Bumper Scottish Water bonuses were a failure to read the room

PA

Water. Clear, soft eminently drinkable Scottish water. One of the basics of our national drink and so significant there was a line in EU water regulations which specifically exempted it.

However, the national pride in its quality, and tendency to boast is becoming a thing of the past. Not helped by the fact that this perceived decline is paired with increased water bills and massive bonuses for already well-paid executives.

This week we learned that while most of us are paying £42 a year more, put up with overpowering smells from sewage works and constant leaks in Victorian drainage systems, the top executives in this publicly owned water company will get bumper bonuses.

Public servants already on six figure salaries will get extra taxpayer funded payments totalling a quarter of a million pounds.

In fact three executives, it has been revealed, will receive a total of £258,000. I have no issue with rewarding success, and recognise that if we are going to have the best public services we have to attract the best talent to run them.

But I have to ask whether in dolling out these bonuses Scottish Water has listened to the room and gauged the public mood. Yes I recognise when Scottish Water’s spokespeople say targets have been met, pollution incident figures have been reduced and customer satisfaction is high. Then I find myself asking if they have taken into account the current climate.

By that I mean both economic and meterological.

At the same time as we are seeing these hefty bonuses, the taxpayers shelling out both for them and for increased water bills, are also coping with a cost of living crisis.

Private employers facing increased water bills are also dealing with increased NI contributions and employee shortages. On the metrological front Sepa is warning of low water levels in rivers across Scotland and extraction shortages in some, with the prospect of a national drought after the hottest and driest summer in living memory.

Add to that the inevitable leaks from outdated and crumbling water systems and it is not a happy picture.

We need investment in our sewage plants, drainage systems and in keeping our bills down. The Liberal Democrats at Holyrood have proposed a Clean Water Act that would bring our sewage network into the 21st century, while also tracking down and reporting every sewage dump, and replace outdated standards with modern enforceable regulation.

Something the Scottish Government has long promised to do and failed. It had originally committed to updating broken guidance from the 1990s, but earlier this year emails obtained under FOI showed that the Scottish Government and SEPA were no longer looking at updating the 1998 rules.

In my constituency we regularly hear from constituents concerned about burst mains, smelly sewage works and polluted rivers. For them it is little consolation that Scottish Water is still in public hands or, in the oft repeated slogan of the Scottish Government: “Not as bad as England”.

That is not good enough.

That Scottish Water is still in public hands and not been sold off for profit is to be welcomed.

But surely it should also mean that our Government is able to do more to ensure its efficacy.

The Clean Water Act and updated regulation would be a start.