Does a Citizen's Assembly on Water make sense?

We recently received the following question (shortened for brevity):

The XR advocacy of Citizens’ Assemblies baffles me. There was one on Climate Change in 2019 and others on Adult Social Care, Future of Scotland, National Assembly for Wales, Congestion & Air Quality, and Town Centres. They produced some interesting ideas but had fairly low impact as they are not near the centres of power and money. Ireland had an interesting CA on Abortion and voted to repeal the Eighth Amendment. The Dail took this up in the 36th amendment bill of 2018. This CA was fairly influential, on a topic which is ethically divisive.

Dirty Water is very topical but money is the big issue. We need more plant and rainwater cisterns, The water companies want big price increases, OFWAT is allowing smaller ones, but it’s still “price increase”. Nationalisation has been suggested by the Greens, but full compensation for shareholders would add to the national debt – a mere £2.7 trillion. The creation of a Climate Civil Defence Force with water engineering as its main skill is another possibility. [...]

Here are our thoughts on this:

Dirty Water is very topical, but money is the big issue. We need more plant and rainwater cisterns, The water companies want big price increases, OFWAT is allowing smaller ones, but it’s still “price increase”. Nationalisation has been suggested by the Greens, but full compensation for shareholders would add to the national debt – a mere £2.7 trillion.

The advocacy of a Citizens’ Assembly has always been one of the three demands of XR. It is recognised that achieving this with everything lined up, in terms of mass public support, mainstream media attention, government sponsorship (but not interference), and government commitment to respond/act on the citizens’ conclusions is a difficult set of circumstances to bring about. The UK Assemblies have never had all/manyall of these aspects addressed in advance. Their running into the sand was inevitable.

Several people in government (this and the previous one), as well as senior civil servants, understand the process but there isn’t a mass public appreciation of it. To that end XR has expanded its advocacy of deliberative democratic process to include Community and Peoples’ Assemblies. But to bring about a campaigning alliance, mass public attention, sustained media interest, crowd funding, and leverage on a powerful governing party still in need of wider public endorsement - going for a CA on Water seems to match that list completely. If XR and our allies are successful, the entire ground will have been prepared for XR’s Assembly on Climate and Ecological Justice.

Money is the issue, or at least a reluctant government can say so. But that really is rubbish? There is money if there is an appetite for taxing land, other assets, even share transactions, in proportion to the existing taxes on income. If water supply and treatment are not put right, our national infrastructure fails. Without that, growth or any other aspirations of government will not be possible. It is important that the participants in the Citizens’ Assembly on Water are not constrained in their thinking by predefined limits on spending. It’s not a question of saying we can’t afford to fix our water provision. We simply have to.

The actions proposed by the Dirty Water team are steps towards engagement with the public in local communities. These escalate from initial claims on people’s attention to bringing them into participation in ceremony and an invitation to press on, to gather in a Community Assembly. Those who participate will be left in no doubt that our demand is the CA on Water, and they'll asked to producedevelop recommendations and demands of that body. So no, no random scattergun hoping on happenstance. Just a coherent progression towards a complete statement, with maximum public support, of what we want from our water providers and legislators."

Oh, a bit more - the CA on Water needs to make the recommendation officially, but there should be no compensation for the water companies or their shareholders. They have robbed the bill-payers blind for 35 years and deserve nothing. If anything, they should all be prosecuted for the failure to meet their contractual obligations (defined or implicit) and made to return undeserved dividends, bonuses, and inflated loans repayments.

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