Labour and the water industry

Edgbaston reservoir, a lake surrounded by green vegetation in dayligh

I am planning to write a series of responses to Labour NPF report 2026. Some I hope to pursue the conference itself through my CLP, others I hope will be of interest to others in the party. In this article I talk about Water, which I don’t propose to put to my CLP.

In the Commission, “MAKE BRITAIN A CLEAN ENERGY SUPERPOWER”, there is a section on the Water industry, which welcomes the Labour Government’s initiatives to repair the damage done by the conservatives. Most submissions want greater pace. The report also makes little mention of the excessive bonuses being paid to directors of Thames Water, and probably others.

In the conclusions section, on page 25, the obvious policy proposal missing is  the renationalisation of the water boards

The BBC report on 10th August that Thames Water made a £1m signing bonus to a new Finance Director. (This might well be a hook for a contemporary motion, although SERA & Mainstream have published a model motion calling for the renatitonalisation of the industry.)

If this is important to you, take it to your CLP, and submit it to Labour Conference before the 17th Sept.  …

What about the water industry?

Congress then considered its policy on the Water industry. This took place in two debates.

an outdoor tap in front of a green bush

The first was on a composite motion, C13 p169 in the final agenda document, entitled, “Public interest environmental reporting, GMB seat on new water super regulator, and trade union representation on water company boards. “

To me the purpose of the motion, is well summed up as follows, when decisions are taken behind closed doors, accountability & transparency suffer! This debate was followed by a guest speech by Fergal Sharkey.

…

Later in the day, we debated, M222, p122 in the final agenda document,  222. Proposal to design oil and gas exploration contracts in the UK for the benefit of British citizen .

This argues for nationalisation and/or the adoption of the Norwegian model,

When people criticise motions on trivial grounds, which I am about to do, I often claim we are not writing legislation, that he direction of policy is good enough, which is so for this motion. The motion does not recognise that Norway has a special petroleum industry tax, and that it also acquires value through its state ownership of the industry and its supply chain, but writing and designing fallback positions is very difficult. Zak Kahn’s moving speech is very good. The debate is published on the video stream, and since the CEC supported the motion, I have clipped the moving and seconding speeches.

There followed a debate on investment and infrastructure, which was well informed, arguing to protect farm land, yet reinvest in manufacturing, I fear we’ve missed the boat on renewable energy as a manufacturing competitive advantage, the failure of the giga factory and the windmill company. Google AI perspectives tells me, “The United Kingdom is a global leader in renewable energy generation and deployment—particularly in offshore wind—but lags significantly behind major global competitors in domestic manufacturing of clean tech hardware.” I also fear that we are starving the universities and  the NHS of research funding, so it’s unlikely that the next technological breakthrough will occur within the UK.  Greater access to Horizon Europe would of course help in the development of ideas on which growth can be built. (The more I examine the question of industrial policy, the more I can see the damage that the Tories did to the UK’s productive capability. Brexit of course is one culprit, but their refusal to engage in an active industrial policy is another, illustrated by permitting the further collapse of British steel and as identified elsewhere within this report the ceramics industry. ) …