Show us the evidence?

The final report from the independent Water Commission, led by Sir Jon Cunliffe, arrived on July 21st, 464 pages and 88 recommendations.

A lot to wade through, but don't worry, we won't drag you on that trip; we will take you to the heart of the matter. Is it credible?

After careful consideration and conducting some error checks on the report and process, this is our review:

Ill-conceived, selective, flawed, and opaque.

We have already shown in an earlier blog how this was a review designed by a government trying to please big financial funds, not to serve the public or our embattled waters.

It was established with clear instructions about what was to be delivered: regulation that would be more attractive to 'investors' and we know what that means; it has to be worse for customers and the environment - but it had to be dressed up to look good to the victims as well.

It started like this in the instructions to the Commission Chair:

"The UK government has already confirmed that nationalisation of the water sector will not be in scope, due to the high costs associated with this option, the lack of evidence that it would lead to improvements, and the delays it would cause in achieving better outcomes for consumers and the environment."

Source - the final report https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/independent-commission-on-the-water-sector-regulatory-system-terms-of-reference/independent-commission-on-the-water-sector-regulatory-system-terms-of-reference

By basing it on this demonstrably untrue statement, the Water Commission was established to protect the interests of the water 'investors' - largely offshore private equity funds that have not invested, but instead managed and manipulated customers' money for an outrageously high fee - about £85billion.

£85 Bn ref

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cw4478wnjdpo

A cursory check would have provided a huge amount of evidence and academic research to undermine the investment claims about the need to attract more parasites, but Sir Jon appears to have either chosen not to look, or to ignore it; we may never know which.

Evidence or opinion and lobbying?

One example - Professor David Hall's work provides compelling peer reviewed evidence and analysis of the 'investment illusion'

https://gala.gre.ac.uk/id/eprint/47165/3/47165%20HALL_Ownership_Without_Investment_In_English_Water-net_Capital_Extraction_2024.pdf

The evidence we have heard the government cite for the high costs of taking water into public ownership (originally £90Bn) comes from a widely discredited report from 2018 by the Social Market Foundation (Think Tank), paid for by various water companies and Water UK, (ie. You, the billpayer).

It was roundly dismissed as nonsense by eminent Economist, Prof Sir Dieter Helm.

https://dieterhelm.co.uk/natural-capital-environment/water/water-boarding/

When this fell apart, the government flipped its reasoning to a valuation of the regulatory capital value (RCV) of the industry (basically a number made up by water companies and accepted by Ofwat to help regulate them).

This has also been taken apart by Professor Ewan McGaughey, a professor of law at KCL, specialising in water industry regulation.

https://www.common-wealth.org/publications/how-to-clean-up-our-water

By accepting a biased and untrue statement as a foundation for his work, an apparent lack of professional curiosity seems to have led to Sir Jon simply regurgitating the Secretary of State's demonstrably false claims.

Now a brief look at how the Commission was conducted.

The Secretariat was from Defra (alarm bells - one of the main offenders was in charge) - the government department that has been feeding Ministers fake news and was and still is, responsible for disabling the Environment Agency and has directed the current scapegoat Ofwat through selecting its leaders and directing its policies.

Inexplicably (no doubt a reason will come) Sir Jon decided not to publish the evidence that should underpin the Commission's findings, but rather to summarise it. This is not what happened with the Environmental Audit Committee, the Efra Committee, nor the House of Lords, Industry and Regulators Committee, or other nationally important reviews. Evidence was published in full on the websites. Ironic, as the Commission's report mentions 'transparency' no less than 50 times.

It is unclear who decided what, or how much influence was exerted by water companies and those others who will benefit from continuing privatised water, but Prof Becky Malby BEM, of the Ilkley Clean Rivers Group, Sewage Campiagn Network and Chair of the People's Commission on Water, which did publish its evidence, has discovered this about who dominated the meetings with the Commission:

Chart courtesy of Prof Malby of the Sewage Campaign Network

A remarkable presence of 'investors', especially as they have been shown to extract money rather than invest, and in the absence of anyone to challenge water company input, that looks like an awful lot of water company and potential shareholder lobbying.

The NGO representation does not specify whether the organisations benefit directly or indirectly from the water industry (and thereby privatisation) or Defra funding, as many of them do.

And with the Defra Secretariat.

Source Prof Malby

Now let's look at some evidence - real evidence; facts, figures and analysis from witnesses, not just opinion or lobbying. We can trace one very solid contribution from WASP's Prof Peter Hammond. 14 relevant reports dating from 2021 to 2024 from an expert witness and data analyst formerly of the Big Data Institute. The Professor of Computational Biology, who has been investigating water company regulation for 8 years and who led the exposure of widespread illegal pollution that was being missed or hidden by the regulators in 2021. He was recognised by the Environmental Audit Committee as conducting better quality analysis than the regulators.

Superior analysis - Paras 168 and 169 https://committees.parliament.uk/publications/8460/documents/88412/default/

This hard evidence - did not even feature in the report and does not appear to have been considered. Not fitting a predetermined narrative, perhaps.

In the briefest summary, this evidence shows how water companies have duped regulators and how regulators with more than adequate powers have failed the public. As an example, one of the reports debunked the Victorian blaming myth and showed how little of the sewer network is Victorian - less than 12% in England and Wales with the highest, about 20%, in the Thames Region (because it has London) with no indication that Victorian infrastructure performs worse than the rest.

Busting the Victorian myth from Prof Hammond

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xJuxAqJFEoggPngggN-Hy4pbmbjdM-HV/view

However, the Cunliffe report, page 373 says this.

"Thames Water warns that their ageing, Victorian infrastructure poses a risk to public safety, water supply, and the environment. They also state that they have approximately £19 billion of assets that are in poor or failed condition or are not capable of reliably performing their function.1208"

And that number '1208' is a reference to Thames Water's Asset Health Deficit document which mentions the word 'Victorian' twice and on both occasions to refers to this: "For example, our Victorian Mains Replacement programme has undoubtedly resulted in improved asset condition, but it was primarily targeted to reduce leakage and was efficient in doing so."

So the tired old Victorian excuse is not even substantiated in the reference supplied with it, and we wonder how many more comments are similarly not substantiated, merely referenced to look like they are.

Sir Jon seems to have critically missed what the Efra Committee has been majoring on lately - some water bosses who have been deliberately underinvesting and relying on getting away with the resultant criminal pollution for years have shown scant regard for the truth. It has been called 'mis speaking' but we know what that means.

Giving water companies such apparently unfettered input and influence in this process should ring serious alarm bells in terms of the credibility of the end product.

The cross-party Efra Committee has taken a grip - It is all about the money

https://committees.parliament.uk/committee/52/environment-food-and-rural-affairs-committee/news/208246/thames-water-recalled-to-efra-committee-following-disclosures-and-new-financial-concerns/

To be fair, the Commission was far too big a task to be completed in such a short (9 months from announcement) timescale with inadequate and compromised resources and a Chair with no experience of the water scandal but plenty involving banking and economics, with a reported predisposition towards the too big to fail (TBTF) and bail in principles.

Defra, Sir Jon and an advisory team was pitched to resolve what can easily be described as a water industry scandal, which has years of experience of manipulating and capturing regulators and governments, and to make it worse for the public and environment, the task was to make it more attractive for the people who have effectively exploited and wrecked the industry for profit.

Add to that the embattled and exposed regulators peddling excuses for failure and then bring in a group of sophisticated and motivated 'investors' holding power over government with their notional private sector 'investment' being played as a virtually fake bargaining chip and the outcome was destined to be what we see now.

Even the selected advisory part of the NGO sector was influenced by all of the above insofar as it needs vital funding or desires 'collaborative working' that has so far resulted in the terrible state in which nature lies struggling to survive in the UK.

Thus, a cocktail of vested interests provided their own version of what was called evidence but in the absence of being able to see it, looks far more like comment or lobbying with a few facts, figures and reports of various degrees of credibility and relevance thrown in alongside some serious work, to be shaken or stirred by the Defra Secretariat until it settled into the predetermined layers set out in the terms of reference.

A contemplative person may be forgiven for thinking that there is absolutely no way a Chair, no matter how talented, with no prior knowledge of a complex subject, aided by an assortment of advisors of varying experience and ability could develop the understanding and expertise to come up with 88 recommendations, directing the minutiae of regulation just 3 months after closing the two month window for the submission of evidence. But we know that Defra was the Secretariat, and almost certainly, Defra staff wrote it.

More alarmingly, could it be likely that within the smokescreen of 88 recommendations lies a small group that the government intends to invoke to redirect the water industry the way it and the shareholders want it? We think so.

One clue may lie in the recommendations to clear out the legacy criminal offences as soon as possible (this means alternatives to court and doing away with dents in profits or reputations), to draw a new line in the sand and reset what is currently criminal to what can be hidden behind vague water quality outcomes instead of hard evidenced permit breaches. The ultimate trick to block the public's defences.

What do we do now? Keep our eyes on the ball - privatisation is a guaranteed expensive failure for everyone but the shareholders and senior management, and, if we cannot break its stranglehold, we will be forever blighted, not only as the dirty man of Europe, but also the stupid one.