Welcome to the free market, where actions of rational agents produce the optimal result: cutting corners while getting paid the same and pocketing the difference.
It’s not even just that. They have borrowed £60billion(!) and given it to shareholders as dividends.
People should be in jail.
It does almost by definition. Sewers are a natural monopoly, it's physically infeasible to switch providers.
It's really hard to see how this works with water. Upstream of your taps is an essentially fixed set of water collecting infrastructure. Downstream of your waste pipe is a natural monopoly sewer system which collects waste towards a single geographically determined water treatment plant. What is there for a competitive operator to change?
The honest answer is that water privatisation was the product of a very specific brand of 80s-00s magical thinking that believed the private sector was necessarily more efficient even without a plausible model of how the efficiencies would happen. There's a reason water and rail were two of the last privatisations, long after all the things like British Airways where there were reasonable grounds to believe the private sector was a better home.
Yeah I know this model but here the one infrastructure is the service.
Many fundamental components of society aren’t amenable to market based competition. The public sector can be inefficient, but in many cases the alternative is a form of economic tyranny that is far far worse. In the UK, most of our key infrastructure has been privatised and it has been a disaster for our economy and for the population. One of the likely causes of the UK’s productivity crisis is the lack of investment in infrastructure caused by privatisation, for example.
This is all rather self-evident but I’m so surprised how very intelligent, highly educated people often are unable to see that government is sometimes superior to the private sector. It seems their judgements are clouded by dogmatic ideology, but because that ideology is capitalism they are unaware that their dogmatism is no different from the others that they regularly mock and criticise.
I say that because I remember the nationalised services in the UK in the 70s and 80s and they were a complete mess. My mother spent 1/4 of her life arguing with the gas board, the council and British Rail after things went to crap. It definitely improved when privatised even if it’s not perfect.
The public services were not accountable and were completely untouchable to the end user and any legal recourse.
The other option is forcing these private companies to fix those issues through legislation, but they will just take the easy route of going bankrupt or they will lobby the government to either give them money or allow them to increase the bills 2-3x so taxpayers will pay for it either way, and shareholders can keep their billions in payouts.
Public services can be regulated and have oversight, too. What properties do private services have that make them more amenable to being regulated?
The ability to sue thing also depends a lot on where you are. The Crown Proceedings Act 1947[0] waived most of the special protections government operations got, especially in "commercial" areas. So in practice it's not worse here than suing any other large organisation.
[0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crown_Proceedings_Act_1947
But how are the distributors being privatised a good thing? I don't get to choose if Cadent serves my gas, or whoever my DNO is re: electricity, or if Thames water serves my water, so they have no motivating reason to give a shit about me. Their goal is aimed directly at a) lobbying regulation down, b) working around regulation as much as they can, to make as much money as they can.
This has resulted in distributors for electricity and gas being the #1 and #2 highest profit businesses in the UK (~40% profit IIRC), with water being at #6.
This isn't to say a corrupt government can't do the same thing, but there's more incentives for officials at smaller leaner agencies to operate in the public benefit.
If you start with a government that cannot run sewers and then expect the same government to be competent in regulating profit-motivated companies then maybe you solved the wrong problem.
Anyway, after the then government agreed to bail out Irish banks, the EU put the Finance Minister under pressure to introduce austerity. Up to this point only businesses, farmers etc actually got billed for water but regular citizens were not. It's was paid for under progressive taxation. So when the government tried to introduce water charges and privatisation, the backlash was huge. Arguments raged.
Electorate: "Why introduce regressive charges that will disproportionately hurt the poorest?"
Politicians: "Other EU have water charges, get with the program".
Electorate: "So what? That's not an argument."
Politicians: "Actually it's because the infrastructure is crumbling and needs investment, but we have no money because 'austerity'!"
Electorate: "Why is it crumbling? Why didn't you invest in it during the Celtic Tiger boom?"
Politicians: "Uh... well... That's beside the point! People are wasting water! We need to charge people for overuse!"
Electorate: (Does some detective work) "Actually, due to our weather we don't water our lawns or own swimming pools. Our water usage is pretty flat across the social classes, unlike places like California and Florida. In fact our usage is comparable to that of England, who have similar weather and water charges."
Politicians: "Ok, by privatising water, the market will make the system more efficient!"
Electorate: "How will the introduction of a complex new billing system, meters, social welfare credits and a private company with its own organisational overhead, salaries, profits and bonuses ... make this cheaper or more efficient? Won't they just charge us more, pay themselves more and save costs by not investing in infrastructure?
Politicians: "That's just stupid"
Electorate: "Look at England"
That whole debacle basically destroyed Ireland's Labour Party, who were in a coalition government at the time and backed the water project. They never recovered from that.