Water (Special Measures) Bill [HL]

Earl Russell Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 20th November 2024 Lords Chamber

I conclude simply by saying that it is not only in the sewers that the waters are mixed. My home in Devon, a very old house, was flooded twice eight years apart, with three feet of water through the ground floor of a house that was originally built in the 1700s. Very old houses, often without cavity walls, do not like soaking up all that water. When the rain comes down, you leave your home that day and do not come back for six months. When that happens once, it is bad enough, but, like me, many people around the country will know the experience when the capacity is not sufficient. Nothing brings a community together more than knowing that, when you are wading around in three feet of water on your ground floor, all the sewage from your neighbours is mixed in and floating around your furniture.

[Earl Russell (LD)]

My Lords, I will briefly speak to this group of two amendments on the implementation of Schedule 3 to the Flood and Water Management Act 2010 to promote sustainable urban drainage systems, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh. Amendment 3 seeks to include the standards issued under that schedule in the guidance produced by Ofwat in relation to performance pay. Amendment 43 requires the Secretary of State to lay a report on the effect of the Bill on the implementation of Schedule 3 to that Act within six months of the passing of the Bill before us. I will speak to both amendments together, as, in the main, they are about the same issue: the implementation of Schedule 3.

We on these Benches are broadly in support of the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, and we welcome her continued commitment to this particular area of policy. Of course, if we could roll back the clock and start again, we would all ensure that all housing had sustainable drainage designed in and built as standard. That option is obviously not available to us, but these amendments seek to ensure that all housing developments are built with sustainable drainage methods going forward.

We should all use grey water to flush our toilets and water our gardens, and, as a society, we need to make sure that surface water and rainwater are collected, stored and used, so that they do not mix with the foul water from toilets and overflows and overfill our antiquated sewerage systems.

In the face of climate change and even more extreme forms of weather, we need to do more to reduce the use of water and to slow any unessential abstraction of it from our rivers and streams. Planning authorities should not grant new housing planning permission unless proper systems are in place to reuse rainwater, separate it from the foul water and build attenuation ponds to collect surplus rainwater. There are two ends to this problem, and it seems like 99% of what we do is dealing with the bad end rather than with the preventive stuff at the other end. Of course, nature solutions are one option for dealing with these issues. Is anything in the Minister’s Amendment 42 on nature-based solutions helpful to the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, and her amendment? Perhaps there is nothing, but perhaps there are some connections between the two.

Do the Government still intend to push on in the new year on a consultation on how we could revise these regulations, with the aim of increasing water reuse?

As this is the only contribution I will make to this debate, I will take a moment to thank the Minister and her team for the constructive way she has engaged with all of us across the House on the Bill, and for bringing forward many government amendments that have sought to address concerns raised across the Chamber.

[Baroness Altmann (Non-Afl)]

I apologise to the House for not having been able to participate in previous stages. I will briefly support the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, and these amendments. How come the Government, when in opposition, supported introducing mandatory sustainable drains in major new developments but now seem not to wish to do so? If no drains, soakaways or culverts are constructed to take the excess, flood-water will go into combined sewers, potentially then bubbling up and leaving sewage in housing developments. This causes a health hazard by flooding homes with sewage.

The amendment asks simply for a report on how developers have implemented Schedule 3 to the Flood and Water Management Act 2010. There was cross-party support for that in this House, and I hope the Minister can reassure us or find a way to meet the concern of the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh.