Water (Special Measures) Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Young of Old Scone and Baroness Pinnock

Committee stage
Wednesday 30th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 53 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering. It gives the Secretary of State six months to report on the implementation of Schedule 3 to the Flood and Water Management Act 2010, which covers sustainable drainage. The Act is what it says on the tin: enacted in 2010—but, if I understand it correctly, Schedule 3, which we slaved over in your Lordships’ House, has never been formally commenced. There is no point in legislating if it is not brought into effect. What is the point of us being here if the legislation we meticulously pore over and pass is never implemented?

This is an important issue of sustainable drainage. The noble Baroness has already outlined how it impacts on housing development and other developments. It has a big impact on river and water body quality, so I look forward to hearing how the Government intend to deal with this issue.

[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

My Lords, the amendments from the noble Baronesses, Lady McIntosh of Pickering and Lady Browning, and the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington, are, in their varied ways, interesting.

The amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, urges the Government to give greater consideration to encouraging water companies to use nature to slow down excessive water flows, particularly in rivers, because that would reduce the impact on combined sewers, which take both sewage and rainfall through the sewerage system. The noble Baroness gave the example of Pickering, which was discussed when I was on the board of Yorkshire Water some years ago. I was very pleased to hear that that approach has worked so well.

There is another interesting example, in Somerset. A group of environmentalists—not a water company—encouraged a river to return from a driven channel to its natural meandering state. That has benefited nature in many ways, but it has also reduced the speed of the water flow, thereby bringing about the benefits the noble Baroness described. The Government could encourage such approaches—not much more is needed. The Pickering scheme was supported by the board of Yorkshire Water because it was a lot less expensive and had many environmental pluses, among which was the reduced carbon cost of not having to use huge amounts of concrete, adopting a nature-driven approach instead.

I hope the Minister will take on board what has been said. The water companies, with a bit of oomph behind them, could be encouraged to experiment and use these ways to reduce water flows and therefore flooding, to reduce excessive water in the system, and to reduce storm water overflow pollution incidents. This would have a huge benefit.

The next issue, which we discussed on Monday, is the failure to implement SUDS. That was supposed to happen this year and has not, but it ought to. On the plus side, although the Government have not implemented it, in my experience planning authorities are already insisting on new planning applications having a SUDS scheme, because of the capacity issues raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Browning. In any major housing development scheme, the sewerage undertaker is required to commentate on the scheme and may say, “Guess what? There’s not enough capacity in the system”. A SUDS scheme is then applied, which reduces the highways rainfall flow so that it goes not into the sewerage system but, via attenuation tanks, into a neighbouring water course.

In some ways these things are already happening, but I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Browning, about the importance of considering the capacity of the sewerage system and water resource availability. We know that in some parts of the country, particularly the south-east, housing developments do not happen because there is insufficient water supply. I heard what the Minister said earlier—that in the price review to be signed off by the end of this year, sufficient capital was agreed for nine new reservoirs. That is important, but we also need to think about using water more efficiently, as was said earlier. The volume of water that each of us uses compared to even 10 years ago is quite concerning. We need to think carefully about water efficiency, so that we use what is a precious resource more carefully.

I urge the Government to think again about a national water grid. Water is connected across the country, but the water resources are owned by individual water companies. There is quite a lot of water in the north and not anywhere near enough in the south of the country. Water is currently pushed from one part of a company’s resources to the neighbouring water company. For instance, Yorkshire Water regularly pushes water to whatever the neighbouring authority is in the Midlands. The Government should think about using the water in the north—I am sure that we who live in Yorkshire would be willing to sell it at a good price to those of you in the south who do not have enough.

On that basis, we support what has been proposed by the noble Baronesses, Lady McIntosh and Lady Browning, and we look forward to the Minister’s response to those concerns.