Water companies have been invited to advise on the design of new panels that are supposed to hold them accountable to the public. It’s a neat summary of Labour’s approach to the privatised water industry: let the monopolies keep control of the service, then ask them how they’d prefer to be questioned about the damage they cause.
The Consumer Council for Water (CCW) is creating new “Water Voice” panels in England and Wales. Ministers have promoted them as “powerful consumer panels” through which customers will be able to question company executives, raise complaints and seek redress over sewage, interrupted supplies and other failures.
Documents released under freedom of information laws, however, show that the CCW “set up an industry advisory group to get ideas, feedback and advice from water companies”. In other words, the companies facing scrutiny have been given a place in the process used to construct that scrutiny.
This is what passes for accountability under the dictatorship of capital. Workers are permitted to complain about the consequences of private ownership, but the owners retain control over the infrastructure, investment and revenues. The public may be offered a microphone in front of an executive; it isn’t being given power over the industry.
The language of “consumer power” helps conceal this class relation. Water customers aren’t participants in an ordinary market who can simply take their custom elsewhere. They’re a captive population buying an essential service from regional monopolies. Calling them consumers makes the relationship sound like a series of individual transactions rather than what it is: private companies controlling infrastructure that society can’t function without.
The results are visible across the country. Large parts of south-east England have endured days without water after faults at treatment centres. Hosepipe bans have remained in force for months while companies have failed to invest in new reservoirs. Sewage continues to be discharged into waterways and bills continue to rise.
These aren’t isolated mishaps in an otherwise sound model. Capital treats infrastructure as a means of extracting revenue. Long-term investment is a cost, pollution can be pushed on to the public, and customers have nowhere else to go. The contradiction is built into the ownership of the industry: water must be managed according to social need, while the companies controlling it operate according to the demands of capital.
Even obtaining compensation under the present system can be a battle. Customers frequently struggle to get companies to respond when supplies fail or sewage backs up into their homes. Participation in the CCW’s existing process is voluntary for water companies, leaving local MPs to intervene in complaints that the supposed regulators and consumer bodies haven’t resolved.
Complaints are rising sharply. The CCW received 80 percent more complaints in 2025-26 than during the previous year, but was given no corresponding increase in resources. The state has allowed the burden created by the water monopolies to grow while denying the consumer body the resources needed to deal with it. Now the public is being offered another panel.
Water campaigner Feargal Sharkey described the arrangement bluntly: “This is a stitch-up. If water companies are involved in setting this up customers will not get any redress. The people who are important in all of this are the customers who have been extorted by these companies. The CCW is asking the extorters what should be happening to the victims, this is an outrage and a scandal.”
He added: “It sounds like this scheme will be equally inept and dysfunctional.”
The CCW denies that companies were asked to decide how they should be scrutinised. A spokesperson said: “It is a complete misrepresentation to suggest that CCW consulted water companies on how they would like to be held to account. CCW has engaged with water companies to work through the practicalities of how we could ensure their full engagement in the panels. For example, giving them enough lead time to ensure their chief executives were able to attend the accountability sessions and making sure action plans were produced in good time.”
But the defence doesn’t remove the underlying problem. Even if the discussions concerned only the “practicalities”, the industry was still brought inside the process while remaining the object of public anger. Its executives are treated as partners whose engagement must be carefully secured, rather than managers of essential monopolies answerable to the millions of people who depend on them.
The same deference is visible in the crisis at Thames Water. Prime minister Andy Burnham is under pressure to take the failing company into public control as it runs out of money. Yet the plan has been delayed by fears that creditors may launch a legal challenge if the company is forced into administration, while the Treasury worries about the cost.
That reveals the real hierarchy of interests. When households lose water or have sewage forced into their homes, they’re directed through complaints procedures. When the claims of creditors are threatened, the machinery of government slows down and considers the legal and financial risks. Public control is treated as an exceptional danger; the continuing power of private finance over an essential utility is treated as normal.
Labour’s forthcoming water bill is also expected to replace Ofwat with a regulator granted supervisory powers similar to those introduced for banks after the financial crash. Experts would be placed inside water companies to check that they obey the law and improve their environmental performance.
This may change the form of regulation, but it leaves the basic relation untouched. Supervisors can inspect, report and demand action within the limits granted to them. They don’t abolish private ownership or replace the priorities of capital with democratic planning. Like the post-crash oversight of the banks, the proposal begins from the assumption that socially indispensable institutions should remain under private control and that the state’s role is to manage the resulting danger.
The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said: “We know the water industry hasn’t been working in the public interest for far too long. That’s exactly why this government is looking at how to give the public more control and keep bills as low as possible.
“We’re not satisfied with the current system, so we’re also introducing a new, independent and impartial water ombudsman to strengthen customer protection and make sure complaints are taken seriously and resolved quickly. It’s the least the public can expect, and one of our first steps to building a water system that works.”
But “more control” is doing a lot of work here. A panel can let people speak. An ombudsman can process complaints. A regulator can supervise misconduct. None of these gives the working class control of the water system. The monopolies remain in place, the creditors retain their claims and the public is invited to debate how the consequences should be handled after the damage has already been done.
Labour calls this consumer empowerment because naming the real issue would mean confronting private ownership itself. The proposed panels turn anger at a failed system into managed consultation, with the water companies helpfully present to advise on the arrangements. Customers get a voice; capital keeps the power.
