"It's theft!" LBC's water nationalisation debate 

Now imagine what a private NHS is going to look like.

Capitalism: Privatise the profit, nationalise the debt.

Scottish water is nationalised. The quality of our rivers and lochs is vastly better, the system better run, the bills less. This isnt some nationalistic contest or a slight against England, but to illustrate that a nationalised water system is just better. Privatising critical infrastructure is just insane.

Everything leads back to Thatcher, evil incarnated.

The UK just can’t catch a break. No heat, no food, water drying up, bills hiking, rent hiking, free movement destroyed, trade destroyed, overworked and underpaid, criminals in control…

Things must be bad, Peter Hitchens is making sense.

Water should NEVER have been privatised! Many of us tried to tell them at the time but were ignored. It must be re-nationalised. If Thames Water is going bankrupt anyway why can’t the government just take it back? The corporation (and the CEO etc.) is in charge of its own debts!

The money needs to be recovered and people need to be charged with fraud

None of OUR utilities should ever have been privatised.

nation builds a service, a company comes in and makes a profit out of it, and when it collapses, gets tax payers to bail it out whilst still giving the CEO millions in bonus packages!

Thanks alot for privatising the water industry Thatcher.

Their shareholders should pay back.... Water, railway's, power etc should be owned by the people of the UK!

She keeps blaming the lack of or poor regulation, but I’m willing to bet if the regulator had been stricter over the years then she would have one those blaming “over regulation” for stifling the companies.

She claims there was more investment yet the last reservoir built in the UK was before privatisation. Even though the population has increased by 10 million a 17% increase, we have less reservoirs now than then.

Nicky Morgan saying it's a failure of regulation is like saying you failed to regulate a scorpions behavior, you can't, it's a scorpion

I do not understand, why should shareholders be compensated? The company is £14bn in debt. This needs to be paid off before any shareholder takes any money. As someone on the panel commented any shares they hold are worthless

The people responsible should be in Jail.

Fundamentally, Thames water had ZERO debt when privatised. Now it has £53 BILLION debt but since privatisation has paid £72 BILLION in DIVIDENDS to shareholders. This is tantamount to an institutionalised con job . Public money being syphoned off to private employees and investors while accumulating debt that has become unserviceable with the high interest rates. Clearly what Sunak meant when he said ‘hold your nerve’ was a message to the people who benefit from these institutionalised con jobs which appear to be quite legal but are obviously abhorrently unethical and unsustainable. Just like the credit crunch con job that was manufactured by greedy bankers these schemes allow shareholders and employees to accumulate vast wealth through clearly unsustainable and deceitful financial models. When the inevitable bubble of deceit bursts those people retain their wealth while government money is used to bail out the ‘too big to fail’ banks or the essential water companies. Then the dust settles and the same conmen start another institutional con job.

I remember in I think 1989 when water was privatised and the main sales point was a private companies could raise the capital to replace all our old Victorian sewers and storm drains, and 33 years later I watched a CEO of one of the water companies tell a Parliamentary Select Committee that it may be necessary to increase the cost of water and its treatment because they needed to make large investments to replace our old Victorian sewers and storm drains.....This was the moment I knew that the privatisation of water and our railways for that matter was just a big criminal Ponzi scheme were dividends were just paid out with no return for the public and the profits shifted to the water companies overseas owners offshore accounts with very little tax payed in the UK, which has also occurred with our privatised railway companies. Our government criticise the way Putin runs the corrupt business practises in Russia, and yet I quite happy for our own population to pay through the nose for a poor service. And because of Brexit and we know longer need to abide by EU clean water regulations we can now show our freedom by dumping more raw sewage in our rivers and seas, to enhance profit, and the final insult because of mismanagement the British taxpayer may have to bail out Thames Water. The problem is we have too many investment financiers in our ruling party where if they did the moral thing it may affect their dividend earnings so they are quite happy with the corruption.

Surely no-one ever thought the robber barons would act in the public interest?

Britain is so stuffed

Regulations don't mean anything if breaching them only means a fine. If a company finds it cheaper to go against regulation and pay a fine than it is to follow the rules then they'll just pay the fine.

55 billion in debt added to the water companies since privitization, 64 billion given to shareholders... investment negligible to zero..... gee, who'd a thunk it.... Oh yeah, everyone but the billionaires and their lackies...

Baroness Nicky Morgan? Geeze, they'll give gongs to any fool these days.

Shareholders don't have to be compensated, they get a vote, they should have exercised control over the company. They don't get to cause the problem by taking the money out of the company and then get paid again as a reward for their poor investment choices.

Let Thames Water fail, then nationalise and let the investors take the hit.

The water companies paid nothing for the infrastructure. Who nominates the regulator.

The shareholders have robbed the people of all the money for water and now that they have to give back they are dumping it. They should be all held accountable.

Either sort it out or go to jail. I'm sure it'll be fixed very quickly when there are consequences for their actions.

This plan has worked as it was designed. It was designed to do precisely this.

I remember the head of Thames water stating on TV that water would only be a small part of its business and asset management would be their main job. Now the Assets have been stripped are we really surprised. The fat cats have had their profits and now there's nothing left, so off they go.

Nice to hear Peter come around to positions Christopher held for years.

Vote these Tories OUT!!!!

Water in Scotland is NOT privatised. 😎

How can water be privatised!? It’s an absolute joke…

As a Dane I'm both mildly amused, sad and scared because of course this'd happen, and I'm sorry for your people but lastly: sick neolib theory is all politicians know in Denmark as well.

Thatcher's cycle coming to fruition.

I'll wager that a majority of tory members are owners of shares in these crooked companies, reaping huge rewards from them without worrying about the consequences that are coming to light that we the public will no doubt have to fund. All the holders of these companies shares should give them up now and receive 10 pence per share. They will have made great profits from them anyway. Also, they don't need more money to sit on!

The invisible hand of the irrational market in your pocket!

Andrew is correct, the assets have been stripped from the company, meanwhile the infrastructure investment that the company was liable for under privatisation, was not done. When the hunt for profit gets in the way of delivering the service, the profit motive needs to be dropped.

Just when the energy companies finally lower the bills we find out water could be going up 40%.This stinks fishy to me.

Sorry I thought if you believed in capitalism investments are risks and now we are being told we can't do the right thing because think of the investors they need to be given more money.

We Own It is the place to go for objective information about all the Utilities,Rail and the NHS.75th Anniversay of the NHS this week.

It's WATER!!! How did you guys allow it to be privatized?!!!

why cant we just sieze it? stolen goods are siezed by the police if a criminal robs a house, these people have robbed us for years and for what? why should we pay them to take it back? they ruined it, stole from us for years and we should take it off them with no compensation, dont like it? should have done a better job and not pocketed boat loads of cash while in charge!

You can blame the regulator all you want, but that does not mean that they should have been run responsibly; they have been used as a cash cow. As for the investors in the pension funds, then those that run the funds should be culpable; they should have been doing due diligence into that which they invested in in the first place.

Yet another example of the awful legacy of Margaret Thatcher.

Why one Earth would you pay compensation to shareholders if you re-nationalise a failing business. Anyone who buys shares knows they risky and if the shares are valueless now, well thats simply a symptom of a failing business and a poor investment choice. No-one was crying when they made heaps of money when the company was first floated. Give them nothing.

Privatise anything and people will get rich from it, investment will fall until whatever it is we're talking about rail, water or the NHS becomes unworkable and there's nothing more to be creamed off, then the tax payer has to rebuild it.

I've never understood the "what about pensions" argument, when the benefit to those with pensions invested in water companies is probably going to be vastly outstripped by their increased bills.

The pension funds will have to take the management to court when they loose money.

The thieves that own these companies should be forced to pay back their stolen money and then sent to prison!

The discharges have only really been bad since the decision was obvious that we were leaving the EU. Before that the water companies were under EU regulation to keep rivers and beaches clean. The blue flag system was working. We've managed to wreck the quality of water in five years, while share holders have been making hay with our money. It's time to pay back and for water company boards to face the consequences for their profit chasing at the expense of our environment.

They have basically done the same to the water company that Ivan Bosky and Michael Milken did to so many companies during their corporate raising in the 1980s. They left a landscape of ruin and misery

That women does know you pay for water and coupled with leveraging that's what would pay for investment. To compare it schools is bizarre.

We need to stop this!

what they did to water companies they did to the gas storage..

Demand to see the bank accounts of each regulator and you will find out why water companies have been allowed to do what they are doing. Regulators are bought and paid for and will not interfere when their own bank accounts are inflating. We must get the regulators in court and find out why this was allowed to happen. This applies to ALL regulators as they are ALL corrupt. This is a scandal and we will be forced to pay for this negligence and greed

It appears to the general public that CEO posts are a bit like football manager roles, if you manage to get a football club relegated and get the sack, six months later ,you appear once again on the merry-go-round of high paid football manager jobs. Surlety when a extremely high paid CEO like Bailey fails so dramatically, she should start at amazon or Evrie the following week on the minimum wage

Privatisation was the asset stripping of national assets. It was never about efficiency, purely and simply it was about Conservative ideology which oppose national ownership. All over Europe nationalised industry's work and work very efficiently, why does it work there when it doesn't in Britain. Answer, they don't have Britain's Conservative Party.

The shareholders should NOT be compensated any differently than shareholders of any private company would be that goes bankrupt - and has to be sold for £1. Likewise those holding debt with the company should not be compensated either. They chose to lend to or invest in the company and if they made bad decisions in doing so, well then they must suffer the consequences. The fact that many of the investors and shareholders are pension funds is irrelevant. Why should I, as a taxpayer, pay for their bad decisions? As a former Equitable Life pension fund holder who only received 25% compensation from the government instead of the statutory requirement of 90% when the company went bust because of bad decisions by the board (and failure of the then FSA to do it's job of regulating the company) I feel all the more strongly about this situation with Thames Water.

I feel sorry for the poor over worked and stressed CEO who missed her £400,000 bonus. She must be worried about her pension investments as well.

Trying to force capitalism on the nation’s utilities has left us in a real mess.

The board in charge of that water company should face criminal charges , how have they been allowed to get away with day light robbery 😒

When are the people who did this going to jail? Until this happens, it will continue.

Peter Hitchens has it spot on.

If pension funds are overexposed to a single company then the people running those funds aren't doing their jobs properly. It's different with UK gilts/bonds since only the UK government sell those but they should really be buy bonds from other countries too for diversification, to spread the risk

Privatizing essential public services like water was disgusting!

As someone else pointed out, if the UK's water industry had not been privatised and if investment levels had been less than needed (as they have been under privatisation), then the taxpayer STILL would have had fifty seven BILLION Pounds that weren't doled out to shareholders to spend on other things.

The Energy companies keep talking about shutting off power (drum roll) because they didn't invest in clean energy or in infrastructure

It's all very well claiming the shareholders have invested in the water industry but the reality is they haven't. Whenever the water companies talk about investing they say we will have to increase prices for this investment to take place. They never say we will have to decrease dividends or senior management bonuses, it's always the customer who will have to pay. Then of course when those prices go up part of that increase disappears in increased dividends and bonuses and investment in infrastructure is as little as they can get away with. Then when another problem occurs they run to the regulator and demand another increase in prices to cover the investment that they didn't make from the borrowing or previous price increase. The water companies should be told you are not going to be allowed to increase your prices or your borrowing but you are going to face the fines for incompetence and be made to carry out the investment that you said you were going to do before. If that means your shareholders are not going to get a dividend well tough you've been raking it in for years now. It's your business and if you want a return, then invest in the business and don't expect others to do it for you. One thing the government should not do however is give them more money for something they claimed they were doing before or nationalise them. If we take them back into public ownership the shareholders and investors will have to be paid compensation so they will once again make money. No they should be allowed to go bust that's the free market and the way capitalism works. Then when they go under and the administrators are brought in the government should announce loud and clear that they will not support any other company that buys them and that company will have to do the back log of work at their own cost. When no buyer comes forward then the government should take the assets from the administrator. The 'investors' who have made billions can suffer the loss of the business, that again is the free market, and the financial institutions who loaned them the money should be paid a pittance on the pound for their reckless lending. This time those that have made money on the back of the tax payer should have to face the consequences of the free market that they claim to believe in.

Basically everything Thatcher stole they should give back

I hope the people calling for the privatisation of the NHS get the point now.

In France they kept the assets in public ownership and put the maintenance out to tender - to allow real competition

I think biggest issue is that compensating the investors will only get blamed on nationalisation and never on the companies incompetence. Which will lead to the next right wing government getting in and privatising it instantly again at a cut down price.

Luckily Scottish Water and Scotrail are publicly owned 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

Bankrupt. Smell ya later. This is competition

shares in a company that has a Victorian dated infrastructure which needs massive repairs costing billions, shareholders get massive dividends and declare it bankrupt in a few years, easy money with no morals.

Water? Water belongs to services of general interest like policing, fire prevention /- brigade, energy aso. Privatization brings in extraneous interests, most obviously but limited to profit for third parties. To organize water supply by private companies is a crime. Having access to water is a human right and obviously a question of survival. It is the highest of all duties of any politician, govt, and parliament to get water supply organized for everyone at a low expense for every single citizen as all of the other services of general interest. Otherwise they completely failed. Your govt has been and is failing on you on so many levels but you don’t want to realize and accept it. It is not unlikely that you will have unrest in the next few years.

Get the Tory’s OUT!!

Profit from national assets belong to the country not privare and foreign shareholder's

My friend worked at Yorkshire water and they all got shares in Yorkshire water. The company was taken over by a consortium of banks and they were made to sell all their shares back. Nationalise the water companies not the debt. Share values going to 0 for these nasty investment companies that have stripped our assets would do wonders for reducing inflation.

Nothing worse than private monopolies.

I agree totally that the shareholders have had their money in the form of dividends that were made by the company incurring debt and not actual profits. As such if the board and investors just wish to walk away then they should not be compensated for doing so.

So don't fine the companies, bring in legislation that would jail the bosses for their criminality.

Hi this has got to stop 3 years to fix a leaking pipe southern water and it is still leaking just left.

People need to go to jail for the wromgs this time, not just say sorry and walk away or resign the responsibility !!!!! its scandalious

Theft at the end of day ...criminal behaviour

Yes the French have issues now but Transportation ,Utilities ..... Jez UK is finished

If Thames Water goes bankrupt then the shareholders have LOST their investment ... they should get NOTHING. Isn't the whole thing about shares that its a risk and not a guarantee?

They should pay the money back because they've failed to do their job.

Wonder how much money and assets these directors of water boards and gas etc have? Public money, needs to take away from those who are legakised corrupt,

Make those that profit, pay it back. Let's clean up our rivers and that often sullied concept- ACCOUNTABILITY

Shareholders don't need to be paid out, buying shares is supposed to be a gamble. They had no problem taking the gains, they can take a loss.

The Water Boards should never have been sold in the first place

An absolute disgrace

If I was a shareholder and Labour get into power I would withdraw all my money immediately

Privatisation is literally a license to print money; with Thames Water, the debt went from zero to billions, all of which was given to shareholders as dividends. No investment was made in the infrastructure, again this was funnelled to shareholders and now it's been drained to collapsing point and the owners will simply dump it and walk away with their stolen money completely untouched by inconveniences such as laws or regulations.

The water companies can’t be fined but they can be jailed.

Banks, Healthcare, Public Transport, Roads, Water, Electricity, Gas, Schools, ... should all be run by government.