British Waterways Board (Transfer of Functions) Order 2012

Debate between Lord Smith of Finsbury and Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts

Monday 25th June 2012 Grand Committee

[Lord Smith of Finsbury]

My Lords, I begin by declaring my interest as chairman of the Environment Agency. I very much welcome the transformation of the British Waterways Board into the new Canal and River Trust and I am grateful to the Minister for the helpful way in which he introduced our discussion. I particularly welcome two things about what is happening. First, I welcome the encouragement and facilitation of increased public and community participation in decision-making about what happens to our waterways. I very much hope that the Government’s intentions in this respect will come to fruition in the way in which the new CRT operates. Secondly, I very much welcome the funding package which the Government have put in place to enable the transfer. In the spirit of the times, it is a somewhat generous package but it will enable a really good start to be made on the work of the new trust.

It is, of course, the Government’s ambition to go a bit further in two to three years’ time and to include the Environment Agency’s navigation responsibilities in the new Canal and River Trust. I welcome that ambition and we in the Environment Agency will do everything that we can to assist the process. At the moment, we have responsibility for something like 1,000 kilometres of statutory navigation. This includes, crucially, the River Thames and the River Medway, Rye Harbour, the Great Ouse, the River Nene, the Stour in Suffolk, the Wye and the Dee conservancy in Wales—substantial navigable rivers of iconic importance. Our responsibilities for those waterways include a duty to maintain them in a condition in which people can safely enjoy the statutory public right of navigation that exists on them. We will continue to endeavour to fulfil those responsibilities to the very best of our ability in the run-up to any transfer to the new trust.

We should remember how popular our waterways are. In 2009-10, the last year for which we have accurate figures, there were approximately 70 million visits to our waterways. There are 32,000 registration holders—boat owners and operators—on our navigations alone, let alone on the canals and waterways that will come under the new body. In the current financial year we will be investing around £10 million of grant in aid and £7.5 million of income, a considerable amount of that coming from boaters, in managing and operating the navigation structures on these waterways.

As we prepare for the further handover, and as we bear in mind the responsibilities that the new trust will have, a few points need to be borne in mind, and I very much hope that the Government will do so. First, on rivers in particular—this differs to a certain extent from canals—there are different traditions for different rivers; they do not all operate in exactly the same way with the same expectations for boat operators and users. Including an appreciation of the subtle differences between different waterways in any assessment of how things move forward is going to be important.

Secondly, and with the events of the past weekend weighing heavily on my mind, we need to bear in mind the need always to manage rivers for flood risk management. The importance of marrying navigation responsibilities with the continuing flood risk responsibilities that the Environment Agency will continue to have in waterways that transfer will eventually be an important part of what happens. Thirdly, it will be important that the money is there for any enhanced responsibilities that the new trust has when transfer occurs in a few years’ time.

Fourthly, in looking at how the new trust operates, both in its initial phase and in the second phase after the transfer of EA responsibilities, it is important that the new trust all the time bears in mind the interests of boat owners and users and the people who want to use our rivers for recreation, for quiet enjoyment and for the solace that very often our rivers can bring. It is being accorded an important responsibility. I have every confidence that the team and the arrangements that are being put in place will enable that to happen, but I hope that the Government will keep a wary eye on making sure that it does.

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts]

My Lords, I also thank my noble friend for the explanation of this order. I share the enthusiasm of the noble Lord, Lord Smith of Finsbury, for this good and imaginative proposal. I do so for practical reasons. One is that, as it says in paragraph 8.12 of the Explanatory Memorandum,

“one of the benefits of moving out of the public sector will be that it should enable and encourage more innovation and diversity in the way the new charity grows its income”.

There is also an emotional reason: the first holiday I ever spent, aged 16, with three friends from school, was to hire a canal boat and travel the Shropshire Union Canal and over the Pontcysyllte aqueduct on the way to Llangollen. I doubt that you would be allowed to take a boat out now aged 16, but in those days we did not have as much health and safety as we do now. When one compares and contrasts some of the things that one sees on the waterways now with what was going on then, one sees that a lot of the developments and improvements have been made by voluntary labour, so this is a welcome extension of a trend that is already present in the waterways movement.

The putative board very kindly had a briefing meeting on 6 July last year. It explained its plans for the future, and exciting indeed they were. However, one of the questions that I would like to funnel to it through my noble friend regards the enormous cultural shift that there is going to have to be within the organisation in order to pick up and respond to the challenges of working in the private sector. As some noble Lords know, my life is in the City. When I said, “Just tell me a bit about the return on capital and post-investment appraisals”, and those sorts of things, there was an answer but not one that I would describe as being of sufficient crispness if this organisation is to hold its own against the very sharp commercial operators with which it will have to carry out joint ventures to develop its various assets. It was slightly hazy. It is important that this very imaginative proposal should succeed. Therefore, I very much hope that this body will be able to up the game, if that is the right expression.