Southern Water dismisses and refutes all suspicions and accusations about their allegedly impure motives and predatory conduct relating to hyper-inflated bills.

However, on the balance of probabilities, taking account of Southern’s extensive criminal track record, Mr Justice Johnson’s damning judgement of the company’s “deliberate disregard for the law from the top down”, and its ongoing hyper-inflated bills programme, customers are fully entitled to angrily dispute the company’s protests of innocence and demand government action.

Customers ought to be able to rely on the assumed independence, integrity, impartiality and public protection purpose of Ministers and relevant regulators to help defend them against corporate predators. The legal principle, that government functions and officials can be presumed to always act honestly, transparently, impartially, and non-corruptly, is called the ‘presumption of regularity’.

Regrettably, so far, no Minister, the Parliamentary EFRA Committee, and none of the Ofwat-CMA-CCW coterie has uttered one word against Southern Water’s predatory bills regime. Many MPs just ‘look the other way’ on this matter. They not only make themselves all look complicit but also give every encouragement to Southern that it can continue to expect to ‘get away with it’ unimpeded into the future.

Unfortunately, modern British history is littered with appalling examples that utterly trash the presumption of regularity. The Post Office Horizon Scandal, the Contaminated Blood Scandal, the COVID Contracts Scandal, the Windrush Scandal are the tip of the iceberg. The Southern Water Bills Scandal appears to be yet another