Clive Lewis skewers toxic environment secretary Steve Reed over water privatisation

Clive Lewis’ Water Bill had its second reading in parliament on Friday 28 March. The Labour Party MP skewered environment secretary Steve Reed in the exchange.

Water privatisation: “systemic exploitation of a common resource”

In a speech, Lewis flipped the script on Reed, who has been arguing against public ownership of water:

They say, “I’m more interested in the purity of our water than the purity of our ideology.” I love that quote. I love it because it lays bare just how deeply the ideology of privatisation, and all that goes with it, has embedded itself. So entrenched is it within our collective consciousness that we no longer recognise it as an ideology. We no longer see it for what it is: a systemic exploitation of a common resource for private gain. Instead, it has simply become the natural order of things.

It’s worth noting that water company owners have gifted Reed £1,786 in football tickets. The Labour leadership also used false analysis that the water industry cooked up in order to argue against water privatisation.

In the Commons, Lewis continued:

But how much longer can this go on? Since the crash of 2008, this ideology has been faltering under the weight of its own contradictions, yet its grip on British politics remains vice-like. Austerity, exploitation and corporate price gouging are still treated not as choices but as inevitabilities. Why? Because too many politicians on both sides of the House refuse to contemplate alternatives.

Full privatisation of water and sanitation isn’t a thing in most other countries, so it is far from an inevitability, as the MP says. Lewis further accused Labour of propping up what is Tory ideology:

we wrap their ideology in the language of fiscal responsibility, economic prudence and stewardship of the economy. But it is not fiscal responsibility when we balance the books on broken backs. It is not stewardship when the ship has been sold off and the crew left to drown. It is not prudence. It is power maintenance.

In response, Labour MP Neil Coyle commented:

There are far more [Labour MPs] since July last year than there were in 2019, with a very different approach taken in our manifestos. Does he fear that the shift in tone he is suggesting is one of the reasons that we did so badly in 2019 but so well last year?

This argument is laughable. Labour received far more votes in 2017 and 2019 than the party did in 2024. The issue in 2019 was that the leadership capitulated on Brexit and offered a re-run of the referendum. This destroyed Labour electorally because the majority of its seats voted Brexit, particularly in the heartlands.

Indeed, Lewis said:

We have a distorted electoral system. Bring on proportional representation, because if we had PR, we would have had a different Government in 2019 and most definitely in 2017.

Privatisation: lack of investment

During the debate, Lewis also noted:

In the 35 years before privatisation almost 100 reservoirs were built; in the 35 years since privatisation, not one major English reservoir has been built. But it gets worse, because in that same period private water companies have sold off 25 reservoirs without replacing one. Instead of investing in resilience, they have extracted value: £72 billion paid out in dividends while pipes leak, rivers choke, and the public pays the price.

On this point, the Mirror reported in 2022:

The GMB union says companies have sold off 232 properties in England and Wales since 2017. These included 35 ex-reservoirs of which, the union estimates, 10 were in use until recently.

The MP for Norwich South further linked the water industry to climate change:

If scientists tell us the climate crisis is an existential threat to humanity and to this country, we must treat it as such: an existential conflict. In that context, the actions of these companies—selling off reservoirs, failing to invest, polluting our water—are not just negligent; they are acts that actively undermine our national water security

And Green Party co-leader Carla Denyer later chimed:

Privatisation is just not working. The experiment has failed… Water is a natural monopoly. For example, people who live in the south-west, as I do, cannot choose to be supplied by Yorkshire Water. I am not sure that they would want to, but my point is that when their provider gives a poor service and charges extortionate sums, they cannot take their business elsewhere. There is no fair competition. You get what you get, and you cannot get upset about it—but we are upset about it, because sewage is being pumped into our water, and we are paying through the nose for the privilege, all while shareholders profit.

Lewis has said his bill aims to bring the debate beyond “simplistic” ideas of “privatisation vs nationalisation”. While public ownership means we can reinvest would-be profits into a better service and cheaper bills, it does not in and of itself guarantee enough investment nor correct management. Lewis believes bringing “economic democracy” to the water industry through citizens’ assemblies would solve this.

Featured image via the Canary