Infrastructure Planning (Waste Water Transfer and Storage) Order 2012

Baroness Parminter Excerpts

Monday 28th May 2012 Grand Committee

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Taylor of Holbeach)]

My Lords, in November last year, Ministers made a Statement in the other place on the Thames tunnel. This included our plans to introduce an order amending Section 14 of the Planning Act 2008, which would classify proposed major sewer projects as nationally significant infrastructure projects, or NSIPs for short. This Section 14 order is before your Lordships today.

We conducted a 12-week public consultation on the draft order last summer and published its summary of responses in January this year. More than 900 organisations and individuals were consulted about our proposals. The consultation documents were publicly available on Defra’s website, and two question-and-answer drop-in sessions for the public were held at Defra’s offices. We received a total of 44 responses to the consultation. The majority were from local planning authorities and individuals near to potential construction sites for the Thames tunnel project proposed by Thames Water. The outcome of the consultation showed that the draft order itself was not opposed. What opposition there was came mostly from local people living near proposed Thames tunnel construction sites. They were concerned that local planning authorities were being excluded from the streamlined NSIP planning application process.

The order would perform two functions. First, it would extend the categories of NSIPs to include major sewer developments with a capacity of 350,000 cubic metres or more. Secondly, it would allow public consultations that are carried out on such proposals before being designated as NSIPs to be treated as part of the planning application process as if they had indeed been classed as NSIPs.

The main advantage of classifying proposed major sewers as nationally significant infrastructure projects is that they would benefit from the existing streamlined NSIP planning application process under the Planning Act 2008. This involves a single application to the Planning Inspectorate for a development consent order.

The NSIP planning application process ensures that local authorities and local communities are included as an essential part of the whole process, enabling them to submit representations to the Planning Inspectorate as part of its consideration of an application. Democratic accountability is built into the system, with Ministers making the final decision on such applications at the end of the 12-month process, taking account of the recommendations of the Planning Inspectorate.

The planning application process for proposed major sewers was considered in February 2011 by the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Select Committee as part of its scrutiny of the waste water national policy statement. The committee found it inconsistent that major sewer developments were not included as NSIPs alongside major new sewage treatment works within the Planning Act 2008. The committee recommended that the situation be rectified accordingly.

The order before your Lordships today meets that recommendation. It does not specifically refer to the Thames tunnel project. However, this is currently the only proposed major sewer development that would meet the threshold of the order. In the future there may be other such projects and so it is right that an appropriate legislative framework is in place to ensure that they too can progress with as little unnecessary delay as possible.

As far as the Thames tunnel is concerned, the waste water national policy statement was approved by Parliament and designated on 26 March. This sets out the need for the Thames tunnel as the most cost-effective, timely and comprehensive solution currently available to the problem of significant ongoing sewage pollution into the River Thames in London, when compared with the alternatives. It will enhance the ecology of the river and is estimated to directly employ around 4,200 people in its construction and in related sector works, with an estimated several thousand secondary jobs in the supply chain and wider London economy. Thames Water has set itself a target of employing local workers to make up to 20% of its tunnel construction workforce.

I know that many of your Lordships have firmly held views on the merits or otherwise of the Thames tunnel and I look forward to this debate during which, no doubt, many of these views will be put forward. However, I ask your Lordships to bear it in mind that the order may apply not only to the Thames tunnel but also to any similar major sewer projects that may be brought forward in the future. I commend the draft order to the House.

[Baroness Parminter]

My Lords, there is clearly widespread support for this order, as the Minister said. The Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee in another place recommended that the Government go down this route and the responses to the consultation contained widespread support, including from the local authorities that would be affected by the Thames tunnel proposals. Therefore, on this side of the coalition, we support the order. It is important to remind ourselves why it is being brought forward. It is not about trying to speed up any decisions; it is about making a process that is timely and minimises unnecessary cost but remains democratically accountable.

This is a new type of engagement for the public in terms of how they respond to major sewer proposals; in the past DCLG has been very good at public education campaigns about how the public can engage which allays fears that these are processes that are somehow to speed things up and stop them being involved. Will the Minister be speaking to his colleagues in DCLG to ensure that a proper public consultation campaign is undertaken so that people realise how they can engage in this new major infrastructure order?

[Lord Berkeley]

My Lords, I spoke about this project—well I did not actually speak, my noble friend made my speech for me because I was on the sleeper to Scotland. He did an extremely good job especially when it apparently diverged from our party policy, but there we are. I do not have a particular problem with the concept of an order such as this amending the planning process because I have always supported the Infrastructure Planning Commission and its successor. I did, however, have a chuckle when I read the impact assessment for this project: in answer to the question of what was the CO₂ equivalent change in greenhouse gas emissions in millions of tonnes of CO₂ equivalent, the answer was “not applicable”.

When I worked out that for the Thames tunnel— I do not know whether Thames Water is still going to move all the spoil away by road—that was going to be 500 trucks a day, the idea that that would not produce any CO₂ was laughable. Of course, many other bits of CO₂ will come out of the construction, let alone the operation. The matter might be a little detailed but it needs looking at again.

Since the debate on 27 March, things have moved on and Thames Water has produced a second consultation report. It has made some changes but I do not think it has recognised that it may have an unnecessarily expensive scheme. The eminent water engineer, Chris Binnie, produced a report, about which I shall speak in a minute and which could reduce infraction fines by obtaining improvement much sooner than 2023, which I believe is the latest date for the scheme to be completed. We must not forget that the cost is now something like £4.2 billion, plus I think that the estimate of infraction has gone up to £1.5 billion. There is, of course, always a risk of cost overrun in tunnelling. Further, there is the estimated £80 per annum for 30 years that every Thames Water customer will have to pay, with or without the extra subsidy from the Government that was agreed a couple of months ago. Therefore, I suggest that the Government ought at this stage to take a step back and reflect before spending nearly £6 billion of taxpayers’ money, which may not even satisfy the European Commission’s requirements. Indeed, we do not yet know what those requirements will be until the Court has concluded its deliberations.

Mr Binnie’s report refers to a possible fine of £1.5 billion. He believes that the fish issue can be addressed much more cheaply and that the same applies to the problems of sewage, litter and health impacts in the London docks. He says that these rather smaller issues could be addressed within two or three years, although one of them will not be resolved until 2023, which is more than 10 years away. However, all this is dependent on the European Court’s judgment, which will go back to the European Commission. Therefore, I argue that it is well worth trying to introduce some interim measures. That would probably reduce the fine significantly as the matter is assessed on a five-point basis and if you make improvements, the fine goes down.

This project has gained a momentum of its own, as do many big projects, some of which one likes and some of which one does not like. This theory of mine as regards projects gaining a momentum of their own goes back many years. Ministers like to put their names to big projects but these projects do not always survive political pressures. That is true of Governments of all parties, and 2023 is a very long time away, although I am sure that the Minister opposite does not fall into that category. However, I am concerned about where the independent advice is to be found in all this. I understand that the person in Ofwat who is responsible for this project used to work for Thames Water and that the person responsible for the technical advice on this scheme used to be responsible for the Mogden sewage works. I also understand that during the hearings that the noble Earl, Lord Selborne, held a few months ago, Thames Water referred to Ofwat and the Environment Agency as its team. This should not be a team. The regulator has an independent role. It is all wrong that they should all be one happy family when they are spending £6 billion of taxpayers’ money. Nobody is looking at alternatives. The Minister said in his introduction to the debate that this was the best scheme, having considered alternatives, but who is considering the alternatives?

I suppose it is not surprising that people are not looking at alternatives but this needs to be done. If one looks at some of the mitigating measures produced by Mr Binnie and others, there are probably many of them. We also need to make sure that if the Thames tunnel scheme goes ahead, it achieves the results we want. However, we do not know what the Commission will decide in this regard. I hope that the Minister will advise his colleagues that it is time to take a step back and look at alternatives. I would very much welcome a quick meeting with him to go through this in more detail. In the mean time, I shall not oppose the order and wish it well. However, I am not sure that I wish the project well at this stage.