Today's discussion about the news

I would be interested in hearing the response of the regulator to this line of thinking.

choosing one year is extreme cherry picking

underinvestment has clearly been long term, therefore total dividends and other financial engineering (i.e. what macquarie et al. did at thames) over that same period are the appropriate comparison

water should ever have been privatised, it's a monopoly, the uk only needs one water utility, multiple entities directly result in massive inefficiency and overhead, n * c-level execs, n * billing a other admin systems, n* lots of other functions

They were always regionalised before privatisation. Some are still not-for-profit which makes more sense to me, it's essential infrastructure and no-one should be profitting from it.

Yes, they were basically privatised because there had been minimal maintenance by the state on the infrastructure since the Victorians built it all, and it was crumbling.

Of course the private water companies should be doing more good and less polluting, and clearly the regulator is weak and fails to hold then to account adequately.

Ultimately, only the state can compel water companies to invest, so it would potentially cut out layers of complexity / cost if the state simply compelled its state-owned water companies to invest. Cutting out the seemingly inept regulator would be a potential benefit too.

From what I deduce, water bills were artificially low for years in the run up to privatisation as there wasn't enough investment happening for whatever reason, and so bills only needed to cover day-to-day running costs. The reason might have been the government wanting to avoid the political flak for rising bills, wanting to keep government borrowing down or simply being asleep at the wheel.

You know there was quite a lot of investment happening already in the current guise, right?

Obviously not enough, but I don't think it's that extreme to suggest that utilities stay solvent - or are we going to have the state start subsidising water as well as energy!?!

Sure, but isn't that what Ofwat does?

It wouldn't be the first time the government has killed investment by prioritising prices.

Right, so the evidence we have is that a) more was invested in real terms under the privatised model than not and b) the profits extracted are pretty small in relation to the amount that was invested, as in, around a 1%.

Feel free to suggest that that 1% would make all the difference, but the above evidence to me suggests the problem is not that the type of ownership is holding back investment, right?

I suspect it boils down to a breakdown in understanding and commutation between the companies and the regulator on what was best for the industry.

This isn't a great analysis. Privatisation happened after under investment. It should be seen as a way for the people responsible for that under investment to provide that investment without the state paying for it. This is not the same as saying that the alternative would have been state ownership and continued under investment.

What has also gone wrong with some analyses is to evaluate what has been taken out of the industry historically, with investment cost requirements now. The point is that it is now more costly than it would have been if the investment had been ongoing. This is the reason tax payers should be pisssed off.

Ofwat is there to regulate an industry that shouldn't be privatised because they are local monopolies. We now have a decision to make - improve the current system, or gradually renationalise.

It seems to me that there is too small a pool of people moving between the regulator and the companies. It is a similar issue to aviation regulation. I don't see how this can be avoided or therefore how the current system can be fixed.

Also seems to me that private water companies has been tried for 35 years and is literally a shitshow. Regardless of the hypotheticals, I'm not fussed if some investors get stung and these companies come back into public ownership as they go bust. I think to an extent that ofwat has to bear this in mind when it sets price rises. I fear that they will allow prices to rise just enough to limp on indefinitely.

Cynically, it feels like the current set up is designed so that everyone can avoid responsibility. There's sufficient privatisation that the government of the day can point at the water companies, meanwhile the water companies can blame ofwat.

Paula Vennels is coming across like a moron who just took everything at face value, with a selective memory.

And what she does remember she excuses for not having understood.

I can someone like that get to such a prominent position in business?

This is part of the problem, people like Vennels shouldn't be offering a defence, they should be accepting full culpability and apologising for their full and knowing part in such scandals.

If you take the money and kudos of being an exec in a major corporation, part of that bargain is that you ultimately take the reponsibility for your institutions failings.

We seemed to have moved to a culture of nobody accepting any responsibility for their actions or failings, especially amongst those in charge.

She won't, but in a sense her punishment will be that she will in perpetuity a by word for one or both of incompetence or dishonesty.

They are discussing a briefing document from 2013 about remote access to Horizon. It says what she should tell people, and then what she would say "if pushed".

She's said she didn't understand the document in that way.

Basically, she's right on the verge of having to admit she mislead parliament. Which she clearly seems to have done. She can't do so under the terms of this enquiry and they cant put her in that position directly, but the chair has just said he is going to need to ask himself why the briefing document was worded in that way.

It is quite an interesting exchange, in that she basically can't legally reply, because she seems to have knowingly withheld something rather pertinent from the select committee.

There's a technicality about parliamentary privilege there I don't really understand.

Anyhow, it is not coming over well that she doesn't know, didn't ask, can't remember or doesn't understand most things, but has crystal clear recollections of odd emails from 9 years ago.

Not a good sign in the long run that people have laughed at her several times and that the chair has intervened quite often, to effectively say, "are you really saying that...?"