Robert Peston

your performance statistics that it can't actually own those pipes anymore, right?

At that point, you are basically internationalization.

It's not the same thing as because we don't own the pipes, you can't just throw Thames water out with no risk of court cases and claims for massive compensation and investors who will basically say, well, if you screw us on this, we'll never invest in Britain ever again.

It is incredibly difficult to see, frankly, how the Manchesterism model of buses would apply to an absolutely palpable problem that needs fixing, which is water, without, in some shape or other, the government facing a massive liability.

And also with all of them.

whether it is, as I say, energy or water or indeed other utilities.

The other problem is when you get investment from the private sector, it is on the basis of a particular regulatory settlement.

If you simply say, right, we're tearing all that up and starting again, again, they will either, well, they will definitely sue for compensation, which again would bring quite a big bill.

Or B, if they decided they weren't going to sue the government, there would be this risk that really quite important investors would just turn their back on investing in the UK.

So it is complicated.

It's not 100 billion plus is what I'm saying.

It all comes back to my fundamental concern, which is the big difference between buses and energy or water or any of the other really important public services is, you know, energy and water are...

incredibly asset-heavy services, right?

Whether they are wind farms or power stations or the grid or gas pipes or whatever, these are...

enormously expensive networks that are currently mostly not owned in the public sector, buses, relatively speaking, are cheap.

Franchising a service that is not dependent on massive assets, massive investments, i.e.

buses, is

I just, in the end, struggle with the idea of how much of a model that can be for these other incredibly important services.

And that is the fundamental issue, which Andy Burnham, I'm sure in the course of the next few weeks, will address.

elucidate for us.