Labour’s New Water Customer Powers Are a Stitch-Up, Say People Still Waiting for a River That Doesn’t Smell
The people accused of extortion have been asked how they would like to be held accountable for it
LONDON — Labour promised customers a seat at the table. The water companies have arrived early and rearranged the chairs. Documents show the Consumer Council for Water has asked the firms how they would like to be held to account by the new “powerful consumer panels.” Feargal Sharkey, who has spent years turning punk credentials into sewage expertise, called it a stitch-up. When the former Undertones frontman and the utility finance director agree that a meeting is happening, only one of them is usually in charge of the agenda.
- Water companies are helping shape the panels intended to hold water companies accountable, using the celebrated judicial principle of letting the defendant choose the jury.
- The panels are called “Water Voice,” although water has already expressed itself quite clearly by emerging through toilets, beaches and kitchen ceilings.
- Customers will supposedly be able to summon senior executives, provided somebody at the water company eventually answers the telephone.
- Complaints rose 80%, so officials responded with panels, an ombudsman and another regulator—the traditional British method of surrounding a leak with administrators.
- Customers will pay larger bills to attend meetings where they can ask executives why their bills became larger. This is what economists call a circular economy.
Water company consumer panels stitch-up: inviting the burglar to comment on the lock
Ministers said last year that boards would let the public grill executives about shortages, bills and the brown tide that occasionally visits the downstairs loo. The panels are now being designed with advice from the people who would be grilled. This is the British model of accountability: invite the burglar to comment on the lock.
Sharkey’s line was not subtle. “The CCW is asking the extorters what should be happening to the victims.” Campaigners wanted redress. What they are being offered is process. Process is what you get when nationalisation is expensive, mutualisation is complicated, and a press release is free. Andy Burnham still talks about “greater public control.” Defra is still examining a multi-stakeholder model in which private capital, workers, customers and the state all own a slice of the same leaking pipe. That is not ownership. That is a committee.
The industry’s defence writes itself
The industry’s defence writes itself. Of course companies should be consulted. They run the pipes. They know the assets. They also know the dividends, the gearing ratios, and the precise legal temperature at which a sewage spill becomes a “storm overflow event.” Thames Water remains a cautionary novel with no last chapter. Creditors circle. Special administration hovers. Customers pay. The river does not get a vote.
As one Yorkshire dales resident told a local paper, in the kind of line satirists dream of and never have to invent, “I’ve stopped calling it a river. I call it the outfall with scenery.” That is not a joke a comedian wrote. It is a joke the water industry wrote and handed to a member of the public for free.
Financial engineering with a bonus culture chaser
There is a reason this story never dies. Privatised water was sold as efficiency. It delivered financial engineering, bonus culture, and a national swimming-quality debate conducted from the towpath. Labour passed special measures, banned some bonuses, criminalised cover-ups, and announced a once-in-a-generation vision. The generation is still waiting for the vision to reach the outfall. A consumer panel that the company helped design is not a revolution. It is customer service with better biscuits.
Citizen scientists already walk the banks with testing kits because the official maps arrived late and polite. They do not need another forum in which an executive explains that investment is “in the plan.” They need a regulator that can fine faster than a spill can travel, and a government that can decide whether “public control” means a golden share or a golden shrug.
A brand exercise wearing a policy costume
The stitch-up accusation works because it is structurally true even if every civil servant is acting in good faith. If the accused writes the terms of the interrogation, the interrogation is a brand exercise. Britain has become fluent in brand exercises. It is less fluent in phosphate.
A serious water policy would start with the bill, the leak, the debt and the outfall, then decide who owns the lot. A panel is what you launch when you are not ready to decide. Customers may attend. They should not confuse attendance with power. Power is the ability to make a company wish it had not come.
The panels are reportedly to be branded “Water Voice,” though water has already expressed itself quite clearly, by emerging through toilets, beaches and the occasional kitchen ceiling. Water companies are helping shape the very panels meant to hold water companies accountable, applying the celebrated judicial principle of letting the defendant choose the jury. Customers will supposedly be able to summon senior executives, provided somebody at the water company eventually answers the telephone. Complaints rose 80 per cent this year, and officials responded with a panel, an ombudsman and another regulator, the traditional British method of surrounding a leak with administrators. Customers will pay larger bills to attend meetings where they can ask executives why their bills became larger. Economists have a word for that. They call it a circular economy.
Sources
- The Guardian via AOL: Labour’s new powers for water customers are a “stitch-up,” say campaigners
- Find a Tender / CCW: Establishment and Management of Water Industry Consumer Panels in England and Wales
The Guardian reported that the Consumer Council for Water asked water firms how the new consumer panels should hold them to account, the mechanism ministers billed as new customer power under the Water (Special Measures) Act. Feargal Sharkey and other campaigners called it a stitch-up. Wider reforms, including debt limits, a clean water bill, and a possible multi-stakeholder ownership model, remain under discussion at Defra.
This is British satire, filed in the tradition of UK satirical news that has never once run out of material where water policy is concerned. English satirical journalism and British rivers have a long, mutually sustaining relationship.
For more satirical coverage from the other side of the pond, visit Bohiney.com.
Auf Wiedersehen, amigo!
Alan Nafzger was born in Lubbock, Texas, the son Swiss immigrants. He grew up on a dairy in Windthorst, north central Texas. He earned degrees from Midwestern State University (B.A. 1985) and Texas State University (M.A. 1987). University College Dublin (Ph.D. 1991). Dr. Nafzger has entertained and educated young people in Texas colleges for 37 years. Nafzger is best known for his dark novels and experimental screenwriting. His best know scripts to date are Lenin’s Body, produced in Russia by A-Media and Sea and Sky produced in The Philippines in the Tagalog language. In 1986, Nafzger wrote the iconic feminist western novel, Gina of Quitaque. He currently lives in Holloway, North London. Contact: [email protected]
