurable in reality!
July 22, 2025
So Kemi is to have a Shadow Cabinet reshuffle and bring back James Cleverly. No Kemi we need a reshuffle of you were Sunak continued policies ditch net zero, ditch the UCHR and have systems that deter illegal and low skilled migrants and deter crime take a look at Farage’s policies. Also admid the Covid vaccines were a huge error and call for research to limit that vast harms done.
The last thing you need is more Libdims like xxxxCleverly.
etc ed
July 22, 2025
The only good thing I can find to say about James Cleverly is he is not quite as dire are Starmer, Lammy, Phillips, Cooper Balls. Theresa May, Sunak, Hunt or the high priest of Net Zero lunacy/most exspenive energy in the World one Ed Miliband.
July 22, 2025
Farage said ‘you would go to jail – even if it was just for a few months – if you broke the law’. Currently that includes ‘hurty words’ ‘being afraid of being killed by terrorists aka Islamophobia’ and not paying the TV license.
Great! He’s proposing building more prisons to imprison us all.
Yes – all of us. We all upset somebody everyday. Might be inadvertent but that’s no defence.
July 22, 2025
Well he obviously intended to say “seriously break the law” after all we will probably get a law saying “I do not think people should be forced to wear Niqabs” or “Ed Miliband’s net zero energy policies are totally insane” will be a criminal offences soon with the new blasphemy laws coming soon.
July 23, 2025
LL when you are legislating what you ‘obviously meant to say’ is irrelevant. It’s what you do say that is enforced.
Farage is not what you would call ‘a detail man’. He picks up popular general principles and ‘owns’ them to great personal profit.
That’s it.
Prepare for you own experience of our cells. All of you – I wonder whether that would exclude Farage, there are a lot of people who witnessed a lot of events ….
July 22, 2025
So the government have arrested a meet and greet Chap in London. The second arrest Two Tier’s “smash the gangs” agenda.
I assume the Government think this “meet and greet” free pizza and take you to you taxpayer funded hotel role is one only for the State, the Lifeboat Service and other charities & not for individuals or businesses to be allowed to compete with!
July 22, 2025
Interesting programme on GB News last Night with Patrick Christy actually in France walking around the illegal camps, he tried talking with many, but few wanted to talk including the three suspected organisers who he found.
All of these very obvious camps, with hundreds of people in each, living openly and freely in squalor, with not a single French Policeman in sight.
No wonder they will want, and be allowed to come to the UK with all of the benefits we offer, the French do not want them, doing nothing much to stop them or the illegal trade, they even escort them halfway before we meet them mid channel, to help them arrive.
“Smash the Gangs” really, Starmer is either a fool, and has been taken for a fool, or is a Lier !
We are paying the French £500,000,000 plus for what exactly.?
July 22, 2025
Been to France for many years and have driven past these illegal camps en route to the South, for years, so know exactly how long this fiasco has been going on.
July 22, 2025
Good Morning,
Cost to acquire the water companies. If they are bankrupt, then they are bought for whatever the receiver can get for them, perhaps a negligible sum. The price mentioned is pure speculation. The buyer will then have to invest in repairs and replacement.
The problem, as ever, is to find management who can do the job competently.
Repky Most of them are profitable and valuable
July 22, 2025
As an example, Thames Water is owned by a holding company which is owned by foreign government funds and other big fisuch as pension funds. This allows the charging of high interest rates and large salaries and bonuses for directors. The operating company is subject to regulation and is unable to invest to meet it’s running cost. In effect the subsidiary is bankrupt. When the government sponsored Channel Tunnel found its cost doubled because of regulation by government, the shareholders lost their money. The money put into the Thames holding company is still there and can be returned or reinvested elsewhere. The government could declare Thames operating company bankrupt and buy it for a pound. Then finance improvements but cut out the high interest rate and directors bonus rip off.
July 22, 2025
@ Stred – surely it is the operating company that supplies the water and sewage services and so it has the customers and hence the income they generate for it. Accordingly, all a regulator has to do is demand the operating company applies enough of its income to meet its non-related party running costs including infrastructure spending and only permit transfers to related parties (the holding company etc.) where those can be afforded.
July 22, 2025
Unfortunately the regulator encouraged the use of highly geared debt finance during the period of ZIRP with the idea of capping bills, and now that is over the consequences of real interest rates leave no money for proper repairs and investments.
July 22, 2025
@ Mark – thank you for your reply. Gross negligence by the regulators then: did they not know interest rates can go up as well as down?
July 22, 2025
If Rachel can ‘cut out the high interest rate’ we have no problems! If she can cut management costs perhaps she should show us how by sorting out the NHS.
If she can do all that then she presides over a prosperous and happy state.
We all feel prosperous and happy – isn’t that right?
July 22, 2025
Most are valuable and profitable – Indeed but changes in regulation and taxation from this dire government could so easily change this as they have already done for so many other farms and other businesses. As Osborne did for the property letting industry by absurdly disallowing interest deductions.
July 22, 2025
If they are well run and profitable then there is no need to consider them. IF their profitability comes from regular annual 30+ percent increases in rates charged, then this is not a well run, commercially viable business. When the so called ‘regulator’ simply rubber stamps the demands for increased rates then there is an even greater problem.
July 22, 2025
The problem has been the regulator and its application of the EU Water Directives that are still among our laws. They require price rationing and no investment in new reservoirs, and no aqueducts between river basins. They also made a hash of financial regulation and by suppressing bills over many years by not passing investment spending have built up a huge backlog, which is of course what had happened prior to privatisation. It was always tempting not to spend on water projects that could easily be deferred whenever governments were looking for spending cuts. That’s also why renationalisation would be a disaster.
July 22, 2025
Mark B..
R to R.
Consider the cost of not doing what is absolutely necessary. Much more water treatment, eliminating sewage. Can it be used as fertiliser? More water storage and a national grid. Modernising the delivery system. Reverse immigration and therefore demand.
July 22, 2025
Think of all the sewage system taking sewage from most houses to be treated & then released into the sea how do you stop this from overspilling when you get unusually huge rainfalls and large flooding – as we get fairly regularly in many parts of the UK. It is not easy or even possible to eliminate all the overflows in the type of floods as we get in Gloucester, Cornwall, Carlisle, the Lake District and many other places.
July 22, 2025
Well we’ve had privatisation of the electricity industry which was a well run and reliable entity. Along comes government mandating levies on fossil fuel and declaring said generation to become stranded assets after 2030.
Consequently we have the highest electricity prices in the world.
The same with steel manufacturing, a once profitable industry brought to its knees by government interference and allowing a strategic industry to be owned by a potential enemy.
Perhaps having the taxpayer owning 50% with a golden share is not a bad idea. Perhaps the government would be less likely to impose onerous costs if it meant taxpayers having to subsidise them.
Maggie was correct to privatise state industries but she never envisaged they would be allowed to be acquired by banks like Mcquareie and the Chinese government.
Reply We put in golden shares to. stop foreign fake overs. Blair and the EU took them out.
July 22, 2025
Reply to reply
Sir John
Those of us who work are both taxpayers and consumers. Others are just consumers who are given money from the taxpayer via the government.
No matter what, I and my fellow taxpayers are still paying.
Please explain
July 22, 2025
Mark the issue is ‘how much are you going to pay’.
Your preferred socialist approach will bankrupt you in short order.
Which part don’t you understand?
July 22, 2025
Lynn
It is NOT Socialist. It is State owned property but private management with the motivation of a profit should they run it well. ie A Franchise.
July 23, 2025
Ah – like the NHS Trusts? 😂🤣
Socialism in tooth and claw.
July 22, 2025
Plus in the private sector we do things for paying customers that are actually wanted by them. But in the State Sector much/most of what is done is useless, worthless or even actively damaging! Net zero, renewable subsidies, over regulation, road blocking, workers rights bills, Covid “vaccines”, Covid Lockdowns, encouraging illegal migrants, augmenting non working with benefits…
July 22, 2025
Well if you are content with socialism Mark, this is a golden era for you.
July 22, 2025
So you are happy for foreign countries to own British Services, charge us a fortune and give us poor service. Sounds like Socialism to me. You obviously have not read what I have written let alone understood it.
July 23, 2025
The Golden Share was there to stop that, as JR says, the Socialist government go rid of it so that pure unadulterated globalist socialism could be unleashed to deliver what it always does, poverty and injustice.
July 23, 2025
You should understand that the fundamental reason so much of our industry and property is foreign owned or mortgaged to foreign institutions is that we have had to finance a negative balance of trade and rising net remittance outflows. Of course, the more we depend on such funding the greater the outflows in interest and dividend payments, and the more we need to sell or borrow to fund it.
Some of this has been the result of the EU attempt to Sovietise the economy by creating interdependence within the EU to try to prevent any country tempted to pursue a better independent future, and to centralise power within the EU core. We now only make bits of aircraft, cars, electrical equipment etc. and depend on imported electricity which has already been used to force a disadvantageous Brexit settlement against weak governments.
Nationalisation does not really solve this. It has to be funded. You immediately crystallise a large sum in payment to foreign owners. If you try to fund that internally (printing money) you end up with inflation, a falling pound and higher interest rates, and a reduced international credit rating and distrust. If you borrow abroad you are simply replacing one stream of foreign financing with another. The only real way out of the bind is to have a well functioning economy that pays its bills without selling off and pawning the family silver. Successful home grown businesses can supplant sclerotic foreign ones.
July 22, 2025
@Reply – when these none competing owners come in strip the assets for personal gain and leave the ‘cupboard’ bare, the taxpayer still has to pay.
Bad deal, bad sale, as @Mark B infers the Company should be working first for the consumer, then the taxpayer. That can only happen if the Company do the work under contract for and on behalf owners of the infrastructure.
No competition equals complacency and rip off. Time and time again an expensive rip off is demonstrated by bad deals/contracts. Yes I 100% agree that the Government, the State shouldn’t be hands on at any stage but that doesn’t stop a preferable consumer or the Taxpayer owning the assets – it is after-all they that have paid for them in the first place only for government searching for a quick-buck to effectively just give them away. A profitable business is needed so as to invest, asset stripping by those without competition, is just that asset stripping. It isn’t serving the consumer its just more destruction.
Reply Consumers do not buy the assets. The producer buys and risks the assets, hoping to make a profit on the goods and services the assets produce. Consumers buy the goods and services. If consumers want to own the assets they have to buy them then know how to use them.
July 22, 2025
@Reply – In any enterprise it is the consumer that pays the wages, pays for the assets and pays for its future – not the banks the investment house or just investors. Those people who forget that do so at their peril. In what we swerved towards here is the Water Companies who got the assets from some one else’s endeavours handed to them at a knock down price. These Companies have either then sold the assets or hocked them with finance houses so as to get any money they had put in ‘out’ with them and their investors then free and clear. They had no risk attached, they id what is termed asset stripped the business.
Now they are not able to generate investment money as they have in effect asset stripped the core to pay for any money they paid over to acquire the propersition. So they become loss making operations by their own actions. Hence one of them this year had to get the Taxpayer to bail them out with a £3 billion loan to keep the operation going.
Privatisation is not a bad idea it is a great idea. But as we know just as with the Government running any business they are at a loss, they are just as bad at creating the contracts to sell them off. As in this instances it is businesses without competition so there is no pressure on them, especially as they can blackmail government to take more from the taxpayer to give to them one way or another – they will never lose.
I would have hazarded a guess that in the particular case where competition cant get involved if the outfit was handed to and supported with the same loan facilities to the consumers it would have cost less, short term and long term as they would have been in it for the long term.
The Steel Industry is and was a different case they went into the free and open market. But they were sold to foreign and in some cases state owned and protected Industries that have no interest in the UK or its Steel Industry surviving. It was in their interest to see these operations fail as it removed competition from the market place. The have seen the Government (Taxpayer) as a patsy – how much taxpayer money has been handed to them in bribes in recent years and the taxpayer still has nothing to show for it. Again as with the above suggestion the State(Taxpayer) would have been free and clear with people still gainfully employed if those industries were just handed to the staff backed by short term loans. Governments keep thinking ‘large’ and ‘mighty’ is strength when in fact it is a weakness. Or they are just desperately short of short term money and cant think beyond the next election
Reply I agree much better with competition. Most water companies are profitable. Water quality is better than under nationalisation.
July 22, 2025
Ian B
Finally, unlike Lynn, someone who gets it.
No matter what model you choose for water, there is no competition, hence you either have a State monopoly or, a monopoly owned privately. But it is still a monopoly. What I proposed was to create a Franchise where, the private management has to run the business. They are free of worry from capital as they do not own the business but, manage the service. The incentive is to be able to make a profit from it whilst maintaining said service.
Reply Plenty of ways of competing in water supply where Statutory monopoly removed. There is water competition for business customers in Scotland. Bottle water competitive.
July 23, 2025
So ‘private management has to run the business. They are free of worry from capital as they do not own the business but, manage the service. The incentive is to be able to make a profit from it whilst maintaining said service’ is EXACTLY how ‘big business’ is run, by employees. That is the very definition of Corporatism and the quickest and easiest way for employees to ‘make a profit’ in their short lifetime is to strip the company EXACTLY as the employees who run the water companies have done, to take all as ‘profit’ and allow no investment in infrastructure.
Because they don’t have ongoing responsibility of ownership and therefore maintenance they are free to loot, and do.
Your remedy is the disease itself!
July 23, 2025
If you analyse what the water industry does and remove the regulatory strangleholds there is lots of room for competition. Repairing pipes is not a monopoly. There are certainly opportunities for competition in supply from aquifers and reservoirs if you allow that to happen, in much the same way as applies in gas (with domestic production, pipeline and LNG imports) and electricity generation. You can move to a co-ownership model for infrastructure as you sometimes find in oil and gas pipelines, which ensures oversight from competing interests. You could even design elements of competition into sewerage treatment.
July 22, 2025
Well governments are useless at running things directly but also useless at regulating things like water, trains, energy… too. Thames water have behaved rationally for their owners – given the way the business was privatised and regulated namely load it up with debt and get as much money out of the business as you can. As with the net harm Covid Vaccines the regulators are mainly to blame. How did they expect the owners to behave given the way they regulated them?
It is extremely difficult to stop all sewage spills when you get exceptionally heavy rainfall and floods state owned or privately owned. Often one cannot even stop things like cars being washed into rivers and the sea in these conditions.
July 22, 2025
And why is rain water going into the sewage system?..
Reply Because the nationalised industry could only afford one set of pipes!
July 22, 2025
That’s why we need the Insurance Industry to be the ‘NHS Regulator’.
The Insurance industry, if they cover a bloc of ‘potential patients’ want them as healthy as possible, cured as quickly as possible, not given ‘killer shots’ and other experimental rubbish.
That is a Regulator which will not be captured because their profit and viability depends on them paying for good treatment early and maintaining a healthy population.
All the industries requiring regulation need to be controlled by the same principle.
It’s called ‘capitalism’ – we should give it a whirl.
July 22, 2025
@Lynn Atkinson – the NHS the Worlds largest employer I am led to believe yet it is the simplest of all UK Nationalised Industries to privatise.
Yes let give capitalism a whirl
July 22, 2025
The way in which privatisation and nationalisation are allowed to operate in monopoly situations is not likely to produce an acceptable result for the customer. In both cases the rules of the respective games need to be rewritten before ownership is decided.
To a greater or lesser extent, energy cost is a cost they all face. The insane and totally unnecessary four times US costs by goverment imposition needs elimination, as does the tax burdon.
Currently we have a government driven by ideollogy and total commercial ignorance. The Lib/Dems come from the same genetic stock with an added posy, so I have no expectations from them. Reform are thinking with a clean sheet of A4 and four years to run. The only hint they have given is that they are in favour of government by professional tallent, not the current status quo. etc ed
July 22, 2025
This is what I advocate. An industry owned by the government but the franchise sold to a private company to manage. If the franchise cannot work or does not perform to contract specifications you void the contract and offer it to someone else.
July 22, 2025
Agreed.
July 22, 2025
Who would buy such a franchise?
Everytime the State sees a profitable industry they snatch it and the profit for themselves.
July 22, 2025
Indeed invest and if it does badly and goes bust you lose all your money. If it goes well they take about 90% of it off you over a few years in CGT, CT, Income tax, NI X 2, IPT, carbon taxes, stamp duty and then when you die another 40% IHT of what is left for good measure.
Does not look like something most sensible investors would take a punt on!
July 22, 2025
What was the contract specification agreed by Sunak with the French on stopping the migrants for his circa £1 billion so far. Sunak “will pay you £x million a day and your Gendarme’s will stab the odd RIB boat to be shown on BBC TV about every six months or so is that OK them Macron?
July 23, 2025
That system has broken on the railways. The tracks and the rolling stock are nationalised. Franchisees run the services in accordance with contracts with the state. Investment is decided by the state (so we waste humungous sums on HS2).
July 22, 2025
Reform’s ‘thinking’ is as blank as their ‘clean sheet of A4.
July 22, 2025
You really are desperately anxious , aren’t you!
July 22, 2025
You will be soon.
July 22, 2025
The sad reality is that the last 35 odd years have hardly in the end proven to have been a shop window for privatised once state assets – indeed very much the opposite. It’s hard to debunk the theory that these were chewed up and spat out by the city, stripped of value and laden with debt, whilst the government can no longer draw on the assets as inventory and sovereign debt rises as a result. A bad result all round, but especially for the consumer.
Reply Not as bad as nationalised HS 2 and the Post Office
July 22, 2025
To reply or the even larger scandals like the vast net harm covid “vaccines” even for those with no need of them, so much of the NHS especially maternity care, blood contamination…
July 22, 2025
Or the Grenfell Tower almost entirely a state caused, owned and managed problem.
July 22, 2025
There is no easy answer to this , because Government seems incapable of running anything efficiently, or Regulating any industry with success.
We do not have a single Minister who has run a commercial business, and Regulation has proved far too complex and complicated to deal with the simple basics and essentials.
I certainly do not think the very basic needs of life should be allowed to be put into Private company ownership, let alone foreign ownership, so I guess a hybrid solution of taxpayer funding/share ownership, and proper commercial management of some sort is the solution, with a remit of providing an economic and constant supply of clean healthy water, and economical but environmentally fit treatment of waste.
Flood prevention should be the business of DOE.
History tells us that Government will always starve any industry it controls of finance/investment so the prospects of a long term solution or improvement are sadly bleak given the massive population increase of the past, and probably into the future.
Reply Bread is produced by free enterprise, water by badly regulated monopoly. Which works better?
July 22, 2025
Reply to Reply
Bread comes in different qualities from different manufacturers, you gets what you pays for, just like most things in life, you do not need to purchase bread to live, or keep healthy and alive.
I would suggest what is needed first is a feasible plan on moving forward, and I think we are a long way from that, even with the latest report.
July 23, 2025
Read ‘bread’ as ‘good’.
Unfortunately you DON’T get what you pay for! That’s the problem.
We had drinking water from our tap, cheap. Del-Boy did a skit in it it Continental bottled water by filling plastic bottles with water from his Peckham cold tap and selling it!
Now we pay a fortune and get muck. I have had to install a whole house filtration system in Northumberland (!) to save my pipes, appliances and heating system.
EU standards!
July 23, 2025
‘Bread as ‘food’ … the sustenance of life.
July 23, 2025
Flood prevention requires local knowledge. When a farmer decided to take action over regular flooding on the River Lugg that was affecting his fields and some neighbouring properties the Environment Agency prosecuted him and he was sentenced to prison. The neighbours were grateful that their properties were no longer flooding. The EA had ignored the problems and were embarrassed to be upstaged. The centralised greens do not act in the interests of the people.
July 22, 2025
Any business, private or nationalised, needs to earn an adequate return otherwise it will need to be either propped up or allowed to wither and die. That return on equity needs to be c15% to cover the cost of capital, inflation, risk and renewal. Perhaps 10% works for a monopoly. Many companies will struggle to achieve these rates of return. I am not familiar with how water industry finances were managed except for headlines that dividend extraction was to the fore. There are some industries such as water that must survive. As monopolies it is astonishing that they fail. Then there are those open to foreign competition, or even dumping, that are deemed to offer essential sovereign capabilities. It is not obvious to me that the implications of such status has been thought through adequately by the political parties or how it should be managed. It would be helpful to get your views on how, for example, the government of the day should respond to dumping by foreign countries that threatened industries deemed critical to the national economy.
July 22, 2025
The solution to dumping is tariffs.
The EU dumped Kerrygold butter onto the South African market at 5p per lb. Did for all the local dairy farmers.
July 22, 2025
“Reform wants to buy a 50% stake in them with taxpayer money. The government says it would cost £100 bn to buy the whole industry”
Why are you relying on Labour estimates for the cost of Reform policies ? Do you also believe the Labour estimate that Reform’s Net Zero policies will cost one million jobs ? Rail and Water might as well be nationalised because the taxpayer will have to bail them out anyway.
Reply I am not endorsing the government one. There is no Reform one.
July 22, 2025
The nearest comparison for the railway is the motorway/trunk road network. They are both the means by which a large number of people can travel from one place to another.
Under the flawed privatisation of the railway multiple service providers ran trains on the track network, based on regional franchises. The service did improve but became very expensive, not least because of the ridiculous working practices, militant trade unionism and excessive salaries now paid to train drivers which are all the consequences of a public sector mindset. Since the regional franchise model failed, now the proposal seems to be to return to the nationalised model, which failed to provide a decent service in the past and will fail to deliver a decent one in the future because the problem is the militant unions and the “public sector mindset.”
The motorway/trunk roads model in England was changed a few years ago. Instead of being a branch of the DfT, (the then Highways Agency), it became a 100% Government-owned Company with a 5-year contract to maintain, manage and improve the strategic road network.
I suggest that that is the model which should be applied to the Railway. It would mean a single entity maintaining and managing the network to achieve the objectives set by the Government, but would not be a nationalised industry with the taxpayer on the hook to continually pour more money into it.
https://nationalhighways.co.uk/about-us/corporate-governance/
Reply The current trunk/ motorway management has high maintenance and new construction costs and masterminded the fourth lane fiasco on the motorways.
July 22, 2025
Reply to reply.
Yes, but the high maintenance and construction costs are largely due to EU and Government Regulations particularly environmental regulations and to a lesser degree, safety-related ones. If we’d actually left the EU and weren’t hamstrung by their Environmental Regulations, it could be made cheaper. The Batshit Bat Tunnel on HS2 is a prime example.
The fourth lane (hard-shoulder) fiasco on the motorways was largely caused by the Coalition Government requiring more road capacity, quickly, to cope with ever rising traffic flows largely due to the ever rising population. EU Regulations make it very difficult and very expensive to construct new motorways and widening existing motorways from their current boundaries is very difficult and very expensive, both for structural reasons and also because along many of the motorways housing estates have been built very close to them. The Coalition Government didn’t want to pay for new construction.
None of this means that the kind of model I suggested couldn’t work on the Railway.
July 22, 2025
Are you sure that we’ve left the EU ….it doesn’t feel like it
July 22, 2025
There is a national fixation with state agencies overseeing private sector activities. This regulation of everything by state is simply socialism gone mad, but the active players in the process of state overreach refuse to see their role in it. They are moving the nation towards totalitarian systems of control all for the very best reasons, of course.
The latest example of state oversight failure being OFWAT, which has in its own terms failed so will be wound up and an even bigger brother will be put in its place. It is anyone’s guess what that will bring to the water industry other than higher costs and future failure through yet more overregulation.
As for politicians from every part of the spectrum advancing the state should take over of failing quasi monopolies. Well, what other options do they have to offer because the state has effectively regulated the private sector out of business…..?
Reply Yes, regulators let us down. Bank of England 11% inflation, water dirty outflows, energy dearest in advanced world etc
July 22, 2025
As a customer of Thames Water I am being increasingly fleeced with increasing costs, including the 10% levy for the London sewer, for a degrading service where assets are turned into debts for funds being leached off to foreign interests.
I have no alternative supplier and the governments show no inclination to address the misuse of once public assets
So how would you solve the problem?
Reply Competition
July 22, 2025
@reply I don’t see how competition can work effectively with Water under the current owners who have under-invested and value stripped the assets through debts.
Reply If they are that bad new competitors will take their customers.
July 22, 2025
How can a competitor offer me alternative water down the supply pipes Thames Water owns at a comnpetitive cost while increase investment and leak reduction.
Reply As with the common carrier use of gas pipes.
July 23, 2025
OFWAT supported and encouraged the highly geared financing model because it allowed them to pat themselves on the back for setting lower bills. They promoted the high cost projects for Thames Water while encouraging them to empty and sell off reservoirs for housing, instead of investing in better supply. They provided a firewall against proper public scrutiny, and MPs and journalists failed to penetrate it.
July 22, 2025
If you’re being charged for investment in infrastructure, I suggest the infrastructure is the property of the customer, not the water company. The water company can legitimately increase bills because of higher running costs.
July 22, 2025
Though I personally don’t agree with part-nationalising the water industry most do (including many comments even on this site). Reform has also announced a radical set of policies to cut crime which I generally do agree with and unlike other Parties they are trying to cut some spending and hold back Council Tax in the Councils they control. They are being very pro-active and very populist and running counter to the convention the Conservatives (which unfortunately John Redwood is supporting) one does not put forward detailed policies years in advance of the General Election. Really Reform see the next election as next May’s local elections where they are once again aiming to win most seats and build even more momentum to power them to a General Election victory. Their strategy (like most outstanding generalship) is contrary to convention but it looks to me that it will destroy the presently conventionally inert Conservative Party as a significant force even before the General Election is called.
Reply
Reform are proposing more police. Conservatives promised and delivered 20,000 more last Parliament. Labour promised 20,000 more and are trying to find the money and the recruits. Reform propose sending all foreign prisoners back. Conservatives tried to do more of this but it needs the consent of the country the criminal came from. All main parties claim they want to cut crime. Conservatives did preside over a big overall reduction in crime. I chose not to highlight Reform law and order policy as it is very similar to the stated policies of the other parties. I do hope Reform find ways to save money in Councils. That would be good. The Kent County website shows no changes yet to current year budget.
July 22, 2025
The really radical part of Reform’s law and order policy is to send thousands of British prisoners to serve their jail sentences in third world countries like El Salvador which apart from being much cheaper would be a real deterrent that would significantly cut crime.
As for the Conservative’s previous record on law and order it will be overshadowed by their record on the economy, taxation and immigration.
Reply Not yet agreed with El Salvador.
July 22, 2025
Wonder how TV Licence defaulters will like El Salvador. Wonder how well they will be treated? Wonder if the duty of care will be met in 3rd world jails chosen by Farage. If not wonder how much the Govt will have to pay ott in compensation?
Is Farage going yo deny families visiting rights? What about Habeas Corpus? What if the person is ‘lost’?
This is the problem with back of fag packet policies dreamed up in the pub.
July 22, 2025
Justifiably imprisoned prisoners should thereby lose any right to compensation just as they lose their right to vote. Incidentally I don’t even believe hospital patients should have a right to compensation if things go wrong as that should be a risk one takes by going into hospital in the hope of a cure – if there is gross negligence then the responsible medical staff should be appropriately penalised.
I expect British prisoners would be treated no worse than are other prisoners in third world countries and that would deter and greatly reduce crime in Britain.
July 23, 2025
You should stand for Reform. You are perfect for it. Do you think British people will know what 3rd world prisons are like or will they only get that information once they arrive? Do you know that in many 3rd world prisons prisoners are not fed? They families come to feed them. How much to take a sandwich to El Salvador?
No compensation for a Surgeon leaving an implement inside you? You think ‘caveat emptor’ must be supreme? So we can get rid of the courts altogether because if you are robbed walking down Pall Mall you should understand the risk thereof and shoulder that burden too.
I’m afraid this is seriously unhinged – Farage will love it!
July 24, 2025
Re, Lynn Atkinson here – your example is perfect for my argument – if you are seriously robbed at Pall Mall even in the unlikely event the Police catch and charge the robber he won’t have the money to compensate you, so no compensation for you!
As for prisoners having to pay for their food, I’m all for it. Students whose studies may well benefit society, have to pay for their tuition and maintenance for probably forty years thereafter, but prisoners who have only harmed and disrupted society don’t have to pay back a penny thereafter – where is the justice there?
July 23, 2025
I suspect that Reform would abolish the offence of TV licence default by abolishing the licence.
July 22, 2025
I’m sure the solution to the Not-a-Conservative-Party’s woes is to bring back Cleverly. Perhaps they should bring back Hunt as well.
July 22, 2025
Your experience and insights are so valuable Sir John. Please keep up the good work by continuing to feed them into the public domain. There is a chance some will listen, and its their loss (and ours) if they do not.
1 Tim 2:1-6
July 22, 2025
Sir John
I know his at odds with your thinking. But, I believe the State or the consumer should own the water companies’ infrastructure. Ideally the consumer
For the most part expecting foreign owners to invest and grow the facilities has shown to be false, the first thing they do once in position is sell of or hock those facilities to cover their debt for the purchase. Or in other words the companies involved are not investing but removing assets from the outset.
As we have seen all new money to improve facilities has come from the Taxpayer. Just as it was the taxpayer that funded the creation of the facilities in the first place.
The model used for ownership has been shown to flawed.
The however, Government, the State as with everything else should not be involved in running anything. I see ownership as a separate entity. All infrastructure projects where there can be no ‘Competition’, the running, the management should be on fixed term contracts to separate companies, by competitive tender.
Then as we have now failure doesn’t mean the Taxpayer will have to dig deep and do the funding all over again.
The flaw in my argument there is no one in Government, its Civil Service able to create contracts – think HS2. Also reminded but slightly different, having Ed Davey in charge and responsible as a Minister for the Post Office, he wants people like himself running things – we still haven’t paid for his last shot at responsibility his ineptitude,
Reply So how much are you prepared to pay to help buy up these assets? Communist countries that steal assets like Venezuela end up poor with very little foreign investment or help .
July 22, 2025
@reply – have they yet paid the market rate for the assets they acquired, no, it was a giveaway. What’s happened to the assets paid for buy the taxpayer and then sold off, it just departs the company. The assets themselves have been sold to clear the new owners debts and pay dividends not to invest, improve and build.
One high profile entity in February this year secured a £3 billion rescue loan from the government – meaning the Taxpayer. When does the Taxpayer get their money back? How much does that mean the State now owns or have claim on the assets of the Company and how much is the company worth. Why wasn’t it their own money they have taken and stripped more from the fabric and structures and still demand the taxpayer is on the hook -‘or else!’ The taxpayer is used as everyone’s ‘mug’
I only said the ‘The model used for ownership has been shown to flawed.’
It is a common flawed practice that is happening everywhere, most other situations because there is competition the consumer can go elsewhere and no one cares or notices.
On the High Street we have 2 major Supermarkets going down the pan because they were not purchased with real money but by debt against accrued assets. Even today we learn an Oil Refinery in Lincolnshire is going to close as it was bought not with the buyers money, but by hocking everything the refinery had accrued over many years of trading.
Something is wrong when this becomes the accepted norm, it costs everyone more and the buyer nothing
July 22, 2025
The assets don’t need to be bought by the State. They can be left in private ownership, but with restrictions placed on them by the regulator. Perhaps separate the infrastructure element from the billing. If investment is needed, that can be paid for by the developers that require the increased capacity. Mind you, if they pay for it, they own it, though the ownership comes under the umbrella of the regulator.
July 22, 2025
@Dave Andrews – sort of agree, but it shouldn’t be the company running them that also owns the resources and infrastructure. Regulator restrictions would still leave the consumer trapped in the Blackmail scenario of if the operator goes bust the Consumer or the Taxpayer will have to buy the infrastructure from the Liquidator. So once more paying twice. That is why Government is paralysed with Thames Water, they are forced to do what ever the company wants or face the wrath of a few million electors – 16million households. The reality from the outset the company created was to ‘Big’
The running of the operation should by independent contract. The owning in this case we are talking where the consumer choice is removed, should ideally be the consumer themselves. After a couple of generations of mistakes on top of mistakes through meddling from the centre (Government) that is more concern about short-term sound-bites with an election around the corner than it is about long-term success of the operation, the right answer cant emerge.
As we know Governments don’t think beyond the next election
July 22, 2025
Water is a pain but not a priority (at moment).
Priority is how to build up our economy (and get immigration down etc).
If the UK is going to ‘spend’ money on anything now, it should be investing in helping out High Tech entrepreneurs and companies in general to help the UK to become the world’s second valley, with focus on Cambridge (the university of Sir Isaac Newton) as the leading university associated with the world’s second Silicon Valley (like Standford is with Silicon Valley) where the Cambridge area is focused on the highest levels of High Tech – everything from computer chips to satellites to AI and to the Apples and Googles of this world). And then in time to draw Oxford University into this but focusing more on software high tech and design (because of its more arts background).
First off, we need a really fantastic train to Cambridge from London, with iconic, two-tier railway carriages, and an excellent train station to arrive in at Cambridge. Super fast. And much of it underground. And part of project is to get it done cheap using the Chinese if necessary or the Chinese for some of it.
Reply Well go and help do it. Oxford, Cambridge and east of the City are homes to lots of tec businesses.
July 22, 2025
@Ed M – yes, the only single thing that matters is the economy, it is the only thing that gets to fund everything else, money taken form the economy, taxes, reduces the economy and the country’s wealth
With a thriving economy the government wouldn’t need to splash taxpayers’ money anywhere on anything.
Your suggestion of sending taxpayer money to China, would be the Government exporting our wealth and our future. When you suggest it is our economy that matters
The men at the centre of the world’s most commonly used AI, Googles ‘Gemini’ and Microsoft’s ‘Copilot’ being Sir Demis Hassabis, Mustafa Suleyman CBE, Shane Legg CBE heading up their respective teams, are London based. They all met at the LSE and are responsible for those companies having there AI based research and development in London. Their words, London is where the talent pool is. So, logic says that section of the Worlds direction is actual based in London and the Heathrow Express could be their only need.
July 23, 2025
Hi, I never said set up in China but to help establish 2nd Silicon Valley in Cambridge area (obviously already techy area).
Besides that misunderstanding / lack of communication on my part, I thought the rest of your comment was useful / interesting.
July 23, 2025
It would take about 30 years and £150 billion+ to build the first thing you say we need …. a mainly underground, two-tier rail line and shiny new stations from Cambridge to London.
Back to the drawing board …. because that’s where the project will be stuck for at least the next 10 years.
July 23, 2025
No way. Using Chinese tunnellers, we could do it for a fraction of the cost. And not tunnel all the way. A bit. Cambridge perfect. 1. The universiry (like Standford). 2. Cambridge – great town (employers want to live in or near an interesting place – for example, boring places like Frankfurt puts people off living there) 3. Cambridge already really techy 4. Relatively close to London (for both business reasons and place to go during people’s free time)
July 22, 2025
Oh dear, The hopeless Labour government tells us the water companies are worth £100B, and we are supposed to believe them? LOL.
They are worth only the price one is prepared to pay for them. If these companies are driven into bankruptcy they are worth nowt and would be put into the hands of their creditors who would be desperate to get some return on their money. Only an incompetent negotiator like those in Government would volunteer their asking price, probably, £100B, LOL.
Those water companies in dire straits could be sold off as in a fire sale and save the taxpayers many £ Billions. And, as they do not show any returns on investment for new Private sector buyers, Nationalisation would be the only way forward until they could be proven profitable. We cannot do without water.
July 22, 2025
It doesn’t matter who owns the reservoirs, pipes and sewage works, just that whoever owns them is subject to the regulator. The owners will have to justify what they charge for the service, and that can’t include interest payments on debts they have racked up to pay dividends and over-generous executive salaries.
July 22, 2025
Off Topic – bombshell, or widely expected?
UK government borrowing rose by more than expected last month, adding to the pressure on the Chancellor, Rachel Reeves. Borrowing – the difference between public spending and tax income – was £20.7bn in June, up £6.6bn from the same month last year, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said.
Higher spending on public services and debt interest payments outstripped revenue from other taxes, including employers’ National Insurance contributions which was lifted in April, the ONS said.
Analysts say it is increasingly likely that the chancellor will have to raise taxes at the Budget in the autumn, after the government reversed cuts to benefits that had been aimed at saving billions of pounds.
July 22, 2025
@Mickey Taking – Ah, but – Rachael from complaints will tell you borrowing isn’t debt, because it wont be this Government paying it. We still haven’t paid for Gordon Browns excursion into thinking he understood what an economy was – that debt passes to our children
July 22, 2025
Correct they actually believe that borrowing is investment
July 22, 2025
History shows that Private or Public ownership of our strategic infrastructure does not seem to work in the long term. So what’s the answer? I am sure the Tax Payer has lost out with the buying back and selling of utilities.
But you can bet someone makes a big profit each time and it is not the Tax payer.
We seem to be stuck with either a Socialist view or a Capitalist view. Do we ever get a Tax Payer View ? Net Zero and overpopulation are clearly having an impact on our infrastructure, but there is an underlying issue that it appears impossible to run a utility for the sole benefit of the tax payer. Politicians of the left and right have not been able to do so for at least a Century now. Perhaps Reform may come up with a different form of Tax Payer control of our utilities.
July 22, 2025
@John McDonald – long term in Politics is the next election, if it was possible to think beyond that they wouldn’t be in Politics they’d be elsewhere earning and contributing to society
July 22, 2025
If you mean ‘Reform control of our facilities’ say so.
July 22, 2025
Neither nationalisation nor privatisation or a combination works whilst we have running these organisations a corrupted and incompetent elite who are never brought to book for their “mistakes”, some of which are a deliberate attempt to sabotage the West’s economy, national security and democracy. For instance it is a mystery to me why no-one is going to prison for the Post Office Horizon scandal. For large, monopoly organisations such as water, it does not matter if the organisation is private or publicly owned because those that are paying for their services are essentially the same people and whilst you might expect a regulator to keep a private organisation in check this never happens. The reason for the disasters now experienced for water and sewage is because of massive immigration overloading the system. But our ruling elites, including in the regulator, wanted to keep quiet about this and keep us in the dark about how our exploding population would affect services such as water supply and sewerage. Just yesterday the PM at the Liaison Committee was claiming there to be “lots of housing available” to accommodate homeless people and asylum seekers. So the gaslighting continues over immigration….
July 22, 2025
Privatisation of Water has been a disaster (along with privatisation of the railway)
It’s time for both to be-nationalised. English water and English railways. The cost will pale into insignificance when weighed against the cost of uncontrolled immigration (see ‘snouts in the trough’ blog £34billion most of which is an annual bill) and the Chagos sell-out.
July 22, 2025
So you want the people in control of immigration and and giving Chagos away with a dowry to control ‘English water’ and ‘English Railways’ too.
What happens at Offa’s Dyke? What happens at the Apennine Wall?
And those are the least of the problems.
July 23, 2025
No! I want a new government, the current one is useless.
The Welsh government can deal with Welsh water (as they already do) The Scottish government can deal with Scottish water (as they already do)
England’s water is under the authority of the UK goverment (quite wrongly)
The railways are semi-devolved. They need to be fully devolved.
July 23, 2025
Initially privatisation of water was a success. Long overdue investment in repair and facilities began to be made. The watershed really was the EU Water Directives that dictated how we were supposed not to invest in new reservoirs or aqueducts and pursue price rationing of supply.
July 22, 2025
We’re in massive debt, borrowing at its highest, we can’t afford nationalisation …..but we’re sending another £60 million to Gaza, with neighbouring filthy rich muslin countries ?
July 22, 2025
Water companies should have all their dividend stopped till each area gets it place clean up and be done by the courts, if price of company shares go down because of this then their shares will be cheaper to buy and then to sell on to a more reliable company.
July 22, 2025
As with the previous discussion on ‘Big Bang’ here the market was opened up to competition so it thrived and grew and yes we all derived a benefit in some little way from it. However, giving away consumer a taxpayer ‘paid for’ assets at a knock down price that then gets rewarded with those assets being sold off/hocked, ‘asset stripped’. The removal of the means for investment money to grow and improve, means there is no growth, no improvements. When there is no competition for the incomer what can you expect, they know, as it has been proven the taxpayer stays on the hook for ever and a day – what sort of privatisation was that?. It would appear it was a government making noises to pull money in to shore up its failures
That may have not been the intention, but that was the end result – we all pay once more for what we already had. A 200% penalty. Paying for exactly the same thing twice is not how a free-market works. With singular pieces of infrastructure, the competition can only come from fixed time/criteria contracts. I don’t mean the as with the NetZero contracts where the UK taxpayer pays Foreign Governments to support their regimes by guaranteeing over the market price for deliver and none delivery. I mean contracts to deliver.
July 22, 2025
The World gets crazier by the day
Guido is reporting a promotion for a man, that was advisor to Osbourne and May, and for instructing Boris how to-level-up.
Clearly, I don’t know the man and I could be bing disingenuous, but we have seen the results of his advise and the proof of the directions he has sent those seeking his advice. Disaster, decline and more decline, even now they are still demonstrating the need coming from some to hang on to continuity at all cost. Let’s not change direction, lets peruse everything we stood for at the last election…
Conservative were disenfranchised at the Last GE, so it seems they will be in the future. No alternative but to vote for ‘none-of-the-other’
July 22, 2025
REGULATION is the only outcome of a Regulator’s involvement.
Reality teaches that the principal beneficiaries are lawyers.
we are soon to have one for the top 5 divisions of the football League.
Seemingly the game over the border is pure as the driven snow.
July 22, 2025
It seems to me that many of the water companies are effectively bankrupt. Their debts greatly exceed their open market value. That being the case, they can be nationalised without compensation or repayment of debt.
After Nationalisation, they can then be sold to new bodies that sign up to a set of very stiff commitments.
Perhaps a strict limit on annual profits could be imposed as a percentage of income ?
Reply They can only be bought at a price the owners accept as fair. Water companies are not bankrupt. It is against the law to trade when insolvent
July 22, 2025
So the powers that be (Serco and the Home Office) have moved the immigrants from Epping to Canary Wharf, half the Met are there protecting the immigrants, and the immigrants are throwing eggs out the windows at passers by….
If I threw eggs out of a hotel window at passers by I would get arrested… betcha the immigrants dont get arrested
I really think the ruling class WANT a civil war
July 22, 2025
the passing taxi drivers showing their support for the people protesting against the immigrants… and there is the authentic voice of the people…
July 23, 2025
+1
July 23, 2025
I think the Authorities are deliberately provoking the ordinary British people.
They want to impose authoritarian governance on us – surveillance; digital IDs; draconian prison sentences if you step out of line or say something “unacceptable;” a social credit system. The methods they used in the Covid Tyranny is the blueprint and the justification will be “keeping you safe.”
Just as it was then.
July 23, 2025
I found it extraordinary that the police bussed in counter demonstrators to Epping in an evident attempt to provoke disorder.
July 22, 2025
In other news – Poland has discovered massive oil field ….I bet they’ll us it to better Poland and provide cheap energy to its people
https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2025/07/21/poland-discovers-one-of-europes-largest-oil-deposits-in-a-decade
Not covered by UK media …perhaps another super injunction
July 22, 2025
Good Lord! You mean they were looking? Is that a violation of the EU ethos? Surely they are not going to pump it? 😱
July 23, 2025
Aren’t the biggest issues with these ex-state sectors that parties wish to renationalise the pension costs?
More public sector defined benefit pension chaos.
Public sector defined benefit pension costs are bleeding the taxpayer dry and need to be transferred to defined contribution with less than 10% employer contribution.
This can be done tomorrow.
July 26, 2025
Points well made.
Reform is definitely pivoting to the Left on economics as they target the easy pickings in Labour’s disillusioned heartland.