Reed announces return of Blair-era PFI deals

  • Post last modified:September 23, 2024
  • Reading time:10 mins read


The Labour Party government’s new sewage scandal solution reeks of more private sector profiteering. Rather than pulling the plug on the failed project of water sector privatisation, it’s readying to pour more profits into the pockets of the water company fat cats. How exactly? The Labour right’s favourite Private Finance Initiative (PFI) con – meaning of course, the public will pay for it through their bills. All this was revealed during this year’s Labour conference.

Another privatisation sewage scandal scam at the Labour conference

As iNews reported:

Tens of billions of pounds of private finance is guaranteed to be spent over the next five years to build new sewage overflows, reservoirs and major pipe upgrades, the Environment Secretary has said.

Steve Reed said the “biggest ever investment” in the water industry, amounting to around £88bn in private cash, will allow the Government to “fix the foundations” of the water sector and bring an end to the sewage crisis.

It noted that environment minister Reed would be officially announcing the new plan at the Labour Party conference on Monday. In short then, the government will be throwing more money at the sewage-mongers responsible for polluting the UK’s waterways in the first place. Obviously, these are the same companies who’ve siphoned off eye-watering dividends for their shareholders, while criminally underinvesting in the country’s ailing infrastructure. Of course, this has only worsened the state of the UK’s sewage crisis – whereby broken pipelines are leaking more sewage into the country’s polluted rivers.

Crucially, iNews highlighted where Labour would be raising the sewage polluter slush fund from. Predictably, this will be through customer bills. And unsurprisingly, it will come from increasing these for the public. According to the outlet, this will see a rise of around £19 a year between 2025 and 2030.

Of course, there’s a term for this type of con, because Labour have tried and tested it to the benefit of the private sector before. Far from the sewage scandal renationalisation the sector sorely needs, Labour is plunging headfirst into the murky, profit-plagued ploy of Private Finance Initiatives (PFIs).

PFIs for big polluters

Clean water campaign group SOS Whitstable summed up the Labour conference ruse in one on point rework of iNews’s headline:

Labour peer Prem Sikka articulated the scam of scandal-hit firms turning more tidy profits:

Notably, Sikka underscored the new plans in light of the staggering profiteering in previous PFI projects. Specifically, it’s a rinse and repeat of New Labour’s neoliberal con-artistry. In particular, this was Labour’s NHS PFI model under Tony Blair and his health secretary Alan Milburn.

And just like PFIs under Blair, Starmer’s corporate-captured Labour government has the perfect pretext for this. For Blair’s NHS privatisation, as the Independent has explained before:

The argument went that Labour had inherited public services in such a diabolical state of neglect that there was no alternative to the private financing of whole swathes of infrastructure.

Now, Labour is once again going all in on the inheriting the sewage mess from the Tories. According to i News, Reed will say at the party’s conference that:

The Conservatives stood back and watched as raw sewage polluted our rivers and customers’ money was funnelled into multimillion pound bonuses and dividend payments while our sewage system crumbled.

Of course, in this instance, the Tories have already long privatised the sector. So, Labour’s answer? More privatisation, of course. So, what will this invariably mean? Funnily enough, funnelling multimillion pound bonuses and dividend payments to the private water sector bosses and shareholders.

As the Canary’s James Wright has recently highlighted with New Labour’s previous PFI schemes, these:

saw the taxpayer charged over £300bn for infrastructure with a value of £54.7bn.

Therefore, as Sikka pointed out, the water sector may now reap a similar return on plundering public money for the next wave of privatisation.

Stinking profits for the private water sector

Plenty of others on X were holding up Blairite Labour’s PFIs coming home to roost for the public, as a cautionary tale:

Despite all this, one person on X noted that iNews had reported how:

New plans being introduced will mean water firms that fail to spend the money raised from customers on infrastructure upgrades will be refunded to bill payers.

However, many weren’t buying this latest Labour conference pledge:

This was not least because Labour has an extensive network of connections to the polluting industry.

One poster had the perfect example of just what will happen with Labour’s new water infrastructure con. Specifically, they highlighted the Tories Thames Tideway project:

The Canary’s James Wright has also detailed the gargantuan scam this turned out to be. He previously wrote how:

The Conservative government financed a new sewer under London, the Thames Tideway, with this new style- PFI. During the year 2022-23, Bazalgette Tunnel Limited – the financer, builder and operator of the Thames Tideway – made £144.6m profit. This shows the prospect of increased user bills makes its financial instruments profitable.

Essentially, this is the exact type of project Labour is now proposing to roll-out en masse.

Labour conference: shovelling shit

Therefore, it’s evident that this government has one thing in mind. That is, how to line the pockets of the private water sector and help it get out of the profit-driven debt and sewage crisis of its own making.

As ever, the public will be drowning in sky-high water bills and literal shit as a result. Meanwhile, Labour and its private water sector pals will be neck-deep in another PFI scam. Water companies swimming in more staggering profits means more political donations and a wide-open revolving door after all.

Feature image via Youtube – BBC News/the Mirror/ the Canary





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