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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Rebecca Pow)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bone. I congratulate the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran) on securing the debate. I realise that she had a similar debate in the past; I was not Environment Minister then, but I have looked at the transcript—it was in 2019, wasn’t it?
I think we are all agreed that water is the most basic, yet vital, resource. It is needed for everything we do and is essential for a healthy environment and a prosperous economy. A reliable water supply should not be taken for granted. I say that because we have not experienced significant shortages of water countrywide since the 1970s, although in April 2012, following two dry winters and just weeks before the London Olympics, water availability in the south-east was reaching record lows. We only avoided significant shortages thanks to a very wet summer in 2012, which highlights how important our water supply is. We have to consider not only a growing population but the effects of climate change, especially in drier parts of the country where it is causing increasing challenges to our water supply. Water companies have to take account of those factors in their future planning in order to provide a reliable and sustainable supply of drinking water. It is our job in Government to work with the water regulators to ensure that the water companies do their job effectively.
The Environment Agency’s national framework for water resources, published in 2020, identified that between 2025 and 2050 about 3 billion to 4 billion extra litres of water a day will be needed for the public water supply—that might surprise a lot of people. We must therefore take a strategic approach to future water needs and work with regional groups and water companies to take account of climate change while protecting the environment. We want to preserve our iconic valleys and water bodies such as chalk streams. Indeed, we welcomed the Catchment Based Approach’s chalk stream strategy, published in October 2021.
The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has worked closely with our chalk stream restoration group on its development and to drive forward a future vision for chalk streams. I do not know whether the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon engaged with any of that, but some of her neighbours did, and a lot of people, myself included, want to re-establish and restore our amazing chalk streams. That includes having to reduce unsustainable water abstraction from chalk streams and aquifers. We have measures in the landmark Environment Act 2021 to do just that.
The EA’s national framework also reflects the Government’s commitment to a twin-track approach to improving water resilience by investing in new supply infrastructure where necessary. Leakage will be tackled by our water companies as they crack down on water wastage. Up to two thirds of our additional water needs can be made up by water demand improvement. By 2050, we expect to see leakage levels halved and average per capita consumption at 110 litres per person—more than 30 litres less than we currently use in our homes. We are consulting on legally binding demand management targets under our new powers in the Environment Act. The issue is so critical that we are looking at it from every angle.
We must expect all water companies, including Thames Water and Affinity Water, to act on customers’ needs for a resilient water supply, as well as to manage the pressures. I hope that the hon. Member will appreciate that collaborative regional water resources groups, including Water Resources East, which she mentioned, have been consulting on their emerging plans—that consultation closed yesterday—and will publicly consult again to improve them. That will be used to inform water companies’ draft statutory water resources management plans, which will require further public consultation at the end of the year. There will be opportunities for her to feed into that.
Layla Moran
I gave Water Resources East as the example of best practice because it has the councils, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and the Rivers Trust sitting on the board, as opposed to their being simply consultees. Does the Minister agree that that is a better model? Local accountability feeds into the plans at the highest level, as opposed to in the Water Resources South East model, which does not include any local democracy whatsoever.
Rebecca Pow
The hon. Lady makes a valid point. We expect water companies to work with their local authorities. She touched on the point about population in her speech. That is where working with the local authority on its local growth plans is valuable, because the local authority will be aware of what new housing there will be and how the population will expand in its area. On those grounds, water companies need to plan for sustainable growth, which is very important.
There will be an opportunity to feed into the management plans. The reservoir would be in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Wantage (David Johnston), so I urge him to get involved. He was vociferous about the need for transparency in the process, as is the hon. Lady. He stresses the importance of making sure that there is a need for the reservoir. He would have spoken in the debate, but he has covid, so we wish him well. Perhaps he is at home listening.
The consultations will help inform future decisions on the right way to secure water supplies, including for Thames Water’s 10 million and Affinity Water’s 3.6 million customers. To support the robustness of water resources planning, as well as the national framework, the water regulators issue detailed guidance to water companies on their water resources plans. If water companies forecast a water supply deficit—as we will see in the south-east—they should study all the available options fully to justify the preferred solutions in their plans.
The Environment Agency and Ofwat have both helped to shape the regional plans and are statutory consultees on the water resources management plans. The EA’s national framework sets out that regional groups must be strategic in planning their water needs. There needs to be more effective collaboration between water companies to manage the supply and demand, the resilience and, indeed, the environment, all of which have been clearly flagged. The Environment Agency also advises the Secretary of State on the draft plan before it can be finalised following consultation, so there is a set and clear process.
Water companies are also using the £469 million made available by Ofwat in this price review period properly to investigate a range of potential strategic water resources options, such as new reservoirs, big reservoirs, small on-farm reservoirs—which we potentially need more of—water recycling projects and inter-regional water transfers. The hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon criticised the use of money for investigation, but I would argue that it is critical to know that the right projects are being focused on.
As the hon. Lady mentioned, the work is supported by RAPID, or the Regulators’ Alliance for Progressing Infrastructure Development, a joint team made up of the three water regulators: Ofwat, the EA and the Drinking Water Inspectorate. It is working with industry on the development of strategic water resources infrastructure that is in the best interests of water users and the environment to inform water company plans. She is absolutely right that a range of schemes are being very closely looked at. It is possible that a combination of these big national infrastructure projects will be needed, and options such as the Severn-Thames transfer and the reservoir are not necessarily mutually exclusive. All of that will come out through the consultations, the investigation and the data.
Recently, I went to visit an enormous pipe that goes from the Humber, where there is a lot of water, right down to Essex. That pipe is one example of the huge water transfer projects necessary because of the critical water situation in the east of the country. The planning for that huge project was put in place some years ago, so that the investment could be made and the project could get under way. I am sure that the hon. Member will not disagree that such projects will be necessary in the future.
I agree with the hon. Lady that we need robust plans and transparency but we do have a system to enable that. The need for new infrastructure is, again, set out in the draft national policy statement for water resources infrastructure under the Planning Act 2008. The statement applies to nationally significant infrastructure projects, and I would expect the proposed reservoir scheme to qualify as one such project. I can assure her that extensive pre-application consultation and engagement must be undertaken by applicants using the Planning Act 2008.
Layla Moran
The Minister mentioned transparency, but there is a real issue with the redacted environmental impact assessment. I say “redacted”, but the document is gobbledegook and I cannot make head or tail of it. The water company would get much further if it took a much more constructive approach to local campaigners, so that they could be reassured that their numbers were right. Does the Minister agree that the company ought to release the unredacted paper so that we can look at it?
Rebecca Pow
I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention, but I did hear her at the beginning of her speech praising her relationship with Thames Water, so she could use that relationship to urge it to do just that. We are still consulting and there is a long way to go in the process.
I want to touch on a couple of points about the carbon impact. The hon. Lady obviously made a good point when she said that if the project went ahead it would be huge, but regional groups and water companies have to show how their overall contribution to the sector’s 2030 net zero commitment would line up, and how it would line up with the Government’s targets and our net zero commitment. All our big infrastructure projects have to take those things into consideration.
Similarly, on the environmental impact, the water companies will have to continue to develop their proposals and their evidence surrounding any kind of footprint on the environment and habitats, and on the requirements for biodiversity net gain. As nature recovery Minister, I would certainly want everything possible to be done in any scheme that came forward to add to the sum total of our nature recovery.
I hope that the hon. Lady and my hon. Friend the Member for Wantage, who potentially is joining us from his sick bed, see that there is a robust process in place, which is critical. The other critical thing is that we must provide the nation with a reliable source of water. The solutions that are finally selected must go through the right due process and we must know that they are the right system for the right purposes.
I thank the hon. Lady for introducing the debate, and I thank you, too, Mr Bone.
Question put and agreed to.