A whopping £600,000 is to be wasted by the Assembly on financing the so-called independent “review” of water charges and privatisation of the water service.
The We Won’t Pay Campaign discovered this scandal after pursuing the matter during a meeting with the Independent Water Review Panel. The Campaign met the panel as part of a delegation from the Coalition Against Water Charges.
Only one member of the panel, Joan Whiteside OBE, attended the meeting. Whiteside excused the non-attendance of the rest of the panel because they were each on a two-day contract and they all had other careers to get on with! When the We Won’t Pay Campaign requested how much each panel member was being paid however, it was revealed that each member was suddenly not on a two-day but a three-day contract and refused to say how much they were getting paid. It also emerged that there is no obligation to make the results of the review available to the public. So much for Regional Development Minister Conor Murphy’s promise of an open and ‘transparent’ review.
Instead of abolishing water charges, the “review” has been set up to give some time to the Executive to come up with different ways of introducing water charges and privatising the service. Representatives of Scottish Water and Water UK recently met with the review panel and the Committee for Regional Development. It has been argued by both Conor Murphy and Joan Whiteside that the water service in Scotland has not been privatised, but this is not the case. Scottish Water is a public company which facilitates privatisation of water through the use of long-term PFI and PPP contracts. The vast majority of the water service in Scotland is run by private companies, such as Thames Water. Northern Ireland Water is also using this back door method to privatise our water service. These PPP contracts should be shredded by the Assembly and the water service taken fully back into public ownership and run democratically.
The Assembly has to set a budget as part of the Comprehensive Spending Review in the coming weeks. Part of this budget will include how the water service is to be financed over the next three years. The We Won’t Pay Campaign will be organising more meetings in the communities to build opposition in the form of mass non-payment if and when any form of water charges are announced. For more info contact the campaign on 02890311778.
