Cunliffe: Water companies acted against public interest

ODN

The chair of the Independent Water Commission accuses some water companies of acting in their own private interest rather than that of the public. Speaking at the London Water and Steam Museum where the commission has unveiled 88 recommendations to reform the water industry, Sir Jon Cunliffe said this ‘must be prevented in future’.  Report by Gluszczykm. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn

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00:00The water industry, of course, is at the heart of this, and the industry as a whole has not met

00:04public expectations or maintained public trust in recent years. Some companies have manifestly

00:11acted in their private interest, but against the public interest. That must be prevented in future.

00:17But the industry does not exist in a vacuum. It sits within a framework of law and regulation

00:22that operates under the strategic direction of government, and is not the only demand on our

00:27water system, or the only contributor to the current state of our waterways.

00:32The Commission's report is long and detailed, with multiple recommendations, because, as I've said,

00:37there is no one single reform, no matter how radical, that will deliver what is needed.

00:43We need to act on all of the failures that have brought us to the present past. Our assessment

00:48is that the current environmental and economic regulators have not achieved what is needed,

00:53and will not achieve what is needed. There are many reasons for this. It's clear the

00:57Environment Agency has not had the resources, the people, the skills, to technology, to hold the

01:03water industry and other sectors that impact the water environment to account. And against that

01:08likely background of rising costs and rising bills, there is a need for a stronger safety net

01:13for the most vulnerable who are exposed to water poverty. Water companies themselves and their owners

01:19must bear a major part of the responsibility for the failures we've seen. Water companies are private

01:25companies, and their owners are entitled to return on their investment. But those returns must not come

01:33at the expense of the public interest. Water companies operate under licence, and the public purpose of their

01:39operations is inherent in those licences. Sadly, we've seen over recent decades examples in which companies have,

01:46as I said earlier, pursued short-term private interest at the expense of public interest and at the cost of the long-term

01:53resilience of their companies.

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