I was pleased to read again in Chris Loder’s Bridport News column that our MP is getting a water company to clean up its act.

He may not recall that over 30 years ago, our water services were publicly owned and he could have held them to account. But then they were privatised, presumably to “save money and drive up standards”. The same happened to many other public services. We became the only country in the world to have a fully privatised water and sewage disposal system.

Now, water company targets are primarily financial (it’s so much easier to measure money than quality); transparency and accountability are non-existent. And the Environment Agency, the body set up to police the quality of bathing waters at, say, Lyme Regis, is struggling. No wonder. It seems that the government’s grant for “environmental protection” is currently 56 per cent lower in real terms than it was in 2009/10.

So if water quality at Church Beach does not improve, our MP might want to consider what went wrong. South West Water’s parent company made £127.7m before tax from their monopoly last year. And the chief executive that he met was paid £1,159,000 (thirteen times what an MP gets). I hope she bought the coffee.

And the next time his party bosses tells him to vote for a privatisation (perhaps for parts of the NHS) Chris might reflect on his experience, and his party’s track record on services for the public good. Or, as we used to call them, public services.

Tegwyn Jones

Claremont Rd

Bridport