𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

As a couple of our water companies let us down again and struggle to supply, many tell me the answer is nationalisation.

They wouldn’t like the big increase in tax bills it would take to buy them up and put in enough investment in new reservoirs and pipes.

They should also ask how it worked when it was nationalised? The truth is it was dirtier and there was even less water available when it mattered.

People are currently grappling with a few hot days as if they were something exceptional. We have had hot summers in the past. A maximum temperature of 36.7C was achieved in 1911.

In 1976, there was prolonged heat from June 23 to August 27, with a 35.9C peak on July 3. This year, we had a very cold start to May, with frosts, which attracted little media interest.

This was followed by a few hot days, and now a few more this week before the temperature subsides again.

In 1976, the longer hot period combined with a long period of low rainfall, lasting 16 months from the previous May. It was the water shortage that did the damage.

Crops failed, moors caught light, people had to severely cut back their water use just when they wanted to water gardens, fill paddling pools and take more baths and showers.

The main feature of the weather-induced crisis was that it revealed the disaster of our nationalised water industry. All those who today think nationalising will make a difference should read the history books on just how bad the nationalised industry was.

It had failed to build enough reservoirs and failed to mend leaky pipes. As a result, the UK soon ran out of water in the summer of 1976. All hosepipe use was banned. In several areas of the country, mains water was cut off.

People had to queue to fill buckets at a standpipe in the street. Water rationing was introduced. People were told to put bricks in their toilet cisterns and to only flush occasionally.

They were told to re-use water within the household, keeping the dirty water from washing for toilet use or for gardens.

Individual daily use of water halved from 190 litres to just 95.

Water rationing was imposed on industry, so plants had to shut down or run well below capacity to live within their reduced water allocations.

That had knock-on effects on employment and overtime. Farmers just had to watch as their crops withered without water to irrigate.

The economy took a nasty knock. The government panicked and appointed a minister for drought, which was a bit like employing someone to give us a rain dance.

The minister turned out to be lucky, as the rains came in September and October to refill the almost-empty reservoirs.

The water industry kept pumping raw sewage into our seas from our coastal towns, giving us dirty beaches and dangerous sea bathing waters.

The industry kept up pressure on governments to carry on with this practice until privatisation in 1989 led to a regulator and the first requirements to monitor and report discharges.

The nationalised industry did not have the money or the will to expand the pipe network to avoid the need to discharge sewage into rivers and sea, or to avoid losing so much water in bad pipes before reaching households.

Every pound of new investment counted as public spending, and the needs of the NHS or schools were nearly always a more important priority than water facilities.

Today, we need a better regulator to allow more investment by our present water industry whilst preventing excessive returns.

The best way to do it would be to allow water competition. We have a competitive gas industry with a single pipe into every home, and could do the same for water.

Lord Redwood is a former Conservative cabinet minister