Cash draining away - how the water industry avoids tax But in recent years all but seven of our 19 companies, each enjoying a local monopoly, have been sold off into the private ownership of this multinational array of financial concerns, for whom British consumers and our tax system have become helpless milch-cows. For a factual report on much of this, see "Leaking away: the financial costs of water privatisation" at CorporateWatch.org. Last year, the UK tax authorities proposed closing the "Eurobond" tax loophole that exempts shareholders from having to pay a 20 per cent withholding tax. But this was abandoned. The only real hope of ending the regulatory failure that allows this state-sanctioned theft to continue must lie in concerted action between the Government and Ofwat. Yet the draft Water Bill shortly to go through Parliament proposes only that the financial constraints imposed on the industry by Ofwat should be further relaxed. What top tables, Mr Cameron? As David Cameron leads his fellow G8 members to their meeting in a Northern Irish bog, he tells us how important it is that Britain remains at the international "top table" through our membership of such bodies as the World Trade Organisation (WTO), the UN and the EU. What he doesn't tell us is that, at the WTO, we no longer have a place at the table at all. Because trade is now an exclusive "Brussels competence," our seat there has been taken by the EU. We still have a seat on the UN Security Council but there too, like France, we now have to represent an EU "common position," so first we must check with Baroness Ashton's EU External Action Service to ensure that we don't speak out of line. As for that "top table" we enjoy in the EU itself, if it comes to a difference of opinion we have only 8.4 per cent of the votes, so we hardly have much clout there unless we agree with most of the other 27 members. What Mr Cameron also doesn't mention is all those other international bodies on which we no longer have a seat, as we have had to surrender our place on them to the EU. As the former owners of the world's richest fishing waters, for instance, we used to sit on the North East Atlantic Fisheries Commission, which ultimately makes the rules for those waters. But there, too, we have been replaced by Brussels. The same is true for the global body that decides all the standards for vehicle manufacture. Although we have one of the largest motor industries in Europe, it is now only the EU which speaks for us. But Norway, with a successful fishing industry but no motor industry, sits on both these bodies in its own right. If Mr Cameron really wants to sit at all these top tables, he could get the best of both worlds by joining Norway as an independent country which enjoys full access to the EU Single Market. But he prefers to stay a member of the EU, clinging on to his fading dreams as our influence continues to ebb away. Energy targets are mind-boggling I must apologise for an error in last week's item on the Energy Bill, where I said that, through a Government amendment, we were now committed to reducing our electricity use by 27 per cent within six years and 40 per cent by 2030. Although it was not exactly clear from Hansard's report on the debate, this was not in fact a Government amendment and was not put to a vote, so those improbable targets were not part of the Bill approved by the House. Greg Barker, the minister for energy and climate change, did, however, say that "in principle" he approved that amendment, which only sought to make a statutory requirement of what the Government is hoping to do anyway. It is clear from a report published last November by his department that these mind-boggling targets are very much part of its thinking as to how we might "decarbonise" our electricity supply. What is proposed in this report, "Capturing the full electricity efficiency potential of the UK," is that we should aim for almost exactly the reductions in our power use proposed in the withdrawn amendment. But it is also clear that one reason why the Government was content to see the amendment disappear is that it hasn't got any idea how such targets could be achieved. The report includes a ragbag of proposals, such as that we can all make a 31 per cent reduction in our home electricity use through better insulation, and 20 per cent more by switching to low-energy light bulbs, which are pure wishful thinking. Such is just part of the suicidal cul de sac we are being led down by our Climate Change Act obligation to cut our emissions of carbon dioxide by 80 per cent within 37 years: a target that cannot possibly be met without closing down most of our existing economy.Š Having observed many times here how outrageous it was that Tim Yeo MP could continue to act as chairman of the energy and climate change committee while earning £200,000 a year for advising various green-energy firms, I noted with interest that he has at last been forced to step aside after being caught in a newspaper "sting." But I also note that his successor as chairman of the committee, a Lib Dem MP called Sir Robert Smith, is recorded on the website They Work For You as being a "very strong" supporter of measures to halt climate change. It must comfort the Government to know that the committee is still in safe hands.