Why aren’t water companies being nationalised in England?published at 10:12 British Summer Time
10:12 BST
Esme Stallard
Climate and science reporter
On Monday we’re expected to hear from the outcome of the Water Commission – the independent review of the water industry set up by the government to come up with solutions to improve the financial and environmental performance of the sector.
But before the chair, Sir Jon Cunliffe even started his review, the government said he could not look at or recommend nationalisation as a potential model.
Steve Reed has said previously, and this morning, that it would be “too expensive” and “too complex”.
Despite this, as part of his work Sir Jon has been looking at alternative models to privatisation, including mixed public-private models – which are common in Europe.
This is something that leader of Reform UK, Nigel Farage, said he would look to implement should his party be running government.
But in his preliminary findings published last month, Sir Jon said it wasn’t clear that any particular model equated to better outcomes.
“The Commission’s Call for Evidence set out preliminary analysis that suggested no clear, consistent causal link between ownership models and water company performance on a range of metrics and called, specifically, for more evidence on this issue.”