BBC panel speechless as Zack Polanski nails the utter state of the water companies

Green Party leader Zack Polanski took to BBC Politics North to lay out the disaster of water privatisation. He left the panel stony-faced.

Zack Polanski: water privatisation is a “failed experiment”

In England and Wales, water utilities were publicly owned until Margaret Thatcher privatised them in 1989. On the BBC on 26 October, Zack Polanski called it a failure:

It is quite simple because actually privatisation was the experiment and it’s a failed experiment.

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England and Wales are outliers in terms of such an ownership model. They are among the few places in the world with fully privatised water and sewage systems. That’s because water is a common essential no one can live without. So why rent it rather than own it?

The Green Party leader continued:

We have water companies who are pumping sewage into our rivers and charging us extra for the privilege. They are pumping dividends to their shareholders while their pumping sewage into our water. So the very obvious answer here is to nationalise the water companies.

Water companies in England released sewage into our rivers and the sea for 3.6 million hours in 2024. Profit-focused management means they have failed to invest in the infrastructure necessary to expand the wastewater system, leading to overflowing.

On top of that, shareholders have taken £85.2bn out of the water utilities through dividends since privatisation. This could have been invested in sewage system maintenance, while public ownership means cheaper interest rates along with the possibility of quantatitive easing. No wonder Polanski is calling for nationalisation.

On the BBC, Zack Polanski went further:

We need to bust through the myth, it doesn’t take money. And actually you don’t need to agree with me on that, you need to agree with the shareholders who are saying our water companies aren’t worth much money at all… They can’t say it’s not worth anything and then say you’re going to have to charge the taxpayer to bring it back. Ultimately if we had a government that had any conviction or integrity whatsoever they would be facing down the water companies on this, rather than… pushing money towards private capital that should be our money, our assets, our wealth. It’s time to take it back.

Major investors in Thames Water have valued their shares at zero because the company is debt and crisis riddled.

Zack Polanski’s spot on with his call for nationalisation.

Featured image via the Canary