Joan Bakewell: Can this selfish country cope with nuclear power?

Imagine what a nuclear industry equivalent of the water companies' performance would be like

It could be fine for you, it could be fine for me; but it's unlikely to be fine for all of us. Selfishness is now the prevailing ethic, with care for each other and our communities in retreat. So we're told by the Henley Centre, which has been asking for the past 20 years whether people think their quality of life is best improved by looking after the community's interests, or looking after ourselves first.

For more than a decade, the results have shown people favoured co-operation, rather than individual priorities. Not any more. The scale has tipped the other way and, if the trend goes on, we'll be acting more in the spirit of "I'm for number one!" and "sod you" to our neighbours.

The Fabian Society, which published the Henley Centre findings on the anniversary of Gleneagles and Live8, could only regret these revelations and insist that the achievements of the Make Poverty History movement - debt cancellation and such - were a good start. Being left of centre, the Fabian Society was eager to emphasise that the benign impulse in the British people can still be roused to help reduce the great inequalities we see around us. But suppose it isn't. Suppose the predictions are right, and, increasingly, we'll prefer to muscle in on a share of the wealth for ourselves. How will this pan out?

Follow the selfishness track and we can expect to pursue with increasing ruthlessness the fruits of the consumer society, seeking out ever-more lavish indulgences, our homes and selves pampered, our exclusive streets manicured. More of us will certainly seek to maximise our financial interest even, perhaps, aspiring to become shareholders with a portfolio of investments, just like the rich people you read about in the papers. Then, as shareholders, we will be pressing for as big a share of profits as possible, urging the companies we now own to cut costs and cut corners in our interests. And that's exactly what they will do.

We know that's so because they do it already. If you have shares in any of this country's water companies you're enjoying something of a bonanza right now. Severn Trent has delivered an 18 per cent rise in yearly profits; United Utilities an increase of 21 per cent, while Anglian Water's annual profits have trebled to £2bn. Meanwhile, Ofwat, which plays a yo-yo game with its price limits, is allowing water companies to raise prices by an average of up to 4.2 per centon top of inflation.

As a consumer, you won't be quite so chuffed. There is a hosepipe ban in much of Britain, a country renowned for its temperate damp climate. Water is leaking at a colossal rate, because the old and rotten pipes have not been renewed in time. Community interest is coming a laggardly second to the interest of business and its eager shareholders.

Water rationing and faulty pipes don't present too great a crisis for us all if it simply means a few wilting gardens and golf courses going to pot. If that's the way we want it, and the Henley Centre findings suggest it will increasingly be so, then there's no great harm done. Especially if we feel our lives and our sense of well-being fulfilled in having such choices. But quite how keen will we be when such criteria are brought to bear on the nuclear industry?

The Government's energy review suggests that whatever share of future energy supplies come in the form of nuclear power, the cost will not be to the taxpayer, but will be funded largely by private investors. No doubt there will have to be hefty come-ons in the form of subsidies and non-repayable loans, but the Government's promise is that the nuclear option will not come at taxpayers' expense. That would seem superficially to go along with the preferences the Henley Centre winkled out of us.

However, it is hard to imagine what a nuclear industry equivalent of the water companies' performance would be like. How many errors and leaks can nuclear power tolerate?

If business priorities rule, as surely they must to attract investment, then cost-cutting and the squeezing of employee numbers and operating practice will come as naturally to such companies as it did to railways which were slow with track repairs, and cleaning contractors hired by the National Health Service, who left wards dirty and infectious.

The question to consider is whether some things are too important to be left to the profit motive? The prospect is not made any brighter by the sight of top-flight bankers being extradited to help investigations into international fraud, and Microsoft facing mammoth fines from the European Commission for its abuse of its dominant position in the marketplace. No comfort either in the spectacle of the police inquiry into the "peerages for cash" scandal.

The profit motive matters particularly when it comes to nuclear power. It is true the Chernobyl disaster happened within a country hidebound by a command economy and its own neglect and corruption. But, if nothing else, that awful episode taught the world a terrible lesson: there are no margins for error in the business of nuclear safety.

In the absence of any coherent public morality, the natural slippage of business and self-interest toward unacceptable levels of commercial sharp practice cannot be tolerated. The damage would be beyond measure and would reach us all.

joan.bakewell@virgin.net