Water (Special Measures) Bill [HL]

Lord Whitty Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 28th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

My Lords, I broadly agree with the amendments in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh. She raised some important issues, about, first of all, the way that surface water drainage is treated. As the Minister will know, surface water is combined with sewage water in the same pipes in many of our towns and cities, and increasing rainfall and development is putting pressure on that combined drainage system.

The other issue to consider, which the noble Baroness raised, is the pressure put on local authority planning services to agree to housing developments where the existing infrastructure is not appropriate to support them, with developers reluctant to fork out huge sums of money to pay for the additional drainage systems needed. The answer lies in empowering local authorities’ planning services to put conditions on planning consent which specifically require developers to build the appropriate infrastructure to support the development that they wish to build.

There is a related point. I am a local councillor; in my experience, where there is an issue of surface water, the planning services require underwater attenuation tanks to be built to hold that water until it can be released to the natural drainage systems, such as streams. However, the developers are very reluctant to do that, and are seeking to get around it in other ways. Surface water drainage issues and local authorities’ inability to enforce this is something that the Minister may wish to raise with her colleagues in local government when it comes to reforms of the planning system, as it will affect the Minister’s environment responsibilities. I agree with the amendments tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh.

[Lord Whitty (Lab)]

My Lords, I was not planning to speak this evening, and indeed I have to go shortly, but this debate raises broader issues.

I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, that water companies should not be pursued by the authority for things which are not their fault and which they are unable to do anything about. However, this underlines the need to ensure that the new authority, whatever it is, is a very powerful authority.

As noble Lords may recall, the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington, and I suggested that we should have a combined regulator. That has been rejected so far, but we need a regulator that can take steps against not only the water companies but other bodies which make the water companies’ tasks impossible or extremely difficult, and which are themselves primarily responsible for the pollution, flooding or other damage caused by the water.

That applies not only to developers, although I think that developers are probably explicitly the worst in this context, but, as the noble Baroness has just said, to highways authorities and to discharges from agriculture. If there is a water authority that has to deal with the far end of the effects of these discharges or the inadequacy of the piping, that authority should have the ability to take such steps. At the moment, it is either the local authority that does that in terms of planning permission, or it is the highways authority, which pays no attention whatever to water run-off, frankly, or it is the various bits of agriculture regulation. But if we are concerned about making sure that we have less sullied water and no threat of flooding, which may well be caused by people other than the water companies, I would argue that at some stage the Government will have to consider giving powers to the new authority that cover those companies, or particular actions by those companies, as well as the water companies.

Water (Special Measures) Bill [HL]

Lord Whitty Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 9th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Whitty (Lab)]

My Lords, I do not wish to repeat the statements that have been made on various sides so far, so I will start again and review some of the history. I do so from a number of different perspectives. First, I was once an official of the trade union that organises most of the workers in the water industry, which would strongly prefer a return to public ownership. I have to tell my noble friend the Minister that we are in a strange week. We are reviewing the two most unpopular privatisations, rail and water—unpopular, that is, with their individual consumers. With one it is clear what the second stage will bring—a return to public ownership, in a form that still requires some determination and definition. However, here we are unclear about what the second stage will be.

Having said that, I strongly support what is in this Bill. To those who represent, directly or indirectly, the interests of the directors of water companies, I say that the more stringent measures to be taken against directors and boards of water companies will be triggered where they have broken the regulations, broken the law, and failed to run their company in line with the commitments given at the previous price review and the strategic plan agreed with Ofwat.

Those are egregious offences and they require those draconian powers—as some see them—to ensure that the behaviour of the management of the companies complies with the intention of the law both on the regulation of the industry and on the environmental regulations. When the regulatory restructuring was first established, it was assumed that water was like any other natural monopoly, which required strong regulation as there was no pressure of competition. Indeed, the only competition in this industry has been through takeovers and consolidation, and that has not benefited consumers of water.

I speak from various perspectives. I was a Minister in Defra at a time when water regulation did not seem too bad. Indeed, I acknowledge that, in the first 10 years or so of water privatisation, there was an increase in investment—certainly over and above what the state had done previously—and there were some major improvements. These were financed both by investment within the industry and the sell off by water companies of their non-water assets, including substantial amounts of land, which has made the environmental benefits of the previous water companies and the environmental regulations we have sought from them less easy to deliver. I was subsequently briefly a member of the board of Ofwat and, for quite a long time—mainly under the tutelage of the noble Baroness, Lady Young—a member of the board of the Environment Agency.

My experience in Ofwat was terrible. It was the weakest possible regulator. I remember one major company failed to meet its commitments on leakage, for example. The tariff would have enabled us to fine it £250,000 for its breach of its commitments, but we actually fined it £12,000. It has always been a weak operator.

I then moved across to the Environment Agency. At the time, I consulted with the Ministers of the then Labour Government on whether I could sit on two boards. I subsequently found that that would have been a good idea—naturally, I would have taken only one fee. That is why, if I cannot have the outcome for the longer term—as the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, was advocating—my second choice would be that of the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington. That is, to have a single regulator that covers a lot, or all, of the three major regulators—four if you include the Welsh board—in one place, with one strategic plan and one strategic outcome at the price review, whose timing and scope need to be reviewed as well. That would make it a much more powerful regulator than it currently is. That is my second choice, and I hope that the review the Minister promised us comes up with that solution fairly fast.

Another problem with the present situation is that Ofwat and the Environment Agency do not properly talk to one another. This has improved a bit, but the coincidence of their objectives, on both timescale and the way they deal with the companies, is not the best example of co-operation I have found in state bodies. Again, that is a reason I support the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington.

When I stopped being a regulator, I became a consumer champion. I agree with the doubts people have expressed about putting consumers on the board—that may or may not suit a particular company—but the Consumer Council for Water, which has managed to sustain its lack of resources and still perform a useful role, needs to be seriously strengthened. I ask my noble friend the Minister whether, even in this short-term Bill, we could give extra powers and resources to the Consumer Council for Water. It can represent the interests of both household consumers and small companies, which are crucial users of the water industry’s output. Like farmers and others, they are affected by the environmental regulations that are required to clean up our waterways. The role of regulation of the water sector is not simply about the price and cleanliness of the water that comes through our taps—which has, for the first time in my lifetime, been questioned in one or two areas; it is about the environmental effects on our streams, rivers, seas and beaches. Consumers come in many forms, and the consumer role in this sector needs to be strengthened, not weakened.

I hope my noble friend the Minister can take that point on board and that all these considerations are taken into account in the second stage of this and the review. I also hope that that review is concluded fairly fast, because the companies, consumers and the environment need to know. The rivers, lakes and seas mentioned in this debate need a future different from the one that faces them at the moment.

Environment and Climate Change Committee Report: An Extraordinary Challenge: Restoring 30 per cent of our Land and Sea by 2030

Lord Whitty Excerpts

Wednesday 11th September 2024 Grand Committee

[Lord Whitty (Lab)]

My Lords, I appreciate that speech. I have to echo a lot of what has already been said by many noble Lords. The noble Baroness, Lady Miller, recalled that many years ago, when we were opposite numbers on the right to roam Bill, we were addressing the problems of squaring access with beautifying the countryside, but also starting to talk about reversing the decline in biodiversity—which, regrettably, has got significantly worse since then.

I then spent four years at Defra, largely dealing with the common agricultural policy and various livestock pandemics. I do not remember much attention being paid to the greening of the countryside, nor do I remember addressing the designation of protected areas until very late in my role, when I received a question from a noble Lord about SSSIs. The noble Baroness, Lady Young, referred to the favourable status of SSSIs declining dramatically; it was already declining when I received this question, and it has not been reversed.

Monitoring the areas we have already designated has been ineffective. The main purpose of the other protected areas is not greening, increasing biodiversity or whatever; it is the beauty of and access to the landscape, and ensuring that fairly large areas have a degree of protection from industrialisation or residential development.

This is a complex problem, because people assume that the label of protection, which includes AONBs and national parks, actually means something to do with nature. In reality, it means relatively little. The whole thing has to be reversed. The public do not fully understand them, normal maps used for walking or visiting the countryside do not mark them, there is little effective status to these designations and there are too many of them.

I hope that part of the future programme will look at the current designations and see if we can go further, using them as a tool in the context of the broader land use strategy we are supposed to be developing. We can then begin to meet the targets that were—I think the word is “boldly”—designated by the Government and adopted internationally. I praise the noble Lord, Lord Goldsmith, and others who committed to and are pushing that, but the fact is that the whole structure of designation, of regulation and of the resources available to regulators such as the Environment Agency, Natural England and local government has reduced in this area in recent years. I hope that we are about to turn a corner and that new Ministers recognise the need for that.

This is broader than that, because the biggest environmental and land use policy, the principles of which we all approved in the last Parliament, in the Environment Act and the Agriculture Act, envisages improvement in what is usually referred to as carbon reduction and greening but is agricultural practice more broadly. That needs driving in a new direction. Unfortunately, most of the schemes that have come out, particularly in the Agriculture Bill, make the mistake of emphasising hiving off from farming bits of land that are to be regarded as green and as contributing to biodiversity targets.

Some of that has to happen, but we will not achieve our targets if we do not also address the problem of making sure that food production, which should continue at a high level, also becomes greener, less carbon intensive and less biodiversity destroying. If we hive off bits of agricultural land, grazing land and upland land in particular, from the requirement to help meet biodiversity targets, we will be making a serious mistake. There is no need for there to be such diverse problems.

One of the issues for the ELMS strategy is that we deliver an outcome that is consistent and points in the same direction, instead of dividing up land into different parcels with substantially different biodiversity approval rates. That strategy has to be abandoned.

We have not tackled the problem of marine areas. We have designated some as higher marine areas, but we have not taken steps to reduce fishing and dredging in our inshore and beach areas. Unless we do that, we will not fulfil the target on the marine side. There is a great possibility of managing to do so on the land, but there is a lot more to do on the marine side, starting, as someone suggested earlier, with banning bottom dredging.

Water Companies: Financial Resilience

Lord Whitty Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd July 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

At the moment we are working closely with the regulators, including Ofwat, to ensure that they are fit for purpose and can deliver what is needed in the sector.

[Lord Whitty (Lab)]

My Lords, further to the question of the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, I speak as a former non-executive director of Ofwat for a few months, and as a former non-executive director of the Environment Agency for a few years. Ofwat was always feeble. The Environment Agency has been rendered feeble by a cut in resources and asking the companies to report on their own homework. What is needed is a new and powerful single regulator for the water sector. Do the Government have plans, at least in the medium term, to move to that?

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

My Lords, we are working with Ofwat and the water companies to deliver change as quickly as possible. As I mentioned, the first thing we are doing is bringing in the water special measures Bill to try to change the culture within the water companies. We will work on another water Bill that will come forward, and I look forward to working with all noble Lords, including my noble friends, on what that could contain in order to make the biggest difference to the current situation.

South West Water: Brixham Contamination

Lord Whitty Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd May 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Douglas-Miller (Con)]

I completely concur with my noble friend that it is critical that we get to the bottom of what has happened to have generated this outbreak of cryptosporidium. It is currently far too early to know the exact cause of the outbreak. South West Water is continuing its investigations to confirm the source of the contamination. The Drinking Water Inspectorate has initiated its investigation into the cause, extent and actions of the company and begun collecting evidence on site. I should point out that it is the Drinking Water Inspectorate which is taking the lead on this investigation.

[Lord Whitty (Lab)]

My Lords, is not this instance a failure of the central role of the water companies to deliver clean and healthy water to every household? In the days before privatisation, we used to pride ourselves on our water and decry foreign water. Whether that was true or not, this is a central failure of regulation. There are three regulators of the water industry. We need to have a new start on regulation of water, with a single regulator for it, if we are not to have renationalisation. On the point of renationalisation, I know that my Front Bench, as well as the Government, are not in favour of it, but I note that the largest shareholder in Thames Water wrote down its shareholding to nil. If the rest of the shareholders, which are very guilty in this, did the same then the cost of nationalisation would be pretty small.

[Lord Douglas-Miller (Con)]

The noble Lord is quite right that the Canadian pension fund’s owners wrote down the value of its shareholding in Thames Water to zero, but that of course does not mean that it is zero. I am not sure that would help him in terms of its privatisation.

Water and Sewage Regulation (Industry and Regulators Committee Report)

Lord Whitty Excerpts

Monday 16th October 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Whitty (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Hollick for his cogent introduction, and thank the committee for what is a trenchant, highly critical report with very interesting recommendations and conclusions. This is a complete failure of the system of regulation, post-privatisation. I would also like to thank whoever invented the title of the report because it most succinctly expresses the outrage at the pollution that is caused by these water companies and the affluence with which they have treated their shareholders, investors and those who bankroll them. It is a disgrace, and one which this House and the Government need to face up to.

I have to first make a confession. I was a small cog in the structure of regulation of this industry, for a few months at Ofwat and for several years at the Environment Agency. That was more than 10 years ago. I clearly remember thinking and arguing at that time that the system was inadequate and that we had failed to use the powers that we already had, particularly in Ofwat but occasionally in the Environment Agency as well. In those days, the Environment Agency had more resources for monitoring, but we did not always use our powers to their full extent—and we see the results.

It is possible to argue that, in the early years of privatisation, more resources were brought to much-needed investment, technology and management improvement. But after that first period, this has not been the case. We now need to face up to the fact that the major political parties are not prepared to commit themselves to renationalisation. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, I would prefer that solution. If it is not possible, we need to start again on the system of regulation, not only of the areas covered by Ofwat, the Environment Agency and the Drinking Water Inspectorate but of the wider aspects of the water system. These broader aspects include taking account of the growth in population and the pressures from housing and from business, of the fact that water usage in this country is one of the highest in Europe, and of the fact that we completely fail to address water efficiency in appliances for industry, agriculture and domestic households.

We need a new start. In my view, if we are not to go for renationalisation then we need to establish a single and very powerful regulator for the water sector as a whole—one which subsumes all these interests and puts water centrally, as it should be, in the management of the resources of this country. It is not only about the dangers that the sewage overflows and discharges cause to our rivers and fisheries, and their threat to human health; it is also about the complete and utter failure to recognise that, as climate change progresses, water will become scarcer and less predictable, and so we need a much more effective system of management and a much stronger regulator.

We need a regulator if we are to keep the present system of ownership because these are regional monopolies, untroubled by competition. Unlike some privatised industries, there is no competition. They are also untroubled by requirements to review the franchise periodically, as exist in some privatised industries. That means they are almost free to make as much money as they like. If we add to that the complete failure of co-ordination and of clear strategies by the regulators and Defra, then we are heading for catastrophe unless we start again.

I ask the Minister to recognise that the list of failures spelled out by my noble friend and his committee in the report need a new approach. If we are not going for renationalisation, can all parties commit to a much more effective system of regulation and to starting again? I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, that sanctions need to be placed on these companies. I would hope that those sanctions were effective and would eventually lead to the sector being brought back into public ownership. But in the meantime, we need a much more effective and co-ordinated—and much more environmentally sensitive—system of regulation, which recognises and addresses the problems of this sector, and we need to start now.

European Union: Trade Barriers

Lord Whitty Excerpts

Tuesday 4th July 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what plans they have, if any, to reduce trade barriers to food imports from the European Union.

[Lord Whitty (Lab)]

My Lords, on behalf of my noble friend Lord Howarth and with his permission, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in his name on the Order Paper.

[The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Benyon) (Con)]

My Lords, the trade and co-operation agreement maintains zero tariffs and zero quotas on the trade in goods between the UK and the EU, and it includes a commitment to avoid unnecessary barriers to trade. The border target operating model will provide a proportionate and streamlined regime to support businesses to trade, while maintaining high levels of biosecurity. The UK and the EU are rolling out electronic certification, which will facilitate trade through reducing delays and business administration.

[Lord Whitty (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for that response, but it is largely based on hope. The fact is that food imports from the EU have decreased by over 1% and our exports to the EU have decreased by nearly 6%, so consumers miss out on European products and our farmers miss out because of EU rules, regulations and bureaucracy. My noble friend Lord Howarth and I disagree on the outcome of Brexit, but we agree that the present arrangements are inadequate. When will the Government renegotiate the trade agreement with the EU?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I hate to disagree with the noble Lord but the total value of imports of food, feed and drink from the EU in the three months to April 2023 was £10.6 billion, 11% higher than the three months to April 2022 and 34% higher than the three months to April 2018. Over that period, exports increased from £3.5 billion and were 4% higher than last year and 6% higher than the year before that. We are trying to introduce a system that is fair to importers and exporters and that protects our very important biosecurity.

Air Quality Strategy Consultation

Lord Whitty Excerpts

Thursday 18th May 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

That question reflects issues relating to politics in London that are particularly complex and the impact of the mayor’s ULEZ on people on low incomes who have to travel to the centre of London. The noble Lord makes the accusation of playing politics, but the Question is about consultation. What we are trying to do nationally is support local authorities, and sometimes what the mayor is trying to do is despite what the local authorities within his mayoralty are trying to achieve. That is a local question for London and not for our national policies.

[Lord Whitty (Lab)]

My Lords, does the Minister not recognise that not only is it disastrous that there was such a short time for consultation but the substance of the document on which he was consulting is woefully inadequate to attack the problem? I speak as a former president of an independent organisation, Environmental Protection UK, which made a submission to the consultation. Is it time for the Government—and, in view of the electoral cycle, probably the main opposition party—to recognise that we need a new clean air Act and a central direction through a new clean air commission? Until the Government grasp that necessity, this problem will continue to afflict our people and contribute to the long-term sickness that we have just been discussing.

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

What I would say to the noble Lord, whom I respect for his experience in this area, is that running campaigns to create new laws sometimes misses the most effective way to deliver. The most effective way in which the Government in England can be responsible for this is to support the local authorities which have to do it. We are doing that with money, and we are doing it with policies that require them to hit certain targets—on PM2.5, on nitrous oxide and others. That is the best way to do it. If the noble Lord wants a piece of legislation that will deliver that, it is the Environment Act.

Imported Beef

Lord Whitty Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

My noble friend is absolutely right. That is of great assistance to the Government and regulators, as well as to retailers which want to make a virtue of the kinds of products they put on sale. It is also of great help to the consumer for them to make the right choices about the products that they wish to buy.

[Lord Whitty (Lab)]

My Lords, not for the first time, I feel sorry for the Minister having to come to the House because I am convinced that, privately, his department must have approached our Trade Ministers saying that this is a bad deal. It is always possible for Defra Ministers to alienate some of their clientele but, today, they alienate farmers, environmentalists, animal welfare people and a big chunk of consumers, all at the same time, for the sake of paltry deals that will have a minimal effect on our standard of living. It seems like a humiliation to me. I hope that, if other deals come up, Defra will be stronger in making its views known.

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I am always grateful for the noble Lord’s sympathy, but it is unnecessary in these circumstances. We work closely across government; there has been a slightly changed landscape in government, with big new departments appearing. What is really important is that current trade deals, and future ones as they come in, have proper parliamentary scrutiny—there is a process for that—and reflect the high environmental and animal welfare standards that we have achieved in this country, which we want to see continue.

Environmental Targets (Fine Particulate Matter) (England) Regulations 2022

Lord Whitty Excerpts

Monday 30th January 2023 Lords Chamber

The third salient point is that the benefits of doing so would be very rapid indeed. The CMO’s report suggests that 30% of the reduction in mortality from reducing air pollution occurs in the first year, and 50% in years two to five. Let us think about that. A reduction of between 30% and 50% of up to 38,000 deaths a year would be an extraordinary gain for the people of this country. However, because, unlike the smog in the 1950s, we are dealing with something that is essentially invisible, at the proposed rate of knots primary school playgrounds, GP surgeries, shops and high streets will continue to have killer levels of pollution that will go unattended for years to come. Surely the Government should think again.

[Lord Whitty (Lab)]

My Lords, I have long taken an interest in this subject. When I came into this Chamber I did not intend to speak, but I was utterly shocked by the way the Minister—who in many respects I have some respect for—dismissed the case for a much more ambitious target. My noble friend has set out in great detail how that could be achieved, and why it should be achieved.

I was, until recently, the president of Environmental Protection UK, whose origins were in the National Society for Clean Air, which proposed the Clean Air Act in the 1950s. It was the Minister’s predecessors, in the Conservative Government of Anthony Eden—which does not have a high historic record—who adopted the Clean Air Act when they were told by people, like those who have got at the Minister, “You’re going to try and change people’s habits and they’re not going to stop burning coal”—but they did. I speak as a child bought up in London with asthma in the 1950s. Those five years, in which they cleaned up London, probably mean I am still alive and here in your Lordships’ House today.

It was incredibly dismissive of the Government to condemn those who were advocating tighter regulations. They are based on strong medical evidence; the campaigns that the evidence here dismisses are mainly informed by strong medical evidence that this kills, it deforms and it limits life in all its respects. The Minister needs to take a grip, think again and come back and respond to my noble friend with something better. Otherwise, this Government have something to be seriously ashamed of.

[Lord De Mauley (Con)]

My Lords, we all have a growing understanding of the devastating effects of PM2.5 and particulate matter in general on human health, and we welcome efforts to bear down on them. I think I heard the noble Baroness sidestep the question of what an appropriate target was, preferring simply to demand more ambition. Although other noble Lords have made some suggestions, she did not answer my noble friend the Minister’s question of what actions she specifically proposes should be banned or seriously cut back. It is important that the public know what they are.