A High Court Judge called out the Government and water regulator, Ofwat, for not bothering to show up at court to represent the public in a case that is poised to waste up to £900M of customers’ money on legal fees, advisors and interest payments to creditors in just six months.
“It would have been nice, I think, if either Ofwat or the Secretary of State had felt the need to turn up and explain the position to the court.”
Mr Justice Leech was summing up at the end of a week-long hearing for Thames Water to add about £3billion more debt to the £19billion – yes, nineteen thousand millions of pounds of debt that is the root cause of its rapidly approaching bankruptcy.
What happened to the idea that water bills should be spent on delivering water supplies and sewerage services not feeding shareholders, lenders and their lawyers and advisors?
Imagine selling a product no one can do without to captive customers who have to buy from you and being so greedy that you drive this guaranteed profitable business of a cliff while regulators and governments watch – and we pay. The work of a series of obscenely highly paid senior executives who are still claiming bonuses and paying dividends as the cliff edge approaches.
The judge noted that the only representation of the public interest came from Witney MP, Charlie Maynard who supported Oxfordshire based charity Windrush Against Sewage Pollution (WASP) which saw the injustice and applied to the court to add evidence just before Christmas.
Without this and the generous free legal representation from a specialist Barrister team led by William Day supported by instructing solicitors Marriott Harrison, the public would have had zero input to a decision that will affect everyone.
Now we wait for the Judge’s answer. Will Thames Water be allowed to carry on milking captive customers who already pay about 33p in the £ to fund unnecessary loans that were used to maximise shareholder returns or will a bizarrely reluctant Government, still using the water industry’s ultra-high, but fictional costs to scare the public about a return to public ownership, finally be forced to get a grip and start protecting the country from overseas financial predators?
