I am old enough to remember water privatisation in the late 1980s. It was sold as modernisation. Crumbling Victorian infrastructure would be renewed. Efficiency would improve. And as a bonus, ordinary people could make a quick profit by buying shares.

Fishermen, rowers, surfers and nature lovers were worried. Banks, hedge funds and speculators were delighted. Most of the country shrugged and changed the channel, wondering what Den and Angie Watts were up to while Stock, Aitken and Waterman blared out of the radio.

The result? A disaster.

Carved Up for Cash

Water companies were carved up, loaded with debt and treated as cash machines. Assets were sold off. Bonuses ballooned. Dividends flowed. Infrastructure was neglected.

Sewage poured into rivers. Coastal waters were contaminated. People became ill for the simple act of swimming in the sea.

Meanwhile executives collected eye-watering salaries.

We are the only country in Europe with a fully privatised water system.

Deregulation and Denial

When problems became impossible to ignore, oversight should have tightened. Instead, under David Cameron’s government, deregulation deepened. Self-regulation flourished. Enforcement weakened.

The Environment Agency became increasingly reliant on companies effectively marking their own homework, with costly investigations triggered only when polluters reported themselves.

It took a determined academic and a former police investigator to expose what was happening after the River Windrush in Oxfordshire was effectively suffocated. They uncovered thousands of illegal discharges, millions of gallons of sewage and treatment works barely functioning.

This was not a minor lapse. It was systemic failure.

Political Paralysis

Successive governments have hesitated. We hear soundbites about tougher fines and ending self-regulation, yet the structure remains intact.

In a democracy, governments are elected to govern and regulate in the public interest. Clean water is not a luxury commodity. It is a basic condition of life. Since 1988, regulation has too often bent towards protecting shareholders rather than rivers or people.

A National Emergency

This is not just about bills or dividends. It is about ecological collapse. Rivers are the arteries of a country. When they are poisoned, ecosystems unravel. Public health suffers. Trust erodes.

In genuine national emergencies, governments act. The Bank of England intervenes in financial crises. The state mobilises in wars and pandemics. If the routine contamination of rivers across the country does not qualify as an emergency, what does?

The land is our body. The rivers are our veins. If they are contaminated, the nation is unwell.

That is not rhetoric. It is reality.