Media Watch: UK gov minister's lies about Scotland's water goes unchallenged
UK Environment Secretary Steve Reed was allowed to state unchallenged on Channel Four news that publicly-owned Scottish Water is producing worse outcomes than England’s scandal-hit private firms. He said that “pollution levels in Scotland are worse than they are in England”.
It is not a true statement according to any measure.
It also marks a change in the position of the Labour Party. In the past, Labour has been a big supporter of keeping water in public hands - most notably, they backed Scotland’s united front to successfully oppose the privatisation of water here by Conservative governments in the 1990s.
Scottish Water - the publicly owned utility company that provides water and wastewater services in Scotland - responded to Reed’s comments. "Scottish Water is the UK's top performing water company and most trusted utility in the UK according to the Customer Service Institute,” a spokesperson said. "In addition to producing world-class drinking water, the independent regulator, Sepa, says 87% of water bodies in Scotland are either good or excellent, the highest proportion ever.”
They added: "The Cunliffe Report also makes clear that 'Scotland has a greater number of water bodies achieving ‘good’ status compared to England and Wales'"
The Independent Water Commission, led by Sir Jon Cunliffe, found 66% of Scotland’s water bodies to be of good ecological status, compared with 16.1% in England and 29.9% in Wales.
The Cunliffe report made no comparison in its conclusions on customer satisfaction - but that is 81% in Scotland and only 55% in England. Water usage is also a lot higher in Scotland, perhaps reflecting the lower charges here.
Comparison table from the Cunliffe Report.
Scottish Water incurred just one fine of £6000 in the last year for breaking environmental regulations last year - compare that with the multi-million fines for egregious and repeated flouting of the rules by several of England’s privatised water businesses.
Scotland’s water charges are also much less than the English average - BBC Breakfast came under fire recently when they presented the rise in water bills as an average £10 a month for England and 10% for Scotland. Of course - that hid the reality that the average rise for Scotland is £3.68 - about one-third of the English rise.
The gulf in average water charges between England and Scotland is widening over time. 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 to invest in its Victorian infrastructure, and, in a large country 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.
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.
Support the work of Believe in Scotland and our independence campaign – Join us! Only a non-party-political independence campaign can move independence support to the levels we need to win our independence.
