‘All options’ on table to rescue Thames Water, says Prime Minister

Andy Burnham says the Government is “looking at all options” to rescue troubled Thames Water.

The Prime Minister has also promised to “lay out a programme for reform” amid “a very poor” privately owned water firm system.

The Labour leader also hinted water sector reforms would be high on his agenda during the party’s conference in Liverpool, which begins at the weekend.

Thames Water, which supplies water and looks after the sewerage system throughout London and parts of southern England, has a debt mountain of around £20 billion.

It previously warned it only has enough money until the year end.

The Prime Minister told BBC South: “We are looking at all of the options.

“And it’s challenging because the effect of privatisation was that it locked in a very poor system.

“You can see that in so many ways with the leaks that people face – the sewage in our rivers and in our seas, but now the bills that people are paying.

“It’s a system where the shareholders never lose and the public never win – and that’s got to change.”

Mr Burnham did not say what the water sector should look like.

However, he added: “As we go into the Labour conference, we will set out more thinking about the change that we need to see in the running of water across the country.”

The Prime Minister has previously told the House of Commons his administration would “find it very difficult to reverse” the privatisation of water companies which took place almost 40 years ago – in 1989.

During Sir Keir Starmer’s premiership, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs estimated that nationalising the water industry would cost around £100 billion.

But Thames Water is facing a “doom loop”, according to MPs on the Commons’ Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee.

The panel last week warned £10 billion takeover plans by a consortium of more than 100 creditors in the company do not have “the interests of the public, the company or the environment at heart”.

Creditors – who collectively own about £17 billion of Thames Water’s £20 billion debt – have already been sent back to the drawing board after former environment secretary Emma Reynolds warned in June she did not believe their plan went far enough to protect customers or the environment.

Want your business, product or service to be seen regionally and nationally? Bdaily helps you get your story in front of the right audience, every day. Find out how Bdaily can help →

Join more than 55,000 subscribers by signing up to our daily bulletin each morning here.