Water UK, the body which represents all the water companies in the UK at both national and international level, has said the Labour Party manifesto "does not do justice to the water industry's record following privatisation."
Water UK, the body which represents all the water companies in the UK at both national and international level, has said the Labour Party manifesto "does not do justice to the water industry's record following privatisation."
Water UK was responding to a pledge in the Labour Party manifesto published this morning which said it plans to “replace our dysfunctional water system with a network of regional publicly-owned water companies.”
In a statement, Water UK said:
"Since 1990, the water industry has invested over £130 billion in better services. The quality of bathing and drinking water is up, and customer satisfaction with water and sewerage services is over 90%. Access to private capital and other sources of funding, repaid through dividends and interest payments, has been key to that record of success.”
"Working closely with their customers and overseen by independent regulators, water companies are currently delivering a five-year programme which by 2020 will see a further £44 billion invested in improvements and a 5% real-terms average drop in prices. All water companies have schemes in place to help those struggling with their bills."
However, the manifesto was thin on the detail, with no reference to how the nationalisation proposals would be financed.
Jeremy Corbyn also failed to respond to direct questions on the issue from journalists at the lauch, confining his comment to saying that Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell “will set out in great detail tomorrow every one of our commitments which is costed and funded.”
The simple answer to questions over how Labour would pay for this and why aren’t the numbers there is that no-one quite knows how much it will cost.
In an interview on the BBC’s Today programme this morning, John McDonnell got the manifesto day off to an inauspicious start. When asked by Nick Robinson how much Labour's plan to renationalise water would amount to he had to admit that he did not know. The manifesto does not include any figures for water renationalisation even though this is expected to cost in the order of tens of £billions.
The only specific figure on infrastructure investment mentioned in the manifesto is that “Labour will take advantage of near-record low interest rates to create a National Transformation Fund that will invest £250 billion over ten years in upgrading our economy.”
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