Mr Burnham rails against new reservoirs and treatment works

A day after a meeting to deal with the water shortage and other issues from the hot weather, Mr Burnham condemns the idea that water companies in the worst drought affected areas should be allowed a small further increase in prices to cover the costs over the next few years of providing more water and water treatment capacity. He seems blissfully unaware that the Regulator has kept investment spending down over recent years to try to keep bills down, at the cost of the companies not being allowed to put in the extra capacity we obviously need.  He also seems to be unable to grasp as PM that if we are to provide adequate supplies and capacity we either have to pay for that through our water bills, or the government will have to pay for it and send us bigger tax bills. The last thing we want, I would have thought, is the kind of design and construction delays and cost escalations that HS 2, our fully nationalised railway, has cursed us with when it comes to a needed programme of new reservoirs and treatment works.

Mr Burnham is right in thinking many people dislike the water companies, feeling let down by sewage in our rivers and now by the threat of water rationing during a drought. He is wrong to think nationalising would correct this. First, the nationalised industry in 1976 with similar weather was worse, with standpipe water only for some regions with no tap water in the home. It presided over  permanently dirty rivers and seas with dumping raw sewage as a matter of policy. Second, if he did want a nationalised solution the costs of taking over the water companies would be huge, as UK shareholders, charities and pension funds that own some of them would not take kindly to theft. Once nationalised the whole extensive investment programmes they are already doing, and the extra investment needed, would be another colossal bill for taxpayers.  The mistake with water privatisation was leaving the monopoly in place which so disfigured the nationalised regional concerns. I have set out before how water competition would unleash more capacity, innovation and new technology to resolve the shortages and dirty water.

My water bill is a small fraction of my Council Tax Bill. It presents good value for the water I use. The Lib Dem led Council wastes and loses a fortune on bad projects and bad management. It regularly puts the bill up by more than inflation. It spends a lot of money on consulting us, only to do the opposite of what we recommend in many cases. Mr Burnham should understand it is rip off government that is doing far more harm to  most domestic budgets. he should also grasp the bad role played by the Water  Regulator in getting us into a position where we have not put enough new capacity in to cater for the millions of extra people  we have welcomed into our country this century.