Managing Flood Risk
Debate between Baroness McIntosh of Pickering and John Redwood(10 years, 8 months ago)
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Miss McIntosh
If I could make a little progress first, I will then take interventions.
There are a number of maintenance activities which the Environment Agency groups into four main areas. The first is operations: inspecting assets, providing utilities, and operating flood barriers and pumping stations. Some of those have passed from internal drainage boards to the Environment Agency, and have not been maintained since 2004-05. It is important to put that on the record.
The second maintenance activity is conveyance. The Committee was shocked to learn that only £30 million is spent each year in the whole of England and Wales on controlling aquatic weed, dredging, clearing screens and removing obstructions from rivers. We will never know whether regular maintenance and dredging on the Somerset levels by the IDBs or the Environment Agency would have prevented the traumatic flooding we have seen since last autumn and right through the winter.
The third activity is maintaining flood defences and structures, including carrying out inspections and minor repairs, managing grass, trees and bushes and controlling the populations of burrowing animals on flood embankments. My argument is that under the previous Government much of the regular maintenance work was simply not done by the Environment Agency because its political masters, the Government, said not to do it because of birds nesting. I argue that IDBs work with nature and dredge only at the right times of year.
The fourth activity is mechanical, electrical, instrumentation, control and automation—MEICA—meaning carrying out minor repairs to, and replacement of, pumps and tidal barriers.
Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend agree that many places, including Wokingham, experienced flooding because essential maintenance work on ditches, culverts, drains and small rivers, which are relatively low-budget items, had not been undertaken by the Environment Agency? In the previous year the Environment Agency spent £1.2 billion overall and massively increased its staff, but it did not have a penny to protect the people of Wokingham from the floods that have now hit them. Is it not a question of how we spend the Environment Agency’s budget?
Water Bill
Debate between Baroness McIntosh of Pickering and John Redwood(10 years, 10 months ago)
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Miss McIntosh
I wish to consider new clause 3 and amendment 9, which seek to address legislation already on the statute books in the Flood and Water Management Act 2010. I remind the House that the cost of bad debt to each household in England is approximately £15 per annum, and in times of great hardship and a period of austerity, which the Government are dealing with through the actions we continue to take, it is incumbent on the Government to consider every opportunity to defray the costs to each household in that regard.
New clause 3 seeks to provide benefits information by allowing the Secretary of State to regulate to
“make provision about the disclosure of benefits information about occupiers”
to water and sewerage companies in connection with the revised part of the Water Industry Act 1991. It goes on to state that
“‘benefits information’ means information which is held for benefit entitlement purposes by the Department for Work and Pensions.”
Amendment 9 would make the consequential change to the current clause 80, to allow the provision of benefits information. I sat where the hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Thomas Docherty) is currently sitting and followed the passage of the Flood and Water Management Bill as closely as he is following the passage of this Bill. I have been very taken with the idea of trying to reduce bad debt in this way. Recently, I was most fortunate to receive a written answer from the Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions, my hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead (Mike Penning), who helpfully told me that at present the legislation does not permit the transfer and provision of benefits information by the Department for Work and Pensions in the way I wish. He did not say it could not be done; he said only that the current law does not permit it. We are where we are.
Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)
To help the House, will my hon. Friend explain what kind of information she would like to see transferred and how it would help?
Miss McIntosh
I hope that my right hon. Friend will bear with me as I take the House through it.
In the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee report on the draft Bill, we reiterated our previous recommendations that the Department should implement without delay the existing provisions of the Flood and Water Management Act 2010 on bad debt, to which I have referred. In our view, it is unacceptable for honest customers to be forced to subsidise those who can pay but refuse to pay their water bills. To answer my right hon. Friend’s question, the specific provision is section 45 of the 2010 Act, which introduces new section 144C to the Water Industry Act 1991. That is what we propose in new clause 3, which would require landlords to arrange for information on their tenants to be provided to water companies.
Instead of implementing the existing bad debt provisions, the Government currently rely on a voluntary approach, whereby landlords share information on tenants on an online database set up by the water companies. Before I go further on the voluntary approach, it might be helpful to ask my hon. Friend the Minister this question: what is to prevent a customer who happens to be a tenant from marking on their electricity bill the fact that they have no problem with it being made known to the electricity company and the Department for Work and Pensions, whichever works best, that they are in receipt of benefits? The Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee was fortunate to enjoy the company of the hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife for a time. I am sure he remembers our exchange, but the Committee has great difficulty in understanding what the problem is for the Government—either the Department for Work and Pensions or the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs—in permitting that flow of information.
The House will recall the tragic case of an elderly couple who sadly passed away because they could not afford to pay their utility bills for heating. No one had informed the electricity company of that fact. I believe that what is good for electricity companies—in law, such information can be provided to those utility companies —should be equally good for the water companies, which are also utility companies. They should have access to the same information.
A close reading of proceedings in Committee shows that Water UK acknowledged the new database for landlords and tenants, but claimed that
“experience has shown that a voluntary approach simply does not work.”––[Official Report, Water Public Bill Committee, 3 December 2013; c. 15, Q19.]
It gave the example of Northumbrian Water. It has had an easy-to-use website for landlords to provide information for two and a half years, yet only 7% of all rented properties have been registered. That is a problem and this is a matter of some urgency. The Government need to press ahead—the House would support that.
In Committee, the Opposition tabled a new clause that would have meant landlords providing contact details of their tenants to the water companies, but it was voted down. The Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee produced a report on the water White Paper—we have worked hard on the issue and I hope we have made a positive contribution. My hon. Friend the Minister nods because he, too, was a member of the Committee when we adopted the report. I find myself in good company this evening. The report recommended that DEFRA work with the Department for Work and Pensions to ensure that all means-tested benefits claimants are given the option to consent to the sharing of their data with their water company for the purposes of help with affordability issues.
I and hon. Members who have put their names to new clause 3—a number are members of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee—believe that there is a difference between electricity and gas bills and water bills. If people do not pay their heating bill, their supply can be cut off, whereas if people do not pay their water bill, the water company is simply not permitted to turn off the supply of clean water going in or prevent waste water—sewage—going out, for reasons of hygiene and good health.
Common Fisheries Policy
Debate between Baroness McIntosh of Pickering and John Redwood(12 years, 8 months ago)
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Miss Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House considers that the Common Fisheries Policy has failed to conserve fish stocks and failed fishermen and consumers; welcomes the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee’s report, EU proposals for reform of the Common Fisheries Policy; and calls on the Government to use the current round of Common Fisheries Policy reform to argue for a reduction in micro-management from Brussels, greater devolution of fishing policy to Member States, the introduction of greater regional ecosystem-based management and more scientific research to underpin decision-making in order to secure the future of coastal communities and the health of the marine ecosystem.
It gives me great pleasure to have the opportunity to move this motion. I thank the Backbench Business Committee for allowing us to debate the issue, and I thank my fellow Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee members—from all parties—for the excellent work they did in drafting the report on this topic. I also thank the witnesses, both those who appeared before us and gave so generously of their time and those who submitted written evidence.
In my local area, I visited the coble fishermen in Filey, who are some of the heroes of the smaller—under-10 metre—fishing fleet in this country. The Committee visited Hastings, accompanied by my hon. Friend the Member for Hastings and Rye (Amber Rudd), and we were very warmly received. It was a highly productive visit—once we had negotiated the London tube network—and I thank everyone who shared that day with us for the warm welcome we received and the evidence they shared with us.
It was a particular pleasure for me to take the Committee to Denmark and to meet the Danish President of the Council of Ministers, the Danish Minister for fisheries, farming and food. We also met the local fishermen in Gilleleje. I have to confess that I had not visited that little fishing port for some 15 or 20 years, but we were impressed by the work and co-operation of its fishermen, and persuaded by the science we saw there. We were allowed to partake in a non-live auction mart, buying and selling some of the fish, which expanded our knowledge of the live internet auction mart that they use. We were interested to see the selective gear those Danish fishermen use, a detail that is particularly relevant to the motion.
This debate is timely. The Danish presidency is expected to reach a political decision in the European Council in June—in the well-known coastal resort of Luxembourg! Seriously however, Luxembourg does have a genuine interest in freshwater fish and aquaculture—the Minister can correct that term, if it is wrong. We are expecting a political decision in the EC in June. For the first time, it will be a co-decision. The European Parliament is seeking to reach an agreement on the financial regulation in January 2013, and we will have co-decision on all the fisheries reforms. A final agreement is not expected until June 2013.
I commend the motion. I think we can all confirm that the common fisheries policy—particularly the last round of reform—has failed everybody. It has failed to conserve fish stocks, and to help fishermen or consumers. I want to dwell for a moment on what I believe is the most exciting part of the motion and of our report, and I am grateful to the very senior lawyers in this place and elsewhere who have advised us on the report. We have a once-in-a-decade opportunity. We have a one-off opportunity to end the centralised micro-management by Brussels, which I think we can all agree has failed to deliver. We want to support the commissioner, who agrees that, as an essential first step, we must look at the possibility of handing power back to member states to enable them to work together to find a local solution.
I applaud the openness of the commissioner, and the immediate past chairman of the Brussels Committee on fisheries, Carmen Fraga, who is a personal friend of mine and who is affectionately known in the European Parliament as “madam fish.” The commissioner was especially open in the meeting we had in Brussels, during our evidence session of some 18 months ago, and more especially when the commissioner gave evidence on the record. I am delighted that there is now a picture on the commissioner’s website of the commissioner and me handing over the report we are debating this afternoon.
I believe we have given the Department, the Commission and the European Union the opportunity—which we were all looking for—to drive decision making down to the most local and regional level. Our proposals are truly groundbreaking. I believe the fault has been that there has been too much micro-management from Brussels and a lack of overarching objectives, which we would like the Commission to remain in charge of.
The Commission should have a strategic high-reaching overview, but the day-to-day decisions on how fisheries are managed in local waters should be decided among the various coastal states on the basis of scientific evidence, which is missing at present, and through working much more closely with the fishermen. We will talk shortly about giving the advisory councils more power.
Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)
I support the motion, but will my hon. Friend make this point clear to me: presumably, she would want the British Government to be able to get rid of the much-hated and stupid discards policy and be free to decide ourselves how to conserve stock?
Miss McIntosh
I am going to be very methodical and discuss discards later, as we have some interesting things to say about them and I hope that hon. Members from all parts of the House will elaborate on the matter.
On the treaty base, I hope that the Minister has now had the opportunity to analyse what we are proposing. This is the first time anyone has identified what is staring us in the face—that all we have to do is amend the regulations, which form the whole context of this round of the common fisheries policy reform. The feedback we have had from the fishermen we have consulted, as well as from the Danes and others, has been very positive.
It is important to recognise that the little fish do not swim around with a Union Jack on them. Much as I would like to say that the fish outside Filey have a Yorkshire flag on them and the fish in the Scottish waters have the saltire on them, they do not; they swim across the various waters. So it is absolutely right that the Commission should retain some competence in this area, and I, for one, do not wish to reopen the treaty base that gives exclusive competence on the resources to the Commission. By allowing the coastal states that neighbour the individual fisheries to take the day-to-day management decisions, we will save a lot of the Minister’s time every December, as things will be managed on a more regular basis. The approach will be much more local, it will be based on science and it will be about working more closely with the fishermen.
Mr Redwood
Nor do the fish swim around with an EU flag on them. We should accept that it is our fishing resource if it is in our wider waters—we have to pay the bills, so we should be responsible for it.
Miss McIntosh
My right hon. Friend has put his finger, possibly inadvertently, on the nub of the issue. This is a shared resource and we need to conserve it. The Committee has gone through things and we have identified many ways in which we believe we can do that.