The glory of politics and the water companies

You may have noted that we’re not wholly keen on politics as a method of running things. Here’s a good example of why:

In his first interview since taking up office, he told The Telegraph: “Every single river in England today is polluted... The public quite rightly are furious that they have to worry about letting their kids splash about in the river, for fear of what they might catch, because it’s polluted.”

Mr Reed said he will introduce a new system monitoring sewage spills, which involves independent scrutiny of the data, to stop water companies from “massaging the figures”.

Oversight of pollution doesn’t strike us as a bad idea at all.

Sewage was spilt 464,056 times last year, totalling more than 3.6 million hours, a record high since monitoring began, according to the latest data published by the Environment Agency.

Water companies are permitted to release sewage into rivers and seas during exceptional circumstances, such as extreme wet weather, to stop it backing up into people’s homes.

That’s because monitoring has hugely expanded in recent years - added to the vagaries of weather which has led to a run of those extreme circumstances. But the thing we think should be noted. As far as anyone knows the situation in Scotland is worse, far worse. But the monitoring is far - far - less intense. And as far as it is possible to see the state owned and run Scottish Water is not to be subject to this greater oversight of pollution issues.

The Bill, which will be brought to Parliament in September with a view to getting it on the statute books by Christmas, will also require water companies to install “real-time monitors” at every sewage outlet, with data that can be independently scrutinised by water regulators.

England is close to this anyway. Scotland is nowhere near it. As far as it is possible to see this bill will apply only to England.

Mr Reed said he will introduce further laws aimed at “fundamentally transforming” the water industry.

This will include setting up a “partnership” between the Government and water sector aimed at raising billions of pounds of private sector investment and encouraging water companies to make long-term plans for investment in their infrastructure.

We already have this. OfWat already determines allowable investment levels in the water companies. One of the reasons they don’t invest more is because OfWat won’t let them.

Finally:

“When I was younger, we’d go to the beach and I’d go in the sea and no one worried about it,” Steve Reed recalls. “We’d go to a lake somewhere and I’d go swimming. No one had to think about it twice – you just assumed the water was clean enough to go in and it was.”

He went on to describe how this care-free approach is a far cry from the attitude of families in modern-day Britain.

“Today parents worry about letting their kids in the water for fear of what they might catch. I want to get back to a position where you don’t have to think about that, you just know that the water is clean,” he told The Telegraph.

The water is hugely, vastly, cleaner than it used to be.

As we say, we’re not great fans of politics as a way of running things. For all of the proposals make perfect sense in that political sense. They’re all also close to or over the nonsense line in a real sense. The lack of investment is because the regulator won’t allow it, the water is cleaner than it’s been since the 18th century - and probably the 16th - and the biggest polluter is the state owned company that isn’t subject to either the bill or the increased monitoring.

Lots of action and little to nothing useful being done - you know, politics?

Tim Worstall