"Livid" activists have responded to a court ruling which will see Thames Water given a £3bn rescue loan. Liberal Democrat MP, Charlie Maynard, who brought a public interest claim into court, said he would seek to appeal the decision which he said was "not in the public interest".
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00:00I'm horrified, utterly horrified that any sane person thinks this is the right thing to do.
00:06900 million of this money would go straight out to predators.
00:09That should have been spent on upgrading our sewage treatment works
00:12and therefore cleaning up our river, which is, quite frankly, very poorly indeed.
00:17I think Thames Water need to go into special administration right now
00:20and they need to start doing the right thing.
00:22How is it right that we are bailing out, yet again, this failing water monopoly?
00:27We have no choice where our money goes.
00:2933p in every pound that we pay Thames Water goes to predators.
00:35Why am I financing their bloody debt? Why should I be paying that?
00:40I shouldn't. I'm absolutely livid.
00:43I'm so angry. I'm close to tears.
00:48I've spent a few years campaigning now.
00:51I absolutely love our river and I spend my life now trying to protect our future.
00:59All they've done on that is...
01:04Well, I'm disappointed because I don't think the ruling is not in the public interest.
01:09We've got 16 million customers who are being royally stuffed at the moment
01:13by this restructuring plan if it goes through.
01:16So we're going from 20 billion of debt up to 23 billion of debt.
01:20Of the 1.4 billion coming in the first 1.4 billion,
01:25900 million of that is going straight out the door on interest expenses and fees.
01:30I mean, how does that make sense?
01:33And then all of us customers are having to pay an extra £19 a month from April.
01:38And on top of that, Thames Water is asking for even more money to raise our bills even further.
01:43We need our money being spent on fixing our sewage treatment works and network.
01:49And it is not being spent on that.
01:51We can spend on funding a mountain of debt and there is no end to that in sight.
01:56I live where I live. We have beautiful rivers.
02:00But I also have constituents who walk through sewage regularly on their way to school.
02:06And I've dug into this. I've worked with lots of very good people at Thames Water.
02:11So it's not about being anti the employees. They all work hard and do their jobs well.
02:15But they are in an impossible situation.
02:18And we have to start digging ourselves out of this hole rather than digging ourselves further into this hole.