Did they subsidise low rates with debt? I thought with the pipes they just subsidised them with neglect by deferring maintenance and replacements.

I never feel like the debt implications are fully explored in these discussions. As with housing, there's a small group of vested interests that I feel take some options off the table from the start. Debt is great for long-lived capital infrastructure like this as it spreads the cost over all the generations who will make use of it over the next 80 years or so. Unfortunately it's automatically a political taboo.

But I dunno, maybe that's already factored in with these rises.