Campaign 4
Make Harm Cost More
Ensure serious corporate wrongdoing is never cheaper than doing the right thing.
Britain needs successful businesses.
Businesses create jobs, innovation, investment and wealth.
But markets only work properly when responsible companies are not commercially disadvantaged by competitors that cut corners and leave everybody else to pick up the bill.
If causing serious harm is profitable, the incentives are wrong.
The campaign in 30 seconds
The problem
If wrongdoing saves more money than enforcement costs, responsible businesses can be disadvantaged.
Government policy
Regulators already possess substantial enforcement powers.
Our test
Are those powers actually changing behaviour?
Success looks like
Fewer serious breaches, fewer repeat offenders and faster remediation, not simply bigger fines.
What the evidence says
England's water companies recorded 2,801 pollution incidents in 2024, including 75 serious incidents. Serious incidents increased by 60% from 2023. (GOV.UK / Ofcom)
Water companies self-reported 85% of all pollution incidents, but only 63% of serious incidents. The Environment Agency also audits, inspects and enforces, so this is not a system of pure self-regulation, but it shows why independent verification matters. (GOV.UK / Ofcom)
In online safety, Ofcom's statutory regime can impose substantial financial penalties. (GOV.UK / Ofcom)
The question is not simply whether strong enforcement powers exist.
Do they change behaviour?
The Responsible Business Enforcement Scorecard
Track:
Harm
How many serious incidents occur?
Financial benefit
Could breaking the rules still leave an organisation better off?
Remediation
Was the harm repaired?
Repeat behaviour
Are the same organisations offending again?
Verification
Can regulators independently check compliance?
Enforcement
How quickly are serious breaches addressed?
Outcome
Is behaviour improving?
Companies should not mark their own homework
Self-monitoring can be useful.
But where significant public harm is possible, regulators need enough independence, expertise and access to information to verify what companies report.
Trust responsible businesses. Verify the results.
What we are asking government to do
Apply a common Responsible Business Enforcement Principle:
Serious or repeated wrongdoing should not leave an organisation financially better off than if it had behaved responsibly.
Consequences could include fines, compensation, remediation, licence conditions, independent monitoring or individual accountability where evidence and law justify it.
This is pro-responsible business
Most businesses try to obey the rules.
Those businesses should not lose commercially because another company discovers that breaking them is cheaper.
Companies should succeed because they create value. Not because wrongdoing is inexpensive.
What would change our mind?
If existing enforcement consistently removed the financial benefit of serious wrongdoing, repaired harm, deterred repeat behaviour and reduced serious breaches, we would not advocate additional penalties merely for their own sake.
The objective is better behaviour, not punishment for its own sake.
Policy in Practice
Strong enforcement can deter wrongdoing, but regulation can also produce secondary effects.
Track:
Questions should include:
- Are penalties actually changing behaviour?
- Are companies simply passing the cost onto customers?
- Are smaller responsible businesses finding compliance disproportionately difficult?
- Are regulations unintentionally strengthening established companies by making entry harder?
Compare the alternatives
We apply the same test to every party: is the proposal costed, independently verified, and does it define how success will be measured?
Current Government
The Water (Special Measures) Act 2025 strengthened enforcement against water companies. Further rules introduced in 2026 allow faster civil penalties of up to £500,000 for specified breaches. The Government's water white paper also proposes a single integrated regulator, alongside a £104 billion privately financed investment programme for 2025–30.
Expected benefit
Faster penalties, stronger accountability and integrated regulation could improve compliance, investment and environmental performance.
Potential trade-off
Stronger enforcement and infrastructure requirements may increase operating and financing costs. Regulatory restructuring also creates transition costs, although financial penalties cannot be passed directly to customer bills.
Conservatives
The Conservatives' policy-renewal programme is reviewing the effectiveness and proportionality of environmental regulation. It has not yet produced a complete replacement water-regulation plan.
Expected benefit
A review could identify rules that are ineffective, duplicative or unnecessarily costly.
Potential trade-off
Without a detailed proposal, its effect on pollution, enforcement, investment and customer bills cannot yet be tested.
Liberal Democrats
The Liberal Democrats propose converting failing water companies into customer-owned mutual public-benefit corporations, replacing Ofwat with a Clean Water Authority and requiring live reporting of sewage volumes.
Expected benefit
Mutual ownership could align company priorities more closely with customers, reinvestment and environmental outcomes.
Potential trade-off
Restructuring indebted utilities could be legally and financially complex, with uncertainty over creditors, governance and transition costs.
Reform UK
Reform proposes making directors personally and criminally liable for systemic illegal working, with major companies also facing fines of up to 10% of worldwide turnover.
Expected benefit
Personal liability and turnover-based fines could strengthen deterrence where corporate leaders fail to prevent unlawful practices.
Potential trade-off
Wider criminal exposure may increase compliance and legal costs, and this sector-specific proposal does not address every form of corporate harm.
Green Party
The Green Party supports bringing water companies into public ownership, with revenues directed towards infrastructure, resilience and pollution reduction rather than shareholder returns.
Expected benefit
Public ownership could place service quality, investment and environmental outcomes ahead of dividends.
Potential trade-off
Transfer would require decisions on compensation and debt, expose the public sector to operational and investment risks, and would not guarantee better performance without effective governance.
Where there is common ground
All five approaches accept that serious corporate harm should carry meaningful consequences. The disagreement is mainly about whether enforcement should focus on financial penalties, structural ownership, personal liability or regulatory design.
Britain on Purpose: The Test
Harm → Financial Benefit → Penalty → Remediation → Repeat Behaviour → Outcome. Reward responsible business. Make harm cost more.
Reward responsible business. Make harm cost more.