@@Michael020 Rich ones also get a peerage - it happened with the MP's expenses scandals - whilst the ordinary person would have been done for fraud, potential jail time and a criminal record - it stinks !
The amount that these people earn a year would be obscene even if they were good at their jobs. The fact that they are also absolutely incompetent renders their salaries utterly deplorable
Their salaries are a minor lottery win. The CEO of Thames Water is on 1.5 Million a year. If they are in their 50’s and they get sacked all they have to worry about is where to live in their retirement.
It's not incompetence they know exactly what they're doing. Let the infrastructure rot , sell off assets, rack up debt, cover yourself with get out of jail free clauses that mean the taxpayer picks up that debt, when it all goes to shit (literally) you just make sure you've already screwed enough money out of the company and retire comfortably.
Catherine Ross should be behind bars for allowing them to pay more in dividends than they made in profit - that's clear breach of statutory obligations as laid out by the honourable gentleman
Function of the private companies paying more…regulation was a route into a water co especially if you were influential within the organisation you left behind 😉
I don't understand why we are talking about this. Take the money back from the investors as they were practically stollen and throw all CEOs into prison. Enough is enough of being too soft on white collar crime 😡😡😡😡😡
Thank God someone gets it. Arrest any dodgy contracts, dodgy dividends, and tell the Ozzie's that if they don't assist us, we will remove the assistance we provide them. Simple.
A fair number of investors were pensions savings... I'm not certain it would be possible to dip into the pensions of millions of people and take the dividend payments back into the public coffers.
this is the issue with private pension fund investment, all of these companies exist to appease shareholders NOT customers!. We've literally painted ourselves into a corner by allowing these ridiculous investment fund managers and the companies they invest in to guarantee returns to shareholders in the form of dividends. they've asset-striped Thames Water essentially and if they have to pay back the dividends (which isn't going to happen as it's a Canadian teacher's pension fund I believe) then imagine how many other companies are acting in the exact same way. The entire game is rigged and the house always wins!
Been saying this for months. Each and everyone of them are to hand back their entire salaries from the day they started. None of them have justified those salaries from the day they took office. Obscene that people can get away with being paid like this for the gravest mis-management.
In Ofwat's interest tomake debt/ capital complicated. Before committee hearings they should send note explaining different calculations of ofwat debt for government committee. Dividends higher than company's profits, £7 bn dividends and £14 bn debt in same 32 year period by Thames Water.
No apology, I havent done anything wrong, it wasnt me, pleading ignorance all done with a smirk on her face, I would have loved to have told her at the end well I am going to make a comment your going to prison, I think the smirk would have disappeared quiet rapidly. why isn't there a regularity body looking over these people or are they in on it as well.
I'm an accountant. 30% gearing is about average; 50% is considered high. 60% is stupid, but manageable. 80% is beyond ridiculous - it's not even a Going Concern anymore at that point
25-50 % is good ...above risky but that is depending on your assets you leverage and liquid cash available to service the debt influenced by many factors such as index rates etc...Thames water is massive and has a lot of debt driven by targets set by regulators and govt...so the gearing will always be high to borrow to spread over an AMP period ... I know this and I'm not even an accountant
Catherine Ross is game keeper (used to be part of the board at OFWAT) turned poacher (CEO of Thames Water). Corruption at its best. They make me sick….
Hahs anything ever come of any of them? They seem to happen time and again and not end in any change so its just a little cycle of having to go to the headmaster for a spanking with the plimsol every now and then.
@@Padraigp yeah I was having this thought as well. I thinks it’s cathartic watching the telling off, but ultimately these tend to result in minimal change
@@PadraigpNope. For something to come of them, the people in charge need integrity. Some MPs hope that their questions will smoking gun and that those questions will lead to the need to arrest or change, however, it never happens. Most people who answer questions are so well insulated, or have one over on an MP, that nothing will ever happen to them.
@@justno808 i see. Thanks. Same here in ireland. We literally do not even have a white collar crime department. Sickening really. There will be a reckoning as granny weatherwax woukd say.
@@Padraigpthey don't have any legal powers, but unlike parliament people are subject to a proper grilling. They cant get away with non answers and we can all scrutinise what is going on.
I’ve got a lot faith in this committee but there never seems to be any consequences for the wrongs done to us. Very grateful to Darren Jones and the rest. Can we just put them in charge?
In the US they managed to put a good number of Enron executives in jail for rewarding themselves while destroying the company finances. Here in the UK Fred Goodwin (I cannot call him SIR Fred Goodwin) rode off into the sunset with an enormous pension pot paid out of the public purse after destroying RBS. Might be an idea to hold to account people who screw up public companies. Instead success and failure are rewarded just the same. That is not a meritocracy: it is a swindle.
Yep just like Dido Harding had a massive data breach at Talk Talk so they gave her the Covid app contract that cost billions, was a failure yet in South Korea one man created his own open sourced version. So where did the billions go? Then the management of the Post Office during the scandal, some have been promoted despite them actually costing lives and ruining others.
I worked in the water industry as a leakage technician and a project engineer. I was a contractor that worked in Thames water for several periods of time and I can honestly say Thames water had the very worst leakage technicians I have ever come across. They thought a running fire main into a disused power station was normal. When I got that main turned off for one hour it dropped the leakage in that area by 17 cubic metres. The whole area was losing 25-26 cubic metres an hour. It took a lot of explaining to the thames water technician that a fire main should only be running when there is a fire, and not when it’s a disused site!
@@mattwebb5532you do know Thames water was privatised in 1989 that’s over 30 years ago - there seems to be many people with zero brains thinking Thames water was recently “privatised” idk where you get your info from.. thesun? Daily Mail?
Thames Water are shite.. I note as soon as privatised the salaries of the top management zoomed. They were previously happy to work for much smaller salaries(or they couldleave to sell their wonderful skills on the open market ) but suddenly felt they were worth more than four times as much! 😲
Thames water had no deficit but borrowed heavily, piled up debt whilst giving billions to shareholders, no new reservoirs built, structures crumbling, industrial scale leaks.. Charging us and government to pay up. Almost all water companies in England are owned by global corporates. An essential service should never be Privatised.
@@taffman1 That was over 20 years ago. The rational in part for blocking it was that the leakage rate was too high & a better solution than building a reservoir was to fix the leaks. Thames Water has done neither: the leakage rate is roughly the same as when the company was privatised.
@zetectic7968 Thames Water have tried to sort their leakage issue out but it’s very difficult as their water mains are buried beneath London. They are allowed to close roads around once a year to carry out work. Water Mains in the U.K. burst multiple times a year due to ground movement. We have frost in the winter which constricts cause the ground to freeze constricting the mains and dry weather in the summer followed by periods of rain which causes the ground to move over a short space of time and the mains burst. Finding the location of leaks is hard enough but repairing them when they are in an area surrounded by so much critical infrastructure is very very difficult.
@@zetectic7968 As you said 'in part' I was part of the then team looking in to the reservoir, and the feeling was reservoir was still needed due to predicted future needs, and that the directors did not want stand up to the politicians , though I agree about the leaks, not often reported by the media is that around 25% of leakage figures comes from the private supply pipes.
Not just an essential service, but one where there's genuinely no possibility of meaningful competition. That doesn't even make sense by the moonlogic orthodoxy of privatisation. If the people choosing which company delivers the service don't actually care whether they do it or not, it's always going to be a race to the bottom.
The arrogance and complacency of these people is infuriating. Based on the sure knowledge that the structure of our society allows the privileged to be rewarded for corruption and failure that would be catastrophic for ordinary people.
Water prices going up but these people haven't invested and given all the money to the shareholders...and now they want us to take on the hike because of their failure! This makes me SO ANGRY! Lock these people up. They know exactly what they were doing!
HOW IS THIS NOT CRIMINAL? She signed off on increasing the debt from 4 to 10 billion (GB£10 000 000 000) and now (a few years later) she heads up the company????????????????? How much has she earned? What am I missing???
"The views have moved on" is the most AMAZING way of saying 'what we told you was bullshit' that I have EVER heard 🤣So glad to hear the committee member repeat that audacious nonsense back to her. Why's it so rare for public officials to own their failures?
Boris is still free. Doesn't that say it all? Three bye-elections on 20th, with Somerton and Frome and Mid-Bedfordshire not yet scheduled: Rutherglen and Hamilton West may soon join the list.
They are anything but useless. Are you still not paying attention!? The regulator is in bed with the company. She signed off on their plan to leverage the assets with the full knowledge that the taxpayers would have to pay for it. As for the other idiot saying, get shareholders to do it! The UK pensions will collapse, only we can offer a solid enough guarantee. The tories treat us like shit, won't even spend our own credit on us, but then use OUR credit rating to steal cash. Please England wake up!!
I was a chemical process safety engineer chartered with the IChemE until the IChemE took issue with me asking the same sorts of questions that Labour MPs are asking now. Tear into them, take no prisoners, all those who tried to solve this according to their duties to the crown got the same treatment from these corporate parasites over the last quarter century, it's about time they understand what pain means. I never turned my back on my duty, even if it meant getting thrown under the bus, and it's only Labour politicians upholding what duty means from what I can see of politics these days, from the perspective of the Crown Charter that all engineers in this country must sign up to.
Research the Labour leadership & what the Party now represents. You come across as a decent human being, with integrity, don't sell it short over politics. ✌
The former head of ofwat, now the head of one of these privatized companies. Now expecting people to believe she wasn't influenced by said companies. Criminal investigation's need to be applied to these rip off merchant's.
Should be illegal to swop jobs like this.. Should be at least a seven year bar.. Same shoyid apply with with Ministers going to work for companies they worked with while in government.. Especially military hardware companies..
It needs more consequences for the intentional wrongdoings of these people. Take away their bonuses, jail time. Whatever. They gamble the shit out of the company and then when the party is over, let's ask the government to bail us out. This has to stop. There's no risk for these people. They still have their jobs that's the worst, they should be fired immediately without pay.
Because the ultimate goal of the Tories is to shift as much money into the hands of their friends in the private sector as they can, and if that results in institutions failing they’re quite happy to toss even more money at them to put a temporary fix on the problem. It doesn’t fix anything properly, but that doesn’t matter to the Tories because they don’t suffer as much as regular people when tax money is spent on saving companies instead of on key services. Ultimately, Tories just don’t understand, nor do most care to understand, the circumstances of regular people and so they can never be trusted to look out for us.
How can those 3 sit there, with arrogance, egotism and a such blasé attitude to something they all contributed to?? Quite a number of years ago I got myself into debt with a bank, had to have a meeting with the bank manager to figure out how I can repay the monies, and the entire time I was there I felt nothing but shame and disappointment in myself. And that was only a debt of £6000!! We’re talking about BILLIONS here!!
No, better to have some strong committee chairs floating around holding the government to account. If they were in the shadow cabinet now they would have to toe the official line and tone their criticism down. Bring them into the cabinet after the election.
Leader. There's nothing to stop him sitting on committees as leader of the opposition that I know of, infact, it might actually work to their benefit 'where's Sunak?' "poncing about in a helicopter foe some reason" 'what about Jones?' "Oh he's down there holding people accountable for their failings again, you know, doing his job..."
We have regulators who don't regulate only giving the impression they do. We also need some serious reprioritizing about what is in the public interest. I would much rather understand how Thames Water have mismanaged their business to such an extent they have to account to a Select Committee as opposed to what Huw Edwards did or didn't get up to behind his wife's back .
And let this sink in...the chief executive of offwhat that now works for Thames water, said she didnt agree with the judges findings that Thames water had fiddled the readings and been evasive when they discovered the leak of sewage.
We were already paying our monthly bills on the proviso that the money was being used to undate the system. Thats what we signed up for. To be told we will have to pay AGAIN for the same thing because they couldnt be arsed to do it the first time round is so fucking shocking its insane.
The media has us think the poor, migrants etc are the boogeymen. Rather, it’s the well spoken folks on the boards and CxO positions of these companies and those who enable them.
If there were a university degree in slipperiness, question evasion and expertise in using the revolving door these people would undoubtedly have "honours".
Nothing is their fault, somebody else (us) is relied upon to act as guarantor whilst they have recklessly mismanaged their responsibilities and enriched foreign shareholders! It is criminal!
All without needing a single drop of their product. To rinse the bill payer. People need to start kicking back HARD against this state sponsored transfer of money from their pockets into the bank accounts of the corrupt best off 5%. The Tory cronies who made a killing out of Covid contracts.
On radio 4 they were claiming that bills would have to go up to, address the victorian infrastructure. I seem to remember this being mentioned when the water companies were privatised. Given that was 30 years ago and there's no competition, what the hell have they been doing.
Screwing profits up and shafting the customers. From personal experience a small leak, when they actually did something it took two days. Pity it took two years of waiting to get it done
Sewage and storm water all go into the same drainage system. That was the Victorian structure. Those drains in the gutters take all the rain water and there is not separate system for your Pooh. Intense rainfall floods the entire system. The infrastructure required is enormous but needs to happen. If the water company is taken into national ownership it,s the poor tax payer who will get hit. The target must be on regulation ( as in so many instances: think Grenfell lack of proper regulation and oversight ) Thatcher was so keen on deregulation, but we need more of it for private industries so they can raise the capital AND do the job…. ( whoops, I was dreaming… )
My concern is , we deregulated the banks and we got the 2008 crash through shady practices ,and poor controls. We deregulated the trains, fares went up, and tax payers were told they had to pay for the infrastructure. Energy was privatised and the government (tax payer) has to help them out during an energy, which could have been avoided had we taken climate change seriously. Now we're with here with the water. What's next deregulated healthcare? I'm not sure if this intentional money extortion by certain bodies, or myopic incompetence. All privatisation seems to have achieved is greater economic division.
Yes, chickens are coming home to roost on that now. A pressure boost caused 3 failure points to old, degraded water mains in Hull; during April 2023. No comments from Yorkshire Water about aging infrastructure though.
I agree... apathy reigns! Maybe they should have a intelligence test before you can vote, lol. No pass, no vote. Proportional Representation would be a start though....
@@alien4422and the public voted her in because of her disgusting opinions on LGBT people and the poor. It's the public's fault. They only kicked off when to no one's surprise, she turned on the people who voted her in.
@@alien4422 But the Public allowed it. They were lied to about the process, and now look where we are. The General Public should be forced to watch these things and see these CEOs and Politicians squirm. You'd soon see change once they all take heed that these people can dump £10Bn of debt on tax payers whilst escaping with £7bn in dividends for the executives and shareholders.
its not only that, its the stupidity of the general public, its clear to see you can't argue facts with dumb people they will latch onto slogans and easy to remember stuff perfect example "oven ready deal" and the tories have done a great job in tricking the most vulnerable into voting to cause them the most self harm.
Did she mean: "Upon thorough contemplation, it has become incontrovertibly apparent that the profound recesses of my cognitive faculties have regrettably failed to amass an adequate assortment of erudite and comprehensive information to formulate a sufficiently intricate and elaborate response that would aptly address your inquiry."
Totally agree with you the need to make an example of these people, they are allowing them to get away with it. we are turning into a third world country.
I have been anti Labour my entire life and now I am seriously swinging towards them next vote. These politicians are good and we need more of them. Keep it up guys!
@@RonnieFerreria these guys are doing a good job here. You don’t see torture doing this type of work when in fact it’s there jobs that they were hired for.
@@Borderman47 Labour have done more than enough to warrant there own blame. I have been reform most of my life as I do not think either Labour or Tory are good and have not been for hundreds of years
The dams in Lancashire, and probably nationwide, were built with tax payers money ...they belonged to the the county . ..then they were sold off ( tax payers received NO remuneration for what THEY had paid for ). ...water rates went up too pay for shareholders, corners were cut to save money ...we are PAYING more ,for things we PAID too build. so RICH investors can earn more money .
The privatisation of water companies should have been regulated. Successive Governments have failed to regulate these companies. What shocks me the most is that they were legally allowed to pump raw sewage into our waterways, killing so many fish and ruining our ecosystem . This loophole should have been closed when it is so obvious these companies were exploiting it in order to maximise profit. They should all hang their heads in shame.
Agree the need for regulation with teeth.But the single drainage cannot cope with what is falling from the skies and releasing sewage as a safety valve the least bad option. There has to be enforcement to invest in the infrastructure and relate improvement to performance. It,s all too damn complicated now. And far far too late. It is not about private v nationalisation IMHO
Wait, hang on, did anybody else catch the bit at 2:40 or so? That the Joint Interim CEO at Thames Water... used to work at OFWAT, the regulator for the sector? What the fuck??
Yeah....talk about marking your own homework.... Thieves and corruption at its worst ( with utter smugness) written on their faces,while going home to their mansion in the country...
Darren Jones cutting them to ribbons....these people should never be allowed to manage anything ever again! These corrupt people won't actually have to pay for their actions!
All water companies and tall transport buses and trains etc , energy should be under public ownership A prime example of greed does not work dumping sewage in too the water system is crimeral
Where do you think the sewage goes? The drains have to be enormous now ( look at the size of the new sections ) to take the storm water together with the sewage unless there are two parallel separate systems.
The last time i took notice of the commons select committee was when they tried to bring carillion to book. Carillion directors laughed at the government and told them, we're not giving the money back.
Darren James commands a room like no other. The man is assertive, that's for damn sure. He's had mentors like Barry showing him how to use that blade. Good mentoring.
What a cosy little arrangement between Ofwat and corporate interests, all for the purpose of shifting debt exposure while rewarding shareholders. With the taxpayer losing out yet again. The two Labour MPs showed this up by effective forensic questioning. In spite of this little merry-go-round, for how much longer will we have shit in our water?
The dividends paid out to so many, involved with this Company, is ridiculous. Salaries are through the roof. No tories screaming here at Mick Lynch over high salaries
In 2014, The Chief Executive of OFWAT, Catherine Ross with apparent disregard to the level of indebtedness of Thames Water, signed off on permission for Thames Water to ramp up their debt from £3 Billion to £10 Billion underwritten by the taxpayer, Having done so, she leaves OFWAT for paid senior management positions in Thames Water to dispense £3 Billion in dividends to foreign investors and othe senior management in higher salaries and bonuses. But for the increase levels of interest required to service the debt, leading to te redundancy of 121 members of their staff, insolvency and an inevitable taxpayer bailout, such fraudulent conduct would have gone unoticed and unremarked. Now they face a Commitee of MPs to account for their actions. That is the sum total of sanction they will face. Nothing more will happen to them. In any of the more mature European democracies, each of them would be serving time in prison. Not here. Each of them has made his or her 'pile' and will simply retire to enjoy their wealth. Britain has indeed become a kleptocracy run by Oligarchs. In the meantime, a Conservative Chancellor exhorts Pension Trustees to invest in private equity companies for higher risk and greater returns on investment. Having looted the taxpayer, they are now coming for your pension!
I thought the questioning was extraordinarily mild! The first problem is that Thames Water was allowed, by Ofwat, to neglect what should have been its core-activity, the business of supply of water and the treatment of waste water. However, what it actually did was to concentrate its efforts on moving money around to maximise profit. This was done with detriment to service with regard to its customers, and all things water. It is NOT Thames Bank, or Thames Finance, but Thames Water!
Essentially, the water companies borrowed large (£billions!) to pay offshore dividends - and just a passing nod to investing in infrastructure. But those debts will be paid by billing customers. Of course the industry should be nationalised - it was entirely debt free when Thatcher privatised them!
These committees are not going far enough. I can talk the whole day with you guys without facing other consequences I wouldn't give a shit. Just like they do
