By stewartb
The water industry is the news again. On July 21, the ‘Independent Water Commission Final Report’ (aka the Cunliffe report) was published. Given it dodged the issue of nationalisation – incurring the wrath of some – it’s perhaps no surprise that the water industry in Scotland is also in the news. This is a result of a British Labour Party MP for an Edinburgh constituency plus a Labour minister making statements to the media that talk down Scotland. Their purpose – distraction and to diminish public confidence in Scottish Water and thus public ownership of this essential for life utility.
From the Water Commission’s report
In scope, the Commission’s recommendations cover England and Wales. Notwithstanding this, the report makes multiple references to Scotland and to Scottish Water – favourable and substantive ones!
The Recommendation 4 for England and Wales states: ‘.. water industry investment planning should be conducted on a 5/10/25 year basis with the greater certainty and granularity for the first 5 years, more indicative plans for the following 5 years and higher level indication for the longer term.’ (my emphasis)
And then (Para 153): ‘The 5/10/25 model takes inspiration from that in Scotland, described in Box 11, though has been tailored for the English and Welsh water sector.’
From Box 11: ‘Approach taken in Scotland: The Scottish Government, Water Industry Commission for Scotland (WICS), and Scottish Water operate under a framework they term a ‘rolling programme of investment’, through which there is much closer working between the company and regulators throughout delivery. Scotland moved away from a rigid, prescriptive list of projects tied to the fixed 6-year cycles and now allocates funding to broader categories of investment and confirms funding when projects are ready to be stood up. …. The ability to carry over funds and begin planning for future periods enhances responsiveness and smooths the delivery profile (see Figure 6).
‘Although this model relies on trust and transparency among stakeholders, it enables a more agile approach to investment, where projects can be re-prioritised as long as overarching ministerial objectives are met.’ (AMP = Asset Management Period, the 5 or 6 year regulatory cycle.)
The graphs below show time series data on water company spend in England and Wales (Figure 4) and in Scotland (Figure 5). To aid comparison, the vertical red line in Figure 4 has been added to mark year 2002-2003, the earliest year shown in the Scotland chart. Since 2010-11 (SRC10 onwards in Scotland) the spend profile in Scotland has been much smoother year on year compared to the lumpy, variable spend in England and Wales.
On water quality (Para 231): ‘Given current progress (16% of water bodies in England achieving good status and 40% in Wales based on the latest classification), the 2027 Good Ecological Status target will be missed.’ Then in Para 237: ‘…. Within Britain, Scotland has a greater number of water bodies achieving ‘good’ status compared to England and Wales. While Scotland’s result is higher, they have considerably lower population density than in England and Wales, an important determinant of GES. They also have a considerably lower percentage of land used for agriculture compared to Wales (see Table 5).’
The population and agricultural land use statistics may well be different but the differences in water body ecological status are substantial as the tables below from the Commission’s report reveal. It is hard to dismiss the relatively favourable data for Scotland: one might consider it more than odd that the geographic comparisons made in Table 4 are NOT replicated in Table 5! Do the caveats about Scotland’s population density and land used for agriculture hold for the selected international comparators?
On regulatory reform, Recommendation 17 concerns possible solutions for the Welsh government to adopt (from Para 359): ‘… An alternative would be to establish the economic regulatory function as a small freestanding body. This could be similar to Scotland where the Water Industry Commission for Scotland (WICS), the economic regulator for Scotland’s water sector, has been established as a non-departmental public body with statutory duties, independent from Scottish ministers. WICS currently has 25 staff members, with expertise in economic regulation and finance.’
From Box 23, on international approaches to economic regulation of water: ‘The Commission has engaged extensively with organisations outside England & Wales at all levels, from government at state and municipal level to regulators and operators, across Northern Ireland, Scotland, France, Germany, Netherlands, European Union, Australia, Singapore, New Zealand and the USA. Other countries follow different price control approaches which offer lessons for the economic regulation of water in England and Wales.
Adding: ’Negotiated Settlement: Scotland has used variations of the ‘negotiated settlement’ approach – whereby the regulator, the Water Industry Commission for Scotland (WICS), sets out a framework and guidelines to facilitate Scottish Water closely negotiating and agreeing priorities, requirements and customer bills directly with its customer body. This approach is based on building trust and fostering collaboration across parties. US States, including Florida and Texas, also employ this approach. In Australia, in states including Victoria, water companies have used variations known as ‘citizen juries’.’
Box 46 on International approaches to asset maintenance: ‘Scotland: Scottish Water, as part of a shift towards improved condition monitoring and understanding of expected asset lives, is gathering an increasing amount of data. Scottish Water divide assets into business services assets, assets that are continually refurbished or assets that are replaced entirely. A broad estimate is then made of replacement cost and average life. This, in turn, supports data-driven decision making for both the company and the regulator for future funding. ‘
Para 690. ‘The Commission recognises lessons can be learned from other models ….. The Commission has also learnt from Scotland’s ethical based regulation model the benefit of close supervisory engagement with the company to understand more deeply its challenges and capabilities and build trust.’
The Commission’s assessment of the significance of water company ownership for performance outcomes is examined in a subsequent TuS blog post.
Talking-up Scotland 'Albatraz' 
Significantly , while the Labour Party was attempting to run down Scottish Water as a distraction to the horrendous state of the privatised English system , they could not provide ANY evidence that the Scottish consumer was in any way unhappy about our water .
Where was the Scottish fury at sewage discharges , where was the Scottish fury at the poor quality of water from the tap , where was the Scottish fury at the outrageous shareholders dividends , where was the Scottish fury at the litany of burst pipes leaking scare water supplies , where was the Scottish fury at rising bills for an unacceptably poor service ….
And why did the media who were broadcasting these Labour lies not question them ? Well, we all know why ! Laziness or complicity – or both !
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O/T but kinda not O/T in relation to water……..
Talking of water…..as in ‘uisge beatha’ the ‘water of life’……this below was on the UK Politics page but when you click onto the story it takes you to the Asia page of the BBC website.
“India PM Modi in UK to sign ‘landmark’ trade deal with Starmer”
“India and Britain are set to sign a free trade deal to cut tariffs on goods and increase market access for the two countries”.
“India will lower tariffs on British whisky, gin and other drinks as well as cars. The UK in turn will import more of India’s textiles, gemstones and other goods”.
At last someone has done it…..British Whisky made in Britain as part of a trade deal post Brexit…………so now let’s get all of those labels on Whisky bottles changed to ‘Made in Britain‘ with a compulsory British Flag.
(In fact do some not already do that ?)
BTW Gin is also now very much a drink that is produced in Scotland, approximately 70% of the gin produced in the United Kingdom is made in Scotland.
However perhaps Cherylann Mollan, the correspondent for BBC News in Mumbai, who wrote this piece assumed that Gin too was British when she wrote “British Whisky, Gin and other drinks”.
“This deal will boost the British economy by £4.8bn a year. It comes after nearly three years of negotiations”
(Three years , so it as a deal, was begun by the Tories).
“Sir Keir called the “landmark” deal a major win for Britain” .
( As in once again both a UK government and their Britain profiting from produce that is made in Scotland…..the same Scotland that they said was too poor to go it alone….yet in all of the UK Trade deals there are always Scottish Food and Drinks factored into the Trade deals made with other countries…..).
(Also BBC website…..story from , checks notes, 13 hours ago on their website, now the 11th story on their Scotland page “Councillor guilty of sex offences against teenage girl”….guess which party….obviously not the SNP as the party name would have been in the headline….he is a Labour politician….BTW he is still not expelled from the Labour party…he was suspended two years ago by them….but now even although proven guilty he is yet to be expelled by Labour…..this story will soon disappear from the Scotland pages of the BBC website…interestingly it , as a story, is not on their Scottish Politics page…..strange considering he was a former politician and if he had been found not guilty he would have still been one….BBC just cannot break this British media habit on behalf of British political parties , as in when it is a scandal then their British party name is excluded from the headline- yet the party name is always included when it is an SNP politician).
I need a drink….either a glass of clean non polluted Scottish water or a glass of the ‘Water of Life’……..
Liz S
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Yesterday, one of Richard Murphy’s regular contributors on his blog, “Funding the Future”, made a comment citing “U.K Water”. I reminded him, politely, and he later apologised, about our vastly different situation in Scotland, I was also criticised by Murphy for being too simplistic in my comment when I merely said it was Scottish Water, a public company who are responsible for our supply. He, Murphy, then made a comment about business users being a different case, and indeed that is true, but what he didn’t mention is that one of the companies who supply that market, Business Stream, a Licensed Provider, (L.P), with over 300,000 customers, is wholly owned by Scottish Water, and therefore in essence, the Scottish Government. To a certain extent all that is somewhat irrelevant, and my “simple” main point is that the water supply in Scotland is where it should be, in public hands. And this isn’t a political comment, because in the past, I have given credit to the Lab/LibDem administration, because I believe it was them, who, in 2005, decided on this course of action. So well done to them.
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I like R. Murphy but he does, too often imo, lump Scotland in with the RUK re resources etc. I wish he wouldn’t do that. I have also pointed it out to no avail.
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I was walking along out local city river a few days ago and got chatting to a dog walker as you do, about the soapy look of the water, she is from S. Africa. We started talking about water, and she didn’t now Scottish Water is not privatised, having lived in Scotland for two years. Interestingly, she said that she lived in Devon for three years and could not swim in the sea, it was full of t*rds! Yuk! Anyway now she knows about Scottish Water being good to drink and SEPA if she is ever worried about the water here.
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