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Water cut-offs are bad for public health, says BMA

The British Medical Association has called for water disconecction to be made illegal in England and Wales, as it already is in Scotland and Northern Ireland. It says Income Support should be increased to cover the real cost of water bills.

The BMA says that water companies are putting public health at risk by their policy of disconnecting those who fail to pay their bills. It points to a 143 per cent rise in disconnections since privatisation in 1989, and large rises in the number of cases of hepatitis A and dysentery over the same period.

But the Water Services Association denied that water companies were being unreasonable and disputed a connection between water cut-offs and disease.

Health secretary Virginia Bottomley described the BMA’s call as ‘misleading, scaremongering and based on statistics that are now out of date’.