(1 day, 14 hours ago)
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Baroness McIntosh of Pickering
To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the latest figures regarding the state of reservoirs and the resilience of water supplies.
Lord in Waiting/Government Whip (Lord Katz) (Lab)
My Lords, the Government are closely monitoring resilience and water refill, but there is no immediate risk to public water supplies. As of 3 November, reservoir storage across England stood at 60.1%, 17% below average for the time of year, with eight reservoirs classed as exceptionally low. However, this is an improvement on the position a month ago. The National Drought Group, which is convened by my honourable friend Minister Hardy, is meeting weekly to ensure water companies take every action available to minimise the impacts of this drought, while the Environment Agency is prioritising protection of public water supplies in areas facing severe drought.
Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)
My Lords, parts of the country are in severe drought. Yorkshire went into drought for the first time in October this year. We are told that we need 450 new farm reservoirs to be built each year by 2050, yet just 34 have been completed in the last five years. Will the department see fit to help growers and farmers by easing the drought permitting system, permitted development rights and abstraction licensing to facilitate building on-farm reservoirs?
Lord Katz (Lab)
Defra and the Environment Agency are working rapidly to improve and accelerate determination times for abstraction permits. We have reduced the average wait and processing times in significant performance outliers, with permitting performance now at its highest level since 2018. The Environment Agency is also improving digital systems to reduce administrative burden and complexity. We are reviewing approaches to high-flow abstraction, trialling dynamic abstraction and making up to £15 million available for on-farm reservoirs, which help farmers capture and store water during wetter periods, alongside taking steps to remove planning barriers to reservoir construction.
The Lord Speaker (Lord Forsyth of Drumlean)
The noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, is taking part remotely. I invite the noble Lord to speak.
Lord Campbell-Savours (Lab) [R]
Looking worldwide at water supply resilience, Ismail Serageldin, a former president of the World Bank, has predicted that wars of the 21st century will be fought over water. With estimates of potentially millions of people migrating to more temperate climates due to climate change and water scarcity, are we thinking through the consequences of that for political turmoil and social cohesion at a time when we are cutting overseas aid and exacerbating the problem?
Lord Katz (Lab)
Unfortunately, I cannot quite find my tab on overseas aid on this Question about reservoir supply in England, but my noble friend is of course completely correct that, across the globe, supply of water and the somewhat combative approach to maintaining it are a real problem. That is only exacerbated by climate change and it is why this Government are taking on the challenge of meeting our net-zero targets, working with the rest of the world to ensure that we have proper climate change amelioration in place not just in this country but across the world. We want to ensure that people across the world, including in England, can access adequate supplies of water.
Baroness Grender (LD)
My Lords, of course we need new reservoirs, but does the Minister agree that, with failing water companies losing nearly 3 billion litres a day to leakage, they risk becoming like giant colanders emptying faster than they fill? Will the Government commit to binding leakage targets now alongside building reservoirs—given that Havant Thicket is not due until 2031—rather than waiting, as we are all waiting, for the water Bill, the timing of which keeps slipping?
Lord Katz (Lab)
I agree with the noble Baroness that it is important not just to invest in long-term infrastructure—reservoirs—but to make sure that we do the day-to-day work, whatever the conditions of drought or otherwise, to improve water infrastructure. She will be aware that the Government have set an interim target of a 30% reduction in leakage by 2032 from the 2017-18 baseline. We expect Ofwat to challenge water companies across the industry to halve leakage by 2050 compared to 2017-18 levels. That is one of the Government’s targets for Ofwat. Yes, there will be more of this in the forthcoming water Bill; I could say to the noble Baroness “when parliamentary time allows”, but I think she will be aware that this is right at the top of the Government’s priority list. Water legislation was announced in the King’s Speech, so we expect it in due course.
The Duke of Wellington (CB)
My Lords, it is the policy of the current Government, as it was of the previous Government, to reduce water leakage by 50% by 2050. Would the Minister agree to ask his departmental colleagues to review this target, which does not seem ambitious enough given the drought and other water supply problems that we all know about?
Lord Katz (Lab)
I am not sure I will ask my ministerial colleagues to review the target. We need to be ambitious on behalf of the water companies and put their feet to the fire a little more than they have been in the past. We are very clear: the water companies should have an ambitious target to halve leakage by 2050, because, as the noble Baroness, Lady Grender, asked, what is the point of building new reservoirs, which takes a very long time, if we cannot make sure that we are reducing leakage to conserve the supply that we are collecting from them?
Lord Roborough (Con)
My Lords, the concerning levels of water in storage—17% beneath seasonal norms, as the Minister mentioned—reflects not just a dry year but systematic underinvestment by the water industry against long-standing forecasts for demand growth and climate change. What assessment have the Government made of the speed, cost and volume of improvement that is possible from nature-based solutions and on-farm reservoirs, versus the expense, controversy and long timelines of new reservoirs? I declare my interest as a farmer and landowner.
Lord Katz (Lab)
I thank the noble Lord for his question. His point about the potential for nature-based solutions to water conservation is part of a wider picture. Yes, we have to make long-term investment in reservoirs and ensure that farmers find it easier and quicker to create their own abstraction on on-farm reservoirs, but there are nature-based solutions too. That is one of the reasons why we expect water companies to plan for one-in-500-year drought. We have to make sure that they prepare for all eventualities, and some of the smaller fixes that we find in nature-based solutions are quick wins that all water companies should promote.
The Lord Bishop of Manchester
My Lords, one of the fastest-growing areas of water usage is in data centres. How do the Government plan to assess how much water is used by data centres in future, where it is sourced from and whether we ought to insist that new data centres recycle the same water rather than constantly using fresh water?
Lord Katz (Lab)
The right reverend Prelate may be aware that the Minister for Water and Flooding issued a Statement on data centres last month, on 28 October, which set out a clear approach to managing water demand as the sector grows. Current evidence suggests that data centres account for quite a small proportion of water demand, estimated at less than 0.2% of the non-household sector in England, and that many facilities already use highly water-efficient cooling technology. Future growth could place extra pressure on local water resources, however, so we expect data centres to minimise water demand where they can and consider alternative sources before using additional public water supply.
Baroness Andrews (Lab)
My Lords, west Sussex is one of the areas that are very badly stressed, as the Minister will know. Ardingly reservoir has 20% of its normal infill. We have not built a new reservoir since 1992—interestingly, coinciding closely with the privatisation of water—and reservoirs take 10 years to build. What realistically can be done in the next 10 years, particularly in areas where we predict persistent drought?
Lord Katz (Lab)
We have to reform the sector, as the Government set out in response to the Cunliffe report. We need more streamlined, efficient regulation to ensure that water companies do the job that we have been talking about this afternoon—reducing leakage—as well as longer-term investment and promotion of better and wiser water usage by everybody, be they businesses, such as data centres, or households. That is why we are committed to setting up new, innovative responses, such as regional water councils, to ensure that water companies perform for the public and for businesses and not just for themselves.
Lord Teverson (LD)
My Lords, to come back to my noble friend’s question about leakage, the fact is that we lose 20% of the volume of water—some 2.6 billion litres a day—but that has not gone down. That percentage has stayed the same, so we are not going in the right direction. Will the Government get tough with the water companies to make sure they take the targets that we set seriously? At the moment, there is no action.
Lord Katz (Lab)
In 2024-25, the Government saw a 12% reduction in the total leakage reported by water companies. To sustain and build on this trajectory, we are investing £720 million through the current Ofwat price review period in smart technology, including meters, which will help to identify and reduce leakage. We are enabling increased rollout of smart meters via the smart water meter delivery group. We continue to hold water companies to account to ensure that they are delivering on their leakage reduction targets, rolling out more things such as smart metering and levying financial penalties if companies fail to meet these targets.