{"id":292911,"date":"2025-07-26T09:14:12","date_gmt":"2025-07-26T09:14:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/292911\/"},"modified":"2025-07-26T09:14:12","modified_gmt":"2025-07-26T09:14:12","slug":"ni-water-charges-declassified-documents-prove-that-despite-its-denials-stormont-privately-negotiated-to-introduce-water-charges-and-to-sell-off-ni-water","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/292911\/","title":{"rendered":"NI water charges: Declassified documents prove that despite its denials, Stormont privately negotiated to introduce water charges \u2013\u00a0and to sell off NI Water"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Exclusive\u00a0|\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"beltel-ebe0ecc6_root beltel-ebe0ecc6_paragraph beltel-91174671_secondary beltel-1d70522a_marginbottom4 beltel-1d70522a_marginleft0 beltel-1d70522a_marginright0 beltel-1d70522a_margintop4\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\" data-testid=\"title-summary\">They denied it for years, but files uncovered by the Belfast Telegraph show it wasn\u2019t British ministers who came up with the idea of water charges \u2013 it was put to them by politcal figures in Stormont Castle<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Newly-declassified files show the idea of selling off NI Water and charging the public came from the Stormont Executive.\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/bf0a890f-2ac3-42ce-8113-fb34945380e5.jpg\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"100%\" data-testid=\"article-image\"  \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"beltel-ebe0ecc6_root beltel-ebe0ecc6_caption1 beltel-300db776_none beltel-91174671_secondary beltel-66f0fec7_regular beltel-1d70522a_marginbottom0 beltel-1d70522a_marginleft0 beltel-1d70522a_marginright0 beltel-1d70522a_margintop3 beltel-b48c4984_left\" style=\"color:var(--color-grey-60)\">Newly-declassified files show the idea of selling off NI Water and charging the public came from the Stormont Executive.<\/p>\n<p class=\"beltel-ebe0ecc6_root beltel-ebe0ecc6_paragraph beltel-300db776_none beltel-91174671_primary beltel-1d70522a_marginbottom0 beltel-1d70522a_margintop0 beltel-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">For more than two decades, Northern Ireland\u2019s biggest parties have insisted they\u2019ve always opposed water charges \u2014 but newly-declassified files show that the idea of selling off NI Water and charging the public came from the Stormont Executive.<\/p>\n<p class=\"beltel-ebe0ecc6_root beltel-ebe0ecc6_paragraph beltel-300db776_none beltel-91174671_primary beltel-1d70522a_marginbottom0 beltel-1d70522a_margintop0 beltel-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">Multiple documents from 2002 uncovered by the Belfast Telegraph in files opened at The National Archives in Kew show that Stormont\u2019s private willingness to sell off the then Water Service \u2014 now NI Water \u2014 surprised Tony Blair\u2019s chief of staff.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Exclusive\u00a0|\u00a0 They denied it for years, but files uncovered by the Belfast Telegraph show it wasn\u2019t British ministers&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":292912,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5011],"tags":[69799,84491,1435,108876,1144,6410,925,27348,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-292911","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-northern-ireland","8":"tag-david-trimble","9":"tag-department-for-infrastructure","10":"tag-liz-kimmins","11":"tag-ni-water","12":"tag-northern-ireland","13":"tag-sam-mcbride","14":"tag-sdlp","15":"tag-the-executive-office","16":"tag-uk","17":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114918776152037120","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292911","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=292911"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292911\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/292912"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=292911"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=292911"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=292911"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}