Water White Paper

Ben Bradshaw Excerpts

Thursday 8th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Richard Benyon]

I have looked very carefully at that issue, and as my hon. Friend will know we are in the process of a very exciting change in how we manage our waterways, in transferring British Waterways to the charitable sector. There remains the opportunity to use our canals to move water around, but the sad truth is that water is an extremely heavy substance, and it is very carbon-intensive to move it very far. The economic assessments that I have seen state that to move water much more than 30 miles is uneconomic, but through a range of different measures we start to see that, with interconnectors, we can incentivise water companies to use a variety of means to move water from neighbouring areas to theirs. Then, we can start moving a trickle of water from areas of high rainfall to areas of low rainfall.

[Mr Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) (Lab)]

I welcome the fact that the Government are implementing the part of Anna Walker’s review that will bring relief at last to consumers in the south-west, although I note, of course, that our bills will still be more than £100 more than in any other part of the United Kingdom. Will the Minister say a little more about infrastructure? The thing that puzzles many members of the public is that we live in a wet, temperate climate with lots of rainfall, and yet we constantly talk about having droughts. What more can the Government do to increase the capacity of reservoirs and other infrastructure to avoid that happening?

[Richard Benyon]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his words. Of course, he is right. We want to encourage water companies to continue to invest. A key element of the White Paper is to send a very clear message to the investor community that we value the nearly £100 billion of investment in our infrastructure over the past 22 years and want to see more of it in future. There have been two intentions in that direction: first, not to spook investors by giving the wrong indications about how we want to proceed on competition; and secondly, to say to the investor community, “This is a place of safety and security where you can invest for the long term.” We will still require greater infrastructure and elements of construction that will make our economy and our environment more resilient to the kinds of weather changes that are happening.