THERE is an ”absolute case” for public ownership of water, GMB general secretary Gary Smith said today as experts argued that nationalising sewage-dumping private firms would cost next to nothing.

A report by the Common Wealth think tank said that ministers have been repeating ”nonsense” industry claims that nationalising the sector would cost £99 billion.

In the report, King’s College London law professor Ewan McGaughey said that the estimate uses a metric designed by the industry regulator Ofwat that takes no account of real market values.

He said that it has been set artificially high to allow more dividends to be paid to shareholders and that the realistic cost of taking public ownership and special administration of the water companies ”is close to zero.”

Prof McGaugey said the government could argue that water companies’ appropriate value in law was close to zero by taking their debt levels, the amount of money needed for infrastructure repairs and the scale of dividends already paid to shareholders into account.

GMB general secretary Gary Smith told the Morning Star: ”The water regulator has allowed companies to get indebted while bills go through the roof and is now trying to shut the stable door after the horse has bolted. 

”Executives have plundered these companies with huge bonuses and the rest of it, run them into the ground and left them hugely indebted. 

”There is an absolute case for public ownership and I think people in this country support that.”

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said: ”The government has no plans to nationalise water companies. 

”It will cost billions of pounds and take years to unpick the current ownership model, during which time underinvestment in infrastructure and sewage pollution would only get worse.”