• THE water companies were mainly debt free before privatisation of 1989, that was supposed to give the consumer more value, choice and competition from the providers.

Now these companies have huge debts collectively in the UK over £60billion pounds, the water infrastructure has been allowed to deteriorate, pipes are leaking everywhere, our rivers, lakes, waterways, and coast have raw sewage pumped in them every day, wildlife is dying and it’s no longer safe to swim.

These companies have been fined a lot, but they can pass the cost of the fines on to the consumer hence bills going up in April 26 per cent. This is outrageous.

Many people have had many years of pay freezes and can’t afford these massive increases. The government goes on about economic growth to fix the economy, but when we are faced with a 26 per cent increase in water bills the only growth will be the water executives’ pay packets.

We all know the Tories caused this water crisis, but new Labour had a chance to renationalise the water from 1997 to 2010; every time we put motions in to renationalise services and industries they told us they couldn’t renationalise anything because of the European Union directives.

But we are now out of the EU and the current 2025 Labour government states water cannot be renationalised because of the billions of pounds of debt that would have to be transferred to the taxpayer.

Water must be renationalised and the billions of debt is not our fault; they need to find where these billions of pounds have gone and who sits on the £60billion and get the money back. It’s appalling.

If Jeremy Corbyn was still the leader of the Labour Party he would have renationalised the water.

MARK STILL, N5