YOUR friend and ours, North West Water, is in the dock again, this time accused of tax dodging.

For, says East Lancashire MP Janet Anderson, the company, now part of giant United Utilities, has paid virtually no mainstream corporation tax since privatisation. Yet, in that time, it has paid out £560million to shareholders on profits of £1.5billion.

How come? A scam, says the Labour MP.

Not so, says the company, it is because of our enormous investment programme that we pay only a small amount of this tax. What is plain, however, is that more of NWW's profits have gushed into the shareholders' bank accounts than into the Treasury's - all as part of the terms of its privatisation.

But this was not the premise on which the sale of the utilities was sold to their former owners, the public. It was supposed to be primarily for the consumers' benefit, not the investors'.

As we see from this permitted tax avoidance, it has once more turned out to be the other way round. North West Water customers have lost out over and over again since privatisation. And they are so fed up that a political backlash is, we are sure, set to reverse that baleful situation.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.