Esme Stallard
Climate and science reporter

Alan Cameron, in Aberdeen, asks: Why is BBC News very carefully avoiding doing
any comparison between the system of privatisation in England and the retention
of the water utility in the public sector in Scotland?

Meanwhile, Chris asks: Why not nationalise water?

We’ve got two questions here which both touch on the issue of how water companies are run.

Depending on where you live in the UK, the water sector looks very different. In Scotland and Northern Ireland it is publicly-owned, in Wales it is mostly a not-for-profit system and in England it is private.

At the start of the review, the government said it did not want author Sir Jon Cunliffe to look at nationalisation in England as it was “too expensive” and “too complex”.

Nonetheless, Cunliffe did look at some mixed models of private and public partnerships and he concluded that: “There is no clear relationship between ownership models and outcomes.” What he is saying is that there are good and bad examples of both public and private water systems.

And we can see that play out in the UK. Scotland has better water quality when tested than England and better bathing waters, but it has far less data on the amount of sewage spilt.

Last year, the watchdog in Scotland concluded that just a third of sewage spill sites were monitored. In comparison, in England 100% of sites are monitored.