Petition: Hold A Referendum To Bring The Water Industry Into Public Ownership

Thames Water is just one of the many deeply unpopular private water companies.

THE NATIONAL LIBERAL PARTY believes that any industry – that could be said to be vital to the national interest – should initially be publicly owned. With this in mind, we feel that the water industry is vital to the national interest.

Therefore, we were more than interested to learn that an online petition has called for a referendum to be held to do just that.

Launched at the beginning of this month, the petition will be open for six months to gather signatures. If this petition gets 10,000 signatures, it will receive a response from the government department responsible for the petition topic.

However, if it receives 100,000 signatures it may be debated in Parliament.

We feel that the idea of a privatised water industry is deeply unpopular – irrespective of what company is running a particular local water supply.

FAIR CHANCE

Therefore, we feel that there’s a fair chance that this petition could well make 100,000 signatures. Any debate should be used by MPs to expose the nature of water privatisation.

This could act as a spur to eventually returning the water industry back under public control.

The text of the petition – created by Ashley Paul Smith – says it all:

‘Hold a binding national referendum on whether the water industry should be returned to public ownership. Water is a basic human necessity; we believe our privatised system has failed, so the public should decide who owns and controls it.

Private water companies have about 62 million captive customers whose bills have delivered over £85 Bn to shareholders; money that in public ownership could have been spent on fixing our infrastructure. No other country in the world has privatised water like this. We believe that proposed government reforms to regulation show that water company owners are being favoured over the public, and this is not right in a democracy. A referendum would give the public back its voice about its water.’

SIGN HERE

We’d therefore call upon as many people as possible to sign this petition, which you can find here:

https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/762640#main-content

Once signed, you’ll receive updates on the progress of the petition. As we noted earlier, we feel that there’s a good chance that it’ll reach 100,000 signatures. This, in turn, should force a Westminster debate.

It’ll then be down to people power to ensure that MPs turn up to vote.

Change will not happen overnight, but this petition & any subsequent debate is a step in the right direction.

We noted earlier that the NLP feels that the water industry is vital to the national interest. Therefore, it should initially be publicly owned. However, we feel that it’d be even better if it was eventually run as a co-operative or on syndicalist lines (whereby workers, who are completely unionised, control industry).