Opinion: The public has made up its mind on water. The government has not

It is rare to find a question on which British opinion is so settled. Survey after survey shows large majorities, often above eight in ten, who want water run in the public interest rather than for shareholders. Andy Burnham's call to nationalise Thames Water taps directly into that mood, and the polling suggests it is a popular thing to say. The government, meanwhile, is pressing ahead with a reform package that pointedly leaves ownership off the table.

The case against the status quo writes itself, and the companies keep helpfully adding to it. Sewage discharged into rivers and onto beaches, bills rising while infrastructure crumbles, and the spectacle of Thames Water staggering under its debts and warning of collapse: this is not an advert for the disciplines of private capital. When the firm responsible for water in the capital cannot raise the money it needs and floats the prospect of its own failure, the argument that markets allocate things efficiently starts to sound theoretical.

What makes the political situation so striking is the breadth of the consensus. This is not a fringe demand or a partisan rallying cry. It cuts across party lines and regions, uniting people who agree on little else. When a policy commands that kind of support, a government that refuses even to entertain it is taking a considerable risk with public trust.

Why ministers hesitate

And yet the government's caution is not simply cowardice. Nationalisation is not a magic wand; it is a balance-sheet decision with a price tag, and a state that takes on a company's assets also takes on its liabilities. Critics on the left who point out that Britain nationalised steel quickly enough are right that it can be done. They are sometimes quieter about what it costs, and about the fact that public ownership does not, by itself, mend a single pipe. The water still has to be paid for, by someone, somehow.

There is a respectable position that says the answer is tougher regulation, not a change of owner: claw back dividends, force investment, fine the polluters until it hurts. The trouble is that this is roughly what we have been promised before, and the rivers are still dirty. At some point a reform that asks the public to keep faith with the same model, run by the same kind of people, under a slightly sterner regulator, begins to look less like pragmatism and more like denial.

The fiscal anxiety is real. Taking a heavily indebted company into public hands could mean the taxpayer assuming billions in liabilities, and there is no guarantee that public ownership would deliver lower bills or cleaner rivers overnight. But the counter-argument is equally real: the public is already paying, through rising bills and degraded waterways, for a system that is visibly failing. The question is not whether there is a cost, but who bears it and what they get in return.

• Polling consistently shows over 80% support running water in the public interest
• Thames Water has warned of its own potential collapse under heavy debt
• Sewage discharges and rising bills have eroded faith in the private model
• Nationalisation would mean the state taking on liabilities as well as assets
• The government's reform review reportedly excluded ownership from scope

“A reform that asks the public to keep faith with the same model begins to look less like pragmatism and more like denial.”

— Priya Nandakumar

Background and context

England's water industry was privatised in 1989, with the promise that private capital and market discipline would drive investment and efficiency. Decades on, the companies have paid out substantial dividends to shareholders while accumulating large debts, and the condition of the country's rivers and coastal waters has become a national scandal. The volume of sewage discharged into waterways, much of it during periods when the rules are supposed to limit such releases, has become a potent symbol of a system many believe has lost its way.

Thames Water, the largest supplier in the country, has come to embody the crisis. Burdened by debt and struggling to fund the investment its ageing network requires, the company has repeatedly raised the spectre of financial failure, prompting questions about what would happen to millions of customers if it collapsed. Against that backdrop, calls for nationalisation, long dismissed as politically marginal, have moved firmly into the mainstream.

The democratic question

What makes this politically combustible is the gap between the governed and the governing. On few issues is the public this united, and on few does the government seem so determined to hold a different line. A review that was reportedly not even permitted to consider nationalisation is, whatever its merits, an odd way to reassure people that all options were weighed.

Ministers may yet be proved right that wholesale nationalisation is the wrong tool. But they will not win that argument by refusing to have it. If the public is wrong about water, the government should make the case openly and trust voters to listen. Treating the most popular idea in the room as the one option that may not be discussed is not leadership. It is hoping the question goes away, and on present form the rivers will not let it.