Gulf opening up in water bills between England and Scotland.
Water bills in England look set to rise - by more than 50% in some areas - as debt-laden private water firms struggle to avoid bankruptcy. England is the only country in the developed world to have fully privatised its water. Scotland did not go down that road and as a result, Scottish waterways are much cleaner than in England and water bills are lower.
The gulf in average water charges between England and Scotland is widening and looks set to increase.
Water bills were already lower in Scotland. They have risen but by nothing like as much - they went up by 8% last April and may rise by a similar amount next year. And Scotland has a more progressive way of helping the poorest households with water bills, based on their council tax band.
Water in Scotland remains - largely - in public ownership. It does face challenges. The way the Victorian plumbing system was designed across the UK means that storm drains and household waste often feed into the same sewerage system. It is not possible to rebuild it completely - you can’t go into Edinburgh New Town and rearrange the plumbing wholesale - but mitigations will have to be put in place to increase resilience to climate change-related flash flooding.
Scotland needs investment in Victorian infrastructure and, in a large country much of it with a low population density, the money it raises has to go a long way. But this work is already underway. Despite charging lower bills, between 2002 and 2018, Scottish Water invested on average nearly 35 per cent more per household than English water companies, according to researchers at Greenwich University. That is essentially because money paid to Scottish Water does not go on dividends to shareholders. In England, the water companies have paid £52 billion in dividends to shareholders since 1990.
That money has not been invested in infrastructure and some companies have been found to have been manipulating their testing to hide sewage discharge. Many English water companies are routinely fined. Just this summer in England, the Office of Water and Regulatory Affairs (Ofwat) proposed fines of a total of £168 million for three water companies in England for failing to manage their wastewater treatment works and networks:
- Thames Water: £104 million
- Yorkshire Water: £47 million
- Northumbrian Water:£17 million
In contrast, Scottish Water was last fined £19,000 in 2020. Unionist politicians sometimes try to make out that the situation in Scotland is the same as in England. On a recent BBC Question Time, a panellist was allowed to claim that “Scotland has the same water pollution issues as England” unchallenged by chair Fiona Bruce. This is not true. In Scotland, 87% of water bodies achieve ‘good’ or better water quality and are amongst the best in Europe. Only 14% of England’s water bodies are rated good or excellent.
Many of England’s privatised water companies are struggling under huge loads of debt. Thames Water is in particularly dire straits - it had to borrow £3 billion to avoid going bankrupt recently. When it was privatised in 1989 it had no debt. But then owner Macquarrie used the guaranteed income stream from households to borrow money, most of which went to its shareholders.
So just how did Scotland manage to keep its water supply in public hands during the era of ideological privatisation when other utilities were privatised - gas, electricity, the National Grid, the railways etc?
The UK Gov did attempt to privatise water in Scotland - but there was united opposition.
Water was privatised in England under Margaret Thatcher. In 1994, the Conservative Government under John Major geared up to do the same in Scotland. It was a period when demands for Scotland to have more control over its affairs were building. The plans to privatise Scottish water met a massive wall of opposition.
Strathclyde Regional Authority decided to hold an advisory referendum to test the strength of feeling. They held a postal ballot. There was a huge turnout with 71.5 percent of electors in Strathclyde returning their papers.
An extraordinary 97.2 per cent wanted Scottish water to remain in public hands. No to privatisation votes numbered 1,194,667 - yes votes just 33,956
This referendum had no legal force at the time. The UK government still had the legal power to do what it wished with Scottish Water. At that time, Scotland didn’t even have a Parliament or a National Assembly. It was run by the Westminster “Grand Committee” on Scottish affairs which was regularly stuffed with English MPs from the shires because there were too few Scottish Conservatives to vote through the Government’s plans.
It was not a controversial issue - nobody supported privatisation.
The Westminster record, Hansard, records MP for East Lothian John Home Robertson saying in a debate about the referendum:
“Frankly, the result did not surprise me. What surprised me was the massive turnout of electors. I am amazed that even this Government think that they can shrug it off. I do not doubt that the result would have been exactly the same if the question had been put to my constituents and those of my hon. Friends in the Lothian region.”
Home Robertson said almost nobody supported privatisation: “The Secretary of State for Scotland prefaced his remarks by saying that we had to return to the issues of state in Scotland today and consider this controversial issue. I have news for the Secretary of State for Scotland: this is not a remotely controversial issue. It is one of very few issues about which it would be impossible to start an argument in the streets, households, pubs, clubs or anywhere else in Scotland today. There is no support anywhere in Scotland for the proposal to take the water and sewerage industries out of the control of democratically accountable local authorities”
Eventually, the local water authorities were merged to form Scottish Water, which is a publicly-owned water company subject to scrutiny by the Scottish government, and overseen by the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency.
Strength in unity
The lesson from the story of Scotland’s water is that when Scotland is united, it wins, The UK Government was forced to back down on this - although it forced through privatisations in many other areas.
Scotland can be confident that when it stands together and demands independence from the UK, it will succeed. That will allow it to take decisions over Scotland’s resources and utilities that benefit ordinary people.
22,000 others have already pledged their support, because only a non-party-political independence campaign can move independence support to the levels we need to win our independence. We Believe in Scotland – Join us!
