Water Abstraction Regulations

Lord Whitty Excerpts

Monday 15th January 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

I am delighted to contribute to this debate. I welcome any opportunity to speak about the environment, in particular its relationship to agriculture. My most relevant interest to the debate is the work I do with the Water Industry Commission for Scotland and the fact that I am an honorary vice-president of the Association of Drainage Authorities.

I agree with everything that my noble friend Lady Byford said. I will make some additional points. The noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, said that this was a long time. Fourteen years is indeed a long time, but seven of those years were under the stewardship of a different Government, who had every opportunity from 2003 to 2010 to bring forward the regulations. It would be interesting to know for what reason they did not have the chance to do so. The noble Baroness also said that she felt that the Government were placing more importance on the business community than environment concerns. I disagree. The statutory instruments before us clearly show the extent to which business interests, the various uses of water and the environment are intrinsically linked.

I will follow up one of the questions the noble Baroness raised with my noble friend the Minister as to what the position is on abstraction policy, in the sense that the Government made a very clear commitment when I was in the other place. We need to set out our stall as to what the abstraction policy will be. As my noble friend Lady Byford said, there have been stresses. The number of licences that have already been issued in East Anglia show how they are more subject to water stress, as opposed to areas such as Yorkshire where we seem to go from lots of flooding one minute to near drought the next. It is incumbent on the Government to come forward with a revised abstraction policy.

I would also be interested to have confirmation that the 25-year environment plan also covers the farming and agricultural aspects. It was of real concern to farmers and agricultural industrialists that there would be two separate plans competing with each other. It would be very neat if all the farming issues could be addressed under the 25-year plan.

I particularly welcome the fact that the Government have stated that the regulations comply with the requirements of the water framework directive but without gold-plating. I do not know whether my noble friend is in a position to say this, but I am very exercised as to what the arrangements will be when the water framework directive and other daughter and sister directives that are currently being revised are approved before or just about the time we propose to leave the European Union. Is there any way the department can let the House know before the agriculture and environment Bills come through? That will be very helpful indeed. My take on this is that we will comply with the new commitments, but my concern is that Ofwat will agree a price review before that time that will apply for the next five years from 1 January 2019. If we are to sign up to these new commitments we ought to give the water companies the chance to put this in their five-year plans. I note that the cost of introducing and applying the regulations will be £89.6 million, with the benefits estimated at only £15.3 million. The costs are substantial.

I have a particular question on the impact assessment. With drainage boards being so prevalent across North Yorkshire, this is of particular interest to me. On page 34, paragraph 6.44 says that Defra is in,

“ongoing discussion with IDBs about their abstraction and none of these discussions has led us to believe that there will be curtailment”.

So it goes on, but it says that there is a certain degree of “uncertainty” owing to the “complexity”. At this late stage, it would be very helpful to know exactly how the regulations will impact internal drainage boards. If it is possible to know that today, that would be very helpful indeed. It would be helpful to know on what date the statutory instruments will come into effect. With those remarks and those questions to my noble friend the Minister, I would give swift passage to these statutory instruments.

[Lord Whitty (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend on raising this issue and on the forensic way in which she approached the analysis of the regulations before us and the history of how we got to this position.

I also thank the noble Baroness, Lady Byford, who was my opposite number for a large number of years. I was responsible for taking the 2003 Act through this House, in the teeth of her forensic analysis, and we came to a compromise, in effect. I asked my officials at the time why on earth there were still licences which provided for unrestricted abstraction and why there were significant exemptions. Logically, neither of those should have existed if we were going to have a rational approach to the management of water, particularly in the upstream areas which have such a dramatic effect downstream, both in relation to agriculture and to droughts and floods.

The answer was that, as far as the exemptions were concerned, there were relatively small companies—farmers, miners and quarriers—who would be very severely affected by removing the exemption. We accepted that argument, and we also accepted at the time that there was the possibility of technological solutions, in particular in mines and quarrying but also in relation to farming, primarily if the Government could be somewhat more encouraging of storage of water for those parts of agriculture which were likely to be hit by shortage of water at particular times of year and where the intensity of water use, unfortunately, usually coincided with the least precipitation and the least access to water—namely, the summer months.

While the mines and quarries, I am informed, have actually restricted and reduced their use of water, and some farmers have restricted their use of water and some storage has existed, actually, government policy never, under any Government, came closer to encouraging, as part of an agri-environment scheme or whatever, that storage of water would be provided. This was particularly important for the horticulture sector, and it has not happened.

The reason we did not immediately move to consult on ending the exemptions after the passage of the Act was principally that we needed time for those changes to take place. The Labour Government did, of course, consult in 2009, and part of the result of that consultation was that not enough had changed for the industry to be prepared to accept the change.

Most of the House will have completely forgotten this, but for one very brief period during the coalition Government I sat on the Front Bench when water legislation was being introduced at that time. That was mainly about introducing competition within the water industry, which has not gone quite as smoothly as it might have done and as we all hoped it might at the time. At that time, we also received assurances from the Government that we would have a strategic approach to abstraction. Indeed, there was some hope of new measures at the upstream end of water, which might involve water trading and possible trading of licences, so that we could gain efficiency at that end in the same way that we are trying to gain efficiency by introducing a degree of competition at the retail end. None of that has happened either, as the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, has just said.

Effectively, the coherent approach to abstraction reform has been put well and truly on the back burner. All we have, therefore, is these regulations to do the easiest bit of it, albeit that it is a slightly painful bit for some abstractors—namely, to end exemptions. It seems to be sensible that we do that. It is, however, now 14 years on, as people have said, and we have also missed the deadline under the water framework directive.

Generally speaking, the water framework directive is regarded as a good exemplar of European legislation because effectively it is outcome related and is not overprescriptive, but it is a relatively good piece of European legislation, one which we would have thought we would be very happy to comply with. We have actually failed to comply with it in a number of important respects, some of which are being put right by these regulations tonight.