Petition: Hold A Referendum To Bring The Water Industry Into Public Ownership (Part 2)

Parliament will debate a petition – on 14th September – calling for the water industry to be returned to public ownership. Given the strength of public feeling, and with one eye on a future General Election, we feel that Andy Burnham (pictured above) could be swayed. However, it’s vital to contact your MP to turn up & speak at the debate. Contact them demanding that they do just this! Picture Credit: uk.news.yahoo.com (Fair Use)

FOUR MONTHS AGO, we published an article –https://www.nationalliberal.org/petition-hold-a-referendum-to-bring-the-water-industry-into-public-ownership – promoting a petition which called for the water industry to be returned to public ownership.

We did this because we believe that any industry (that could be said to be vital to the national interest) should initially be publicly owned. (At a later date it could be run on co-operative or on syndicalist lines – whereby workers, who are completely unionised, control industry.)

The National Liberal Party – NLP – feels that the water industry is vital to the national interest. Therefore asked our readers to support the petition.

We thought it stood a very good chance of gaining 100,000 signatures. This would kick start a debate in Parliament over the issue.

GOOD OPPORTUNITY

The prospect of a debate would’ve presented a good opportunity for the electorate to exert its power to ensure that all MPs turned up to vote.

As of today, we’ve discovered that the petition has gained 173,000 signatures. This means that it’ll be debated in the House of Commons next month (on 14th September).

That’s the good news. The not so good news is that there won’t be a parliamentary vote in September.

We had anticipated this. Indeed, in our April article we noted that change ‘will not happen overnight, but this petition & any subsequent debate is a step in the right direction.’

RIGHT DIRECTION

One step in the right direction would be to use the debate to put pressure on the Government to act & actually return the water industry to public ownership.

However, as we noted earlier, we need MPs to turn up & speak at the debate. Therefore, we’re asking all readers to contact their local MP demanding that they do just this.

We all know how unpopular the privatised water industry is. Given the strength of public feeling, and with one eye on a future General Election, we feel that Andy Burnham & Co. could be swayed. .

Watch this space!