Time to get tough on the water companies

I have a friend who was a bit of a financial wizard. He played the stock market and although he is a very “red in tooth and claw” capitalist he invested heavily in utilities, especially water companies.

Why? Because as he told me they are massively under-regulated, and they make monopoly profits from customers who can never shop around. They also under invest, game the system, intimidate the regulator and as a result they pay massive dividends and their share values rise.

They should be the most boring, capital intensive, low return, low dividend, but steady-as-a-rock investment. Instead, they were a one-way bet.

Any regulator or government should have seen that they were milking their customers and the economy dry and made them invest more and pay out less. Instead, they were snapped up by foreign investors who can recognise an under-regulated cash cow when they see one.

Perhaps this explains the inane, inadequate, and cheeky response to the ongoing scandal of the industry pumping millions of gallons of sewage straight into the rivers and seas of the UK. The industry knows it has to do something, but its reaction has been farcical.

It promised to fix the problem – and then immediately shot itself in the foot.

The industry says this will take 10 years to fix the scandal and that it will cost £10 billion. Fair enough. But then they said, bills will have to rise by £10 billion to pay for it. My jaw almost hit the ground when I heard this.

We have paid billions over the years for a water system that is supposed to provide cheap, clean water and dispose of waste without polluting every river in the country.

Now they want us to pay to put it right, by which I mean pay again to put it right. We have already paid them to run a proper service – if they haven’t done that, it is their problem not ours.

The reason the industry is acting now and presenting this ridiculous plan is quite clear. This government and its current regulator are pushovers. If they sign off on the customer paying again to fix this mess, the industry is safe.

But while this government might not have the sense to call the industry and its regulator in for a damned good talking to, it is fairly obvious that the next government certainly will.

It would be fairly easy to present the industry with a “take it or leave it” deal. Do your job properly, stop the fancy financial footwork, invest properly, become what you should always have been; boring, reliable, low risk and steady. Cut bills, stop paying huge dividends and clean up the mess you have deliberately made to enhance profits. Or, we will come for you.