Restoring our Waters: Britain's Water Company Crisis

The privatised water industry model has completely collapsed. Since privatisation, water companies have accumulated £70 billion in debt while handing out £83 billion in dividends. Up to 28% of customer bills go toward servicing corporate debt, rather than being used to prevent the 3 billion litres of water which leak away daily and the raw sewage which continues to poison our rivers and coastlines.

While both Labour and the Conservatives voted down all 44 Liberal Democrat amendments to the Water (Special Measures) Bill, our party has consistently led the charge for reform. Today, Liberal Democrat members reaffirmed our policy to end the sewage crisis, replace broken regulators, and transform failing water monopolies into mutual benefit corporations.

Our new policy calls on the Government to:

• Immediately replace Ofwat with a new Clean Water Authority, with real powers to end sewage discharges, ban unjustified bonuses, and hold executives legally accountable.
   
• Convert failing water companies into Mutually Owned Public Benefit Corporations - jointly owned by customers, professionally managed, with surpluses reinvested in the network rather than paid out as dividends.
   
• Introduce a nationwide single social tariff to protect vulnerable households from unaffordable bills, alongside new transparency requirements on sewage spill data and a forever chemical restriction and remediation fund.

It is an environmental and financial scandal that customers are being asked to foot the bill for decades of corporate greed and crumbling infrastructure. Profit must never again be prioritised over public health and nature.

The Liberal Democrats are standing up for billpayers, protecting our waterways, and demanding a water system that serves the public interest.