The Times: Cunliffe report won’t make one atom of the UK’s water any cleaner
Sir Jon Cunliffe, chairman of the independent water commission, focuses on a whole bunch of things that are already within the gift of government to fix.
Before the election, during the election and after the election, the government promised us a complete root-and-branch review, a wide-ranging re-examination and a complete reset for the water industry. We were promised champagne but today we’ve been offered sour milk.
I actually have some empathy for Sir Jon Cunliffe, bearing in mind the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs is at the very epicentre of the utter shambles that is the modern water industry.
And yet it is the very government department that not only provides Cunliffe’s secretariat to his independent water commission but, more importantly, took that reset and turned it into an exercise of nothing more than shuffling furniture around, looking at regulation and investment.
He focuses on a whole bunch of things that are already within the gift of government to fix. For example, planning. London is running out of water and we haven’t built reservoirs in decades.
Well, as it turns out, [the former minister] Michael Gove almost fixed that problem seven years ago when he amended the planning legislation to make reservoirs part of the national infrastructure. So those decisions now go straight to the planning inspector.
When Cunliffe talks about priorities and ambition and the direction of travel from government and the regulators being confused, that needs statutory guidance. That is issued by government to Ofwat and the Environment Agency, setting out the government’s priorities. Steve Reed, the environment secretary, could fix all of that this afternoon by simply reissuing the guidance.
The idea of more regional planning is simply window dressing. This has been discussed for 35 years. There is nothing new.
I’m afraid in this case, Cunliffe has just been “Sir Humphrey-ed” — ie never establish a commission unless you already know the outcome.
None of this actually addresses the fundamental underlying issues within the industry. It’s a failed system of regulation.
I have said this to Cunliffe: none of what he’s talking about will actually make one atom of water, anywhere in this country, any cleaner. I was chatting to someone this morning who was in a car looking at Lake Windermere, which was turning green as we spoke.
I don’t think he’s taken on board anything anybody suggested. I have sympathy for him, however, because he’s been blatantly told by government to avoid the big issues. In Sir Jon’s words, and he is quoted as saying it, his job is to simply make the current system better. Well, when the current system is institutionally dysfunctional, institutionally discredited and institutionally incompetent, why bother?
When it comes to Cunliffe’s report, I had absolutely no expectations for it whatsoever. And he has not disappointed.
In terms of the big, ugly issue sitting at the middle of this, he’s been told not to get involved in it. That issue is a restructuring of the ownership of these companies.
There is nothing in Sir Jon Cunliffe’s report or the government’s current strategy that is going to stop Windermere from being poisoned, or save a single chalk stream in this country. We need to take a radical approach to this industry.
