Water Quality: Sewage Discharge
Hywel Williams Excerpts(1 year, 7 months ago)
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Chris Evans (Islwyn) (Lab/Co-op)
In September 2021, I stood in this place and called for an investigation into the activities of Dŵr Cymru Welsh Water. I asked for Ofwat and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to investigate its practices. I did this because it has responsibility for parts of the Wirral, Cheshire, Gloucestershire and Herefordshire. My request was based on an appalling record that has seen communities having their water cut off for days and their rivers being polluted with sewage. I am sad to report not only that these calls have been met with a deafening silence but that things have got worse. The Rivers Garw, Tawe, Teifi, Usk and Taff and even the River Wye are six of the most polluted rivers in UK. What they all have in common is that they are the responsibility of Dŵr Cymru Welsh Water. Last month, research found that raw sewage was discharged in Islwyn for more than 9,179 hours in 1,850 sewage dumping events. Natural Resources Wales has said that there will be no salmon in Welsh rivers within 20 years.
What is Dŵr Cymru’s response to this record of shame? It is to reward its chief executive, Peter Perry, with a bonus of £232,000, on top of his basic salary of £332,000. This is a company serving some of the most deprived and isolated communities in the country. When I wrote to him to query his pay, he was proud to tell me that he had worked his way up from being an apprentice. He said:
“My pay is not determined by me. It is not influenced by me.”
He went on to claim that he was pretty much the lowest paid of his peers in England and Wales. Try telling that to the customers who are struggling to pay the second highest bills in the country. Just over the border, Severn Trent Water has some of the lowest bills. The worst thing is that it is impossible to switch suppliers. Mr Perry is not an isolated case. In 2020-21, three executive directors were paid bonuses of £931,000. At the same time, raw sewage was dumped into Welsh rivers 100,000 times. It all adds up to the same thing: Dŵr Cymru Welsh Water is profiting from pollution.
Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)
Can the hon. Gentleman explain to the House why the recourse that we are expecting from the Labour Welsh Government on storm overflows is so late?
Chris Evans
I think the hon. Gentleman will have to refer that question to the Welsh Government, but I thank him for that little bit of mischief and for the extra minute he has just given me.
It is my sincere hope that, if this motion passes, we will see the end of these unwarranted, unfair bonuses while imposing uncapped fines on the companies that are polluting our beautiful rivers. For me, this goes much deeper than simple profiteering. I grew up along the River Taff, and as I looked into the river, I would see the colours of the rainbow. To my young mind, it seemed that rainbows lived in the river. But they were not rainbows; they were the thick film of oil polluting our rivers. That was over 30 years ago. Since then, our Welsh valleys have become green and beautiful, with our newly emerging tourism industry. It is not uncommon to see people fishing, kayaking and wild swimming, but all those activities are at risk. It is amazing, when we have spent so long cleaning up our rivers, that all that work is being undone by the work of one company.
Although I have to hand it to Dŵr Cymru Welsh Water: it is good at crisis communications. According to the chief executive, in the past year the company has spent over £800,000 on advertising and public affairs. When I spoke out about this 18 months ago, the public affairs officer sent an email defending the company’s practices within minutes of me sitting down. It is certainly busy sending endless emails to politicians.
Cost of Living and Food Insecurity
Hywel Williams Excerpts(2 years, 9 months ago)
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Jim McMahon
Absolutely. We all welcome the fact that we bring in produce from all over the world, as it gives variety and helps maintain consumer price. But it is really important that we do not undermine British produce in that process, and that we understand the importance of seasonality and of food security. If we allow food production here in the UK to be eroded and diminished, the time will come when we cannot feed our own population. That will be the real risk. The Government are watching this now and are allowing wealthy landowners on big estates to get rid of tenant farmers in favour of rewilding, and the Government are paying them for that. It is outrageous.
Jim McMahon
I am going to make some progress for a moment and then I will take the intervention, depending on the time. Food processors and farmers face steeply rising energy, fuel, carbon dioxide, fertiliser and other costs. Because of the Government’s failure to plan, our food supply chains are missing crop pickers, meat factory workers and lorry drivers. In addition, crops are wasting in the fields and there are gaps on supermarket shelves. Immorally, we have seen the cull of 35,000 pigs because the butchers were not available to send them to our supermarkets.
But the Government are not just standing by; they are actively making matters worse. Only yesterday, the Government had to issue another notice, warning of devastation in the pig industry caused, in part, by labour shortages. What an absolute waste. It is immoral to see people go hungry in this country while food is wasted. What is more, whether it is the Prime Minister, the Chancellor or the Governor of the Bank of England, every decision and every action must pass this simple test: does it make life better for working people, or does it continue to put more and more pressure on living standards?
Jim McMahon
Like my hon. Friend and neighbour, I think the work that our volunteers do at Oldham Foodbank reflects the work done in food banks up and down this country. They are the very best of us. They make sure that people do not go hungry, but they rely on the charity of our neighbours, and if our neighbours are struggling to put food in their own cupboards, that will have an impact on what they are able to donate to the local food bank. That is the reality, but where is the Government’s plan for that? How are we going to tackle the cost of living crisis and ensure that the safety net is in place? We just do not see it. That is a real issue that we need to address.
Hywel Williams
Will the hon. Gentleman congratulate the Welsh Labour Government and Plaid Cymru on coming to a historic 46-point agreement for the next three years, which includes such matters as free school meals for primary school children? Will he also commend the fact that the agreement stiffens Labour’s resolve to turn its fine words for many years into real action now?
Jim McMahon
This is my point—words into action is important in politics. People are so fed up with politicians saying one thing and doing another, and making promises that are not kept, that when they see a Government in power who do exactly what they say they are going to do—on free school meals, the natural environment and those issues that matter—people begin to rebuild trust in politics. I think we have seen that during the pandemic and how people viewed the Welsh Labour Government in power and making that real difference.
To conclude, Labour has a five-point plan to tackle Britain’s obesity crisis: restrictions on junk food advertising; promoting healthy food choices in supermarkets; clearer calorie and nutritional information; a ban on the sale of energy drinks to our children; and public health weight management programmes to support people to live healthier lives. But we want to go even further and to realise real food justice. Let us compare that with the Government. More than six months on, the Secretary of State is incapable of agreeing his food White Paper.
Labour is committed to fixing Britain’s broken food system. Fundamentally, we should live in a country where working people earn enough through their work to put food on the table. In short, that means putting food justice at the heart of Labour’s contract to deliver security, prosperity and respect for the British people. After 11 years, the Government stand on a shameful record of high taxes, low growth and rocketing bills. It is clear that they have run out of ideas, and the British people have run out of patience.
Peter Grant
Is it not remarkable how—in this great global superpower, this global leader of the free world, this super global economy—every time that anything goes wrong it is global’s fault? “It was not me. A big global done it and ran away.”
I did see one figure at the weekend—that the price of energy in France is going up by about 4%. Here it is going up by 10 times that, even more than 10 times that for many people. Going back to the hon. Gentleman, I am only quoting figures from the Government’s own Office for Budget Responsibility. If the Government do not trust the OBR, perhaps it is because the number of people trusted by the Government is as few as those who trust the Government.
Let us not forget what promises were made before the Brexit referendum—I know that some people want to say that that is all water under the bridge and that we can forget about it. The present Prime Minister told us in 2016 that an upside of Brexit would be the freedom to scrap the unfair VAT on fuels. Now he says that removing VAT would be a “blunt instrument” that would not direct help towards those in most dire need. The Leader of the House, who I gather has just been promoted to the Cabinet, promised us in 2016 that the price of food would go down if we left the European Union. What has happened to those promises now, and where are the people who made them? Why are they not here to explain themselves to us and more importantly to our constituents?
Hywel Williams
Earlier the right hon. Member for Wokingham (John Redwood) seemed at least to imply that the policy after Brexit was self-sufficiency in home-produced foods, whereas I had thought that, bestriding the world stage, we would import whatever we needed.
Peter Grant
Again, the hon. Member has got it absolutely spot on. Tory Back Benchers have been given quotes to read out by their Whips, and they routinely read them out regardless of whether they bear any relation to reality or whether they completely cut the feet from the argument presented in an earlier quote. They sometimes forget, especially these days, that what the Whips tell them to say today might well contradict what they told them to say yesterday, because the truth may have had to change.
Labour is absolutely right to condemn the record of this Tory Government, but Scotland will not forget that in previous incarnations the Labour party has played its part in creating this crisis. I know that it will not make comfortable listening for Labour Members to be reminded of that. One of the reasons we have been worse hit than a lot of other European countries is that even before the pandemic we were already one of the most unequal societies in Europe. The hon. Member for Oldham West and Royton mentioned that in his speech, but previous Labour Governments did nothing to address it. The Blair-Brown Government managed to preside over an increase in inequalities in Fife, Gordon Brown’s home county, during a period of economic growth.
Although I have no doubt that Labour in Scotland will demand that the SNP Scottish Government fix the whole problem, Labour has repeatedly voted against giving Scotland the powers to allow us to do just that. Employment law, minimum wage legislation, banning exploitative zero-hours contracts, banning fire and rehire, and the proper provision of sick pay could all have been put into the Scotland Act in 2015. Labour voted to keep all that within the hands of the Tories. Energy; the energy price cap; discriminatory charges for access to the national grid for Scottish producers; a decades-long obsession with nuclear power, whose true costs the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy admitted to the Public Accounts Committee yesterday we still do not even know—Labour’s policy on all these has been almost identical to the Tories’. Labour’s policy has been that Scotland should trust this Government on all of them.
Pensions—reserved to Westminster; income-related benefits—almost entirely reserved to Westminster; the national insurance increase, which everybody in this House opposes—reserved to Westminster. In fact, on pensions, during my time as an MP we have seen this British Government betray their promises to millions of WASPI women, betray their promises on the pensions triple lock and free TV licences, and underpay more than £1 billion in pensions to over 130,000 pensioners. Last year they also failed to pay tens of thousands of pensioners their pensions at all after they had reached state pension age.
It is quite clear that we cannot trust this Government with pensions, any more than we can trust them to look after anyone else living on a low income, but Scotland will never forget who did a tour of pensioners clubs in 2014 and told the people of Scotland: “Your pensions will be safe under a British Government.” My message to Gordon Brown is this: our pensions will never be safe under any British Government. If he thinks that the people of Scotland will be fooled by the same myth next time, as they were in 2014, he has another think coming.
Although we will support the motion if it is put to a vote, and although the recent crisis has been made infinitely worse by the British Conservative party, we will not allow the Scottish Labour party, or the UK Labour party, to forget that the reason why Scotland is still part of this mess is the unholy coalition that Labour chose to enter into with the Conservative party at the last independence referendum. I urge Labour Members to consider very seriously indeed whether it is in the interests of their voters in Scotland or the rest of the UK for them to form a similar coalition with the Tories at the next independence referendum.
Royal Assent
Cost of Living and Food Insecurity
Hywel Williams Excerpts(2 years, 9 months ago)
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Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)
Wales has the highest poverty rates of the four parts of the state, with almost one in four people living in poverty. Worse still, Wales has the worst child poverty rates, with 31% of our children living in poverty. My party is determined to solve the crisis and to end that gross injustice through its work in the Senedd and at local level.
To give one example of our efforts, under the recent three-year agreement with the Welsh Government that I referred to in an intervention on the hon. Member for Oldham West and Royton (Jim McMahon), school meals will be free for all primary school children; they will be phased in from September. That is a substantial step forward. It has been an ambition of my party and the Labour party in Wales for many years. Indeed, it has been long-promised by Labour. I am glad that Plaid has made sure that we have at last acted on those fine words.
More generally, families across Wales have been failed by the Westminster welfare system, inadequate as it is in meeting the cost of living crisis. Universal credit is the main tool of support for a third of Welsh families but it is just insufficient. Nearly a third of Welsh adults in poverty are actually in work. I agree that getting into work is a good way to get out of poverty, as Conservative Members have already noted—I have no argument with that—but when wages are so low, the effect is lessened to say the least. Universal credit is just not good enough.
Margaret Ferrier
Citizens Advice Scotland saw a 20% increase in sanctions-related advice from March to December last year compared with the same period in 2020. The Department for Work and Pensions’ stats show that the number of people sanctioned while looking for work increased fivefold in August compared with June. Does the hon. Member agree that imposing further sanctions on those looking for work will only compound financial hardship unnecessarily?
Hywel Williams
I thank the hon. Lady for that point. The sanctions regime has increased misery for many people over many years, and I wish it were not applied as sternly and as regressively as it is. We need another way forward.
One of the things I most regret—I am sure many hon. Members regret it, too—is the Chancellor’s cruel £20 cut to universal credit. Forty-three per cent. of households across the UK in receipt of universal credit are food insecure, and it is worsening. In Wales alone, the Trussell Trust distributed 145,000 emergency food parcels in 2020-21—that is the number of emergency food parcels, not the total figure, which gives an impression of the scale of the crisis people face—which is 88% up on the level at the height of austerity five or 10 years ago. It is now much worse.
On a local level, I draw attention to the efforts of my constituents in Caernarfon. The Porthi Pawb scheme, which means “feeding everyone,” has distributed hot meals throughout the Caernarfon area for many months but, of course, it is not enough, despite its great efforts. I will burden the House with another example. Plaid Cymru has a very successful food share scheme in Bangor. It opened its doors at 10 o’clock on Sunday, and it was cleared out almost immediately, such is the scale of the demand.
Universal credit and, in many cases, employment are simply not paying enough to keep people out of poverty or to put food on the table. Poverty and its consequences for food security are, as has been said many times, an inevitable, direct and foreseen effect of Government policy. Where the benefits system is, to a degree, devolved, as it is in Scotland, the national Government can act for the good of all the people. For us in Plaid Cymru, and for Wales, having parity with Scotland and Northern Ireland on welfare powers is the obvious next step towards defeating and, indeed, eradicating poverty from our country—that and a proper allocation of money from Westminster to support this laudable objective.
In the meantime, I urge the Government to restore the £20 universal credit uplift immediately, to end the two-child limit and to increase local housing allowance back to the 30th percentile of market rates. Labour in Wales does, and indeed should, support Plaid Cymru’s proposal for rent controls to stop the spike in rents in Wales. Many more measures could be taken. Such measures, partial as they are, would boost hard-pressed families’ purchasing power, boost local economies and help to eradicate poverty and the curse of food insecurity from our country.
UK’s Withdrawal from the European Union
Hywel Williams Excerpts(5 years, 8 months ago)
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Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)
I think that I have heard only one Member utter that profoundly silly slogan, “No deal, no problem”, although I did notice some rather prosperous-looking people outside the Palace this afternoon brandishing posters to that effect. The rest of us, even the most sanguine adherents to no deal, concede that there would be some economic pain—“in the short term”, some say. I would say that there would be no pain for the comfortably set up. It is the squeezed majority who would feel the pain, and no deal would be particularly damaging to Wales. My party will vote tonight to take no deal off the table, and, in our opinion, it would be best to do so permanently.
Amendment (c), which stands in my name and those of my hon. Friends, seeks to extend article 50, and it seeks a referendum.
I want to refer to some of the problems we foresee for my country if we follow the no-deal course. It would of course endanger public services and put people’s health at risk. According to Welsh Government analysis a no-deal Brexit would wipe £5 billion off the Welsh economy, meaning fewer jobs and lower wages. Some 60% of Wales’s exports go to the EU; in that respect, we stand out among the countries of these islands in that we have an exporting economy.
With the economy in decline under no deal, public services would be endangered in Wales. The number of EEA nationals in the social care workforce in Wales has grown by over 50% since 2011; without a deal, EU citizens’ rights to work here will be in question, at best, putting further unwarranted pressure on the NHS and the social care sector.
On health, people in the UK rely heavily on medicines imported from the EU; for instance 99% of the insulin used in the UK is imported, largely from the EU. The British Medical Association has estimated that no deal could lead to delays of between 12 and 24 months for life-saving drugs.
One concern that I have raised in the House—I did so last week—is the effect on agriculture. NFU Cymru president John Davies said this afternoon:
“There can be no doubt that a ‘no deal Brexit’ would be incredibly damaging to the Welsh agricultural sector and that eventuality should be avoided at all costs.”
In that respect, he agrees entirely with Glyn Roberts, president of the Farmers Union of Wales. We have two farming unions in Wales, and on this they agree.
The Secretary of State for Wales puts great store by saying he is the voice of Wales in Westminster, and he has the opportunity tonight, given that there is apparently a free vote, to stop playing games and come out strongly against the calamity of no deal.
Water Bill
Hywel Williams Excerpts(10 years, 10 months ago)
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Mr Speaker
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
New clause 2—Retail exit—
‘(1) The Secretary of State may by regulations make provision about the transfer of an undertaker’s assets and liabilities associated with its non-household retail business into a separate company.
(2) Regulations under this section are to be made by statutory instrument.
(3) Regulations under subsection (1) may, in particular, make provision for any such transfer to be subject to—
(a) approval by the Secretary of State;
(b) any such safeguards as may be specified in the regulations;
(c) the transferee company holding a licence containing a retail authorisation pursuant to section 17A of the Water Industry Act 1991;
(d) the provision of any information or other such assistance from the relevant undertaker as may be required by the Secretary of State for the purposes of approving the transfer.’.
New clause 11—Duties of undertakers to furnish the Secretary of State with information: annual review—
‘(1) Section 202 of the Water Industry Act 1991 (duties to undertakers to furnish the Secretary of State with information) is amended as follows.
(2) After subsection (1A) there is inserted—
“(1B) Any company with a duty under subsections (1) and (1A) must furnish the Secretary of State and the Authority with an annual review which provides information about—
(a) their performance;
(b) the total amount of investment;
(c) their taxation structure;
(d) their corporate structure; and
(e) the total amount of dividends paid to shareholders.
(1C) Information under subsection (1B) must be provided prior to the publication of the annual statement of the Secretary of State under section 2A.”.’.
New clause 12—Oversight of charges—
‘In section 2 of the Water Industry Act 1991 (general duties with respect of the water industry), after subsection (2C) there is inserted—
“(2CA) For the purposes of subsection (2A)(a) above the Secretary of State or, as the case may be, the Authority shall have regard to the rates of charges to—
(a) household premises; and
(b) non-household premises.”.’.
New clause 14—Privatisation of water supply: review—
‘(1) Chapter 1 of this Act shall not come into force until the Secretary of State has laid before Parliament a report on the performance of the water companies since the privatisation of the arrangements for water supply came into force under the Water Act 1989, the Water Industry Act 1991 and the Water Consolidation (Consequential Provisions) Act 1991.
(2) A report under subsection (1) must in particular review—
(a) the cost of water to the consumer,
(b) the number of disconnections of water supply,
(c) the purity of the water supplied and the number and consequences of water pollution incidences attributable to the operation of the water companies,
(d) the incidences of leakages, low pressure and disruptions to water supply,
(e) the levels of investment in the water supply infrastructure by the water companies,
(f) the profits made and dividends paid to shareholders by the water companies,
(g) the levels of management remuneration of the water companies,
(h) the levels of taxation paid by the water companies, and
(i) the adherence of the water companies in their operations in the UK and internationally to the national legislation and international conventions and treaties on the protection of the environment, human rights and wages and employment conditions.’.
Government amendments 13 to 22 and 59.
Amendment 12, page 124, line 1, in clause 80, at end insert ‘(h) section [Retail exit].’.
Government new schedule 1—‘Orders under section 77: further provision.
Government amendments 23 to 28, 60, 29 to 46, 61 to 64, 47 to 50, 52, 53, 65 to 87 and 54.
Hywel Williams
As is often remarked, Wales is the land of mountains and valleys, and of lakes and rivers. It is therefore very appropriate that I, as a Welsh Member, speak on the Water Bill.
Water and lakes have had a central part in Welsh culture for many centuries. We witnessed astonishing discoveries some decades ago at Llyn Cerrig Bach, the lake on Ynys Môn, of metal offerings to the gods from 2,000 years ago, including some gruesome slave chains.
There is the story of Llyn y Fan Fach. The poor farm boy wins the love of the maiden of the lake. By intrigue, they marry and prosper. He strikes her inadvertently three times, and on the third blow she returns to the lake with all their worldly wealth. There are many other such stories.
Our lakes have inspired poets—too many to quote. One very short extract, which I will translate, will suffice. Gwilym Cowlyd, in his long poem to the mountains of Wales sings thus:
“Y llynnau gywyrddion llonnydd - a gysgant
Mewn gw as gawd ofynydd
A thynn heulwen ysblennydd
Ar len y dwr lun y dydd”.
That translates as: the still green lakes sleep in a waistcoat of mountain, and splendid sunlight draws on the sheet of the water the picture of the day.
Our lakes and rivers inspired Welsh artists such as Richard Wilson, who is sometimes called the father of “English”—sic—landscape painting. His two substantial paintings of Afon Dyfrdwy, the River Dee, can be seen in the National Gallery. His defining painting of Llyn-y-Cau on Cader Idris can be seen at Tate Britain.
So far, so uncontroversial. That fits into the usual Wales box—it is nothing to disturb Front Benchers on either side of the House—and is the conventional picture of our country as a place of extreme natural beauty, and of a long-lived, varied and inspiring culture, but water has also been an emotive, emblematic and defining political matter in Wales for many decades. Let no one in the Chamber doubt or underestimate the power and significance of the water issue in Wales.
I referred in Committee to the controversy and conflict in the 1950s and 1960s over the drowning of Welsh valleys to supply English conurbations against the will of the people of Wales. That was demonstrated in this very House of Commons, when all but one of Wales’s MPs voted against the removal of the people of the village of Capel Celyn and the drowning of their valley to supply the burgeoning and thirsty industrial development of Merseyside.
At the time, the developers saw that as the entirely reasonable harnessing of readily available natural resources for much needed development. They wondered what all the fuss was about. Many Welsh people saw it as straightforward expropriation, akin to the highland clearances. Chillingly, the drowning of Welsh valleys led to the first sustained campaign of bombing in Wales, which, in a further development, led tragically to the injury of an innocent schoolboy, and to the deaths of two of the bombers and the jailing of some of the key perpetrators. Some hon. Members will be familiar with the pictures taken by Geoff Charles, the photo-journalist, of the 1956 demonstration in Liverpool. The people of Capel Celyn marched through the streets of the city to the council buildings, only to find the doors barred against them. Their banners, carried through a city still bearing the many scars of aerial bombardment, said: “Your homes are safe. Save ours. Do not drown our homes.”
One of the leaders of that march in 1956 was Gwynfor Evans, the president of Plaid Cymru, who in 1966 was elected as the MP for Carmarthen. He was the first Plaid Cymru MP, a political earthquake that still reverberates today. Let no one here today doubt or underestimate the power of the water issue in Wales. To borrow RS Thomas’s line, rather than
“Worrying the carcass of an old song”,
let us look at the situation facing us today.
Dwr Cymru Welsh Water is the provider for most of Wales and for parts of England. Dee Valley Water supplies part of north-east Wales and part of the north-west of England. Severn Trent Water supplies mid-Wales and benefits from its water resources. Indeed, it has a 99-year contract with Welsh Water, dating most recently from 1984, to supply up to 360 megalitres per day of non-potable water. That contract ends in 2073.
This arrangement has its roots in the Birmingham Corporation Water Act 1892. It might appear to some as reasonable and practical at the height of municipal power at the end of the 19th century or when water was in public ownership. Indeed, it was the pattern adopted on privatisation and it continues today. To others, it is nothing less than a clear injustice, with a private sector organisation from another country benefiting from a substantial part of what should be a valuable public resource for Wales.
The water industry in Wales is different from the industry in England and in Scotland. It is run on a non-profit distributing basis. Any profits are channelled into lower prices or investment in the service. This has led to below-inflation price rises for the past three years, with a promise of similar for the future; to a sustained lowering of the gearing of the organisation in an industry where gearing is notoriously high; and to a substantial and sustained investment programme.
To get to the nub of the matter before us in new clause 1, the current arrangements are that the National Assembly for Wales has responsibility for water in Wales, save for that water which flows from mid-Wales to England. New clause 1 provides that the National Assembly for Wales shall have legislative competence for water up to the geographical boundary with England—nothing more and nothing less. It is a reasonable aspiration for any legislature to have legislative competence for important resources within its territory, and it is reasonable that the current arrangements should be changed.
Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
I am listening to the hon. Gentleman’s speech with great interest. When the water industry was established, the boundaries were set on the basis of natural watersheds, which, unfortunately, do not coincide with the boundary between Wales and England. Would the new clause not cause unnecessary and potentially expensive administrative complexity which would benefit neither Dwr Cymru customers nor those in England?
Hywel Williams
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. He anticipates my next points, though he is welcome to intervene again should he still be unsatisfied.
We are not in a static, pre-privatisation and pre-devolution situation. Things have moved on, not least in respect of the current status of the NAW as a legislature following the most recent Act—I note that some hon. Members still call it a Welsh Administration, but that is another matter—and there is the prospect of further change as a result of the Silk commission’s reports. Change is central to the relationship between England and Wales, and has been so at least since the establishment of the Welsh Office in 1964. The pace picked up enormously since 1997 and 1999, with the establishment of the Welsh Assembly. The then Labour Secretary of State for Wales said famously that devolution is a “process, not an event”. That is a truism, whatever the current Labour First Minister in Cardiff might wish for as a constitutional settlement, so that it will “all just go away” and he can continue on his unambitious meander.
Plaid Cymru tabled amendments to Labour’s Government of Wales Bill in 2005-06 that would have had a similar effect to new clause 1, but the then Labour Government rejected them. They retained what, as a shorthand, I call the “London veto on Welsh water”. Their attitude was in contrast to that of the then hon. Member for Suffolk Coastal and former Environment Minister, John Selwyn Gummer, who is now in another place. In response to my right hon. Friend the Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Mr Llwyd), he said:
“Under the clause, a Secretary of State, by diktat, would be able to say that a Measure that has a passing or glancing effect on some matter of importance—sufficiently important for the Assembly to feel that a Measure is needed—should be stopped because he has ‘reasonable grounds to believe’ that it would have an ‘adverse effect’. It is difficult to imagine that a Secretary of State would not be able to stop anything that he did not like. The condition of having ‘reasonable grounds’ does not help, so vague is the wording used in the following paragraphs.”
It was not just the Plaid Cymru MP who was sceptical about the Labour Government’s attitude. John Selwyn Gummer went on to say:
“I agree with the hon. Member for Meirionnydd Nant Conwy.”
That was his constituency at the time.
“Either we trust the Welsh people or we do not. It is extremely difficult for me to accept that the Welsh people have to be singled out and measures taken to ensure that, where water is concerned, they should not in any way or in any circumstances be able to do anything that might upset the plans of English Ministers.”—[Official Report, 24 January 2006; Vol. 441, c. 1359.]
Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (PC)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on making a powerful case for the full devolution of Welsh water resources. Is it not the case that were his new clause successful, the people of Wales would be in full control over their entire water portfolio and that those who abstain or oppose his new clause when we divide will essentially be saying that large parts of Welsh water resources should be under the control of the British state?
Hywel Williams
My hon. Friend makes a telling point that I shall refer to later: there is no centre ground on this matter. Either the Assembly controls Welsh resources or the Government here in London do so. It is a question of whether the Welsh people have self-determination on this matter or whether there is a veto from London. I know which option he favours—it is the same one I favour.
Jonathan Evans (Cardiff North) (Con)
The hon. Gentleman rightly referred to the Capel Celyn situation—I remember it from many years ago when I first entered politics—and rightly said that across the political spectrum there was universal opposition in Wales to the drowning of valleys. Today, however, he should help the House. What is the mood in Wales today? He obviously feels that this is yet another step in devolution, but there is no great appetite for it elsewhere in Wales.
Hywel Williams
That is an interesting point. At every turn, when further devolution is proposed, right hon. and hon. Members of all parties always say that there is no appetite for it, and they point to polls allegedly showing no appetite for further change, but subsequent polls always show that the Welsh people support further devolution. They support devolution that goes further than the Government’s proposals. They supported further devolution before and after the Government of Wales Act. The hon. Gentleman has his own opinion and I have mine, but I think I have my ear closer to the ground of Welsh people’s opinion.
Jonathan Edwards
The hon. Member for Cardiff North (Jonathan Evans) might have noticed over the summer that the Silk commission undertook the most detailed study of devolutionary attitudes in Wales since the Senedd was created in 1999, and it clearly indicated overwhelming support for the people of Wales getting control over their natural resources, be that wind, water, shale gas or whatever. The people of Wales want those resources in the ownership of the Welsh people, and the guardian of the Welsh people is our own sovereign Parliament in Cardiff.
Hywel Williams
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that further point, however disappointed we both might be with the guardianship of the current Government in Cardiff.
Eight years after the Government of Wales Act, circumstances on the ground are much more pressing. For example—a small example, perhaps—the fracking industry, if it proceeds, will be a heavy user of water, and as the Minister of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, the right hon. Member for Sevenoaks (Michael Fallon), has confirmed:
“Water sourced from local water companies for projects in England could potentially originate from Wales.”—[Official Report, 18 December 2013; Vol. 572, c. 640W.]
At the very least, there is the threat of history repeating itself—of industrial development and growth in wealth in England being based on resources from Wales, of the benefits to Wales being limited and of the legislative control of the Welsh Government being limited to part of the country only and being subject to a London veto. I believe that that is insupportable. It would be seen by many as Capel Celyn and Tryweryn once again.
Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)
Does the hon. Gentleman’s new clause imply that the Welsh Assembly could stop water coming into England if it wished to do so?
Hywel Williams
The hon. Gentleman anticipates my next point: it is a matter for the Welsh Government to decide what they would do; they have the right to decide for themselves. What I am against is this place’s veto and this place telling the Welsh Government what they would or should do. I think that in a reasonable world—and I think the Welsh Government are very reasonable people—they would be highly unlikely to turn the off taps, but they might be able to reverse what I described earlier as a patent injustice. What might the Welsh Government do with legislative competence up to the border? That is a matter for them.
This Water Bill introduces competition into water provision. Water companies in Wales are wholly or mainly exempt, but that still leaves open to competition a huge area of Wales owned by Severn Trent, which is expressly against the wishes of the Welsh Government—at least for that part of Wales for which they have the power to decide.
Mr Hollobone
I am following the hon. Gentleman’s speech with genuine interest. If water is abstracted from the area within Dwr Cymru’s competence and Dwr Cymru receives proceeds from that abstraction, could that money be used to keep water bills down for the vast majority of Welsh Water customers?
Hywel Williams
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. As I said, the agreement with Severn Trent predates privatisation, and the amount of money that changes hands is, I think, nominal. I have to confess that I do not know precisely how much it is, but my hon. Friend the Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr (Jonathan Edwards) has referred in the past to a very small amount of money changing hands, which has only a marginal effect on what Welsh Water is able to achieve. I would also point out that what it achieves by being a not-for-distributive-profits organisation is enormously greater than any money it might get from Severn Trent.
Mr Hollobone
The hon. Gentleman mentioned fracking, which could well be a growth business in Wales as in England. From what he says, it seems to me that any water abstracted from Dwr Cymru’s area could mean a negotiation between Dwr Cymru and the users of that water. If it wanted to do so, Dwr Cymru could charge quite a high price for what is a very valuable resource.
Hywel Williams
The hon. Gentleman makes a fine point. That would be the case if, say, Northumbrian Water sells to Yorkshire Water: there are different prices in different parts of the country, depending on the economics of the transport of water. The moot point about water is that it is in some ways a transport business rather than a water supply business, because water is extremely heavy and difficult to move about. It would be a matter of negotiation. As I pointed out, however, Welsh Water does not have control of some of the more significant water resources in Wales—the water sources in mid-Wales. Incidentally, I do not want to stray from the water industry, Madam Deputy Speaker, but fracking might take place in south Wales and possibly not in north-west Wales—the part I represent. Someone has to say that, I suppose—start at home.
Ofwat addressed the matter of realigning legislative competence in its evidence to the Silk commission. People who frighten the horses over the costs would do well to listen to what Ofwat had to say about the “potential impacts” of moving away from the “wholly or mainly” boundary—that is, the current situation. It said:
“During our evidence session I was asked about any possible impacts of moving away from the current policy boundary definition. We believe that there are likely to be some administrative costs to companies (and customers) from such a change and that there could be some incidence effects on customer bills (which could be positive or negative for different customers).”
In other words, it will impact differently, but Ofwat says:
“Generally we would expect both of these to be relatively minor.”
I do not think that there is a reason to be particularly frightened of any costs that might be involved.
Jonathan Edwards
Considering the clear position of the Labour Welsh Government, does my hon. Friend share my surprise that there is not a single Labour MP based in Wales in the Chamber today to defend that position?
Hywel Williams
Alas, I am not surprised at all by the complete lack of Labour MPs from Wales in the Chamber. They might still be celebrating, who knows?
In conclusion, if the coalition Government are unwise and refuse to accept the new clause and we are forced to press it to a Division, I expect the main Opposition party, which is also the Government party in Wales, to join us in the Lobby. After all, this is not just a Welsh test for the coalition Government. It is also a test for the Opposition in this place and for their friends in Wales of their consistency and commitment to the people of Wales. Are they serious about devolving power to Cardiff, or is this to be a case of echoing St Augustine: “Make me pure, but not yet”?
Miss Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Arfon (Hywel Williams), who moved his amendment so eloquently.
I want to speak in support of two little amendments that have been grouped under the heading “Regime of the water industry”. New clause 2 and amendment 12 have been tabled in my name and those of a number of colleagues on the Select Committee on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. We followed the proceedings in the Public Bill Committee with great interest, but chose to bide our time until the remaining stages before we entered into the legislative process, having done what I thought was a welcome piece of work in the pre-legislative scrutiny of the draft Bill.
New clause 2 specifically considers the possibility of allowing a retail exit. It would empower the Secretary of State to make provision by regulation for the transfer of an undertaker’s assets and liabilities associated with its non-household retail business into a separate company. Regulations would be made in the normal way by statutory instrument and would make provision for any transfer to be subject to the approval of the Secretary of State and such safeguards as may be specified in the regulations. Amendment 12 would amend clause 80 by inserting the relevant section on retail exit.
We considered retail exit during the pre-legislative scrutiny. Inevitably, a number of companies may not necessarily fail but will regrettably have insufficient customers to allow them to stay in the market. New clause 2 and amendment 12 would simply recognise that impact and allow companies to function in what would be considered a normal competitive market. An exit clause such as we propose would facilitate new entrants, particularly larger ones, into the water and sewerage retail markets.
We recommended in our report during the pre-legislative scrutiny that the Bill should include such provisions to enable incumbent companies to exit the retail market voluntarily. It would be helpful to hear from the Minister whether he is minded to accept new clause 2 and amendment 12. During our inquiry, both regulators—Ofwat, which covers England and Wales, and the Water Industry Commission for Scotland—said that incumbent companies and, indeed, new entrants were united in calling for the Bill to include an exit route.
During the Public Bill Committee, Opposition Members proposed a new clause to allow incumbent companies to choose whether to provide to the retail or wholesale market only, subject to approval by the Secretary of State. Regrettably, the Opposition’s new clause was defeated in a vote. New clause 2 would have a different effect from the new clause proposed by the Opposition in Committee, as it would specifically enable companies to exit the retail market by transferring their retail contracts and liabilities—that is, their retail business—to a third party where they chose to do so. That would open up the market to new entrants who hold a retail authorisation, by allowing them to acquire whole retail businesses, rather than acquiring one contract at a time. That would allow economies of scale.
John McDonnell
I agree that significant investment has been made in the infrastructure, but the problem is that since the 1990s that has declined as a proportion of the overall turnover of the industry. So the record is not glowing by any means, and the cost of that investment has been paid through significant debt burdens on those companies, which is eventually then paid for by consumers
Hywel Williams
I am sure the hon. Gentleman would agree that the level of investment would be even higher if all the profits were devoted to investment in the infrastructure, rather than being siphoned off abroad.
John McDonnell
That is one reason why I support the Welsh model of a not-for-profit company, because, as I say, I feel that the general public have been ripped off throughout this period.
Let me just finish off with my last couple of examples, because I would not want to miss them out: United Utilities was fined £75,000 for management failures that contributed to a fire in October 2013; and Severn Trent Water received a £30,000 fine for sewage pollution in September last year. The performance record of these companies is that not only do they not tackle the leakages and the real need for infrastructure investment, but they are polluting the very water they are supposed to be protecting and supplying.
John McDonnell
Former Ministers need an element of retraining, so may I say to the hon. Gentleman that he can intervene on me as often as wants, but perhaps he could be a bit briefer?
The issue is this: we are not talking about advocating a return to the previous model of nationalisation here; we are talking about the long-term future of the water industry, which is why this debate is important. My view is that privatisation and competition has not worked, but there are other models that we should explore. The Welsh model of a not-for-profit organisation ploughing the money that comes back into the infrastructure and into quality of service is the one we should now be exploring.
Hywel Williams
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that this can be clearly seen in Welsh Water’s response to the cryptosporidium outbreak in my constituency some years ago, when it managed to spend £1 million almost immediately on installing new mechanisms to get rid of the cryptosporidium and then spent £7 million on further treatment works? It responded appropriately and quickly to the outbreak.
John McDonnell
Competition and privatisation have not worked, which is why I do not think that the Bill, the main thrust of which is to introduce more competition and privatisation, represents the way forward. It provides further opportunities for exploitation. I think that we can all agree to condemn the level of profiteering that has taken pace, particularly in recent years.
I wish to put on the record what has been happening, as independent examinations have shown. Sir Ian Byatt, Britain’s top water regulator throughout the 1990s, wrote in the foreword to a report by the think-tank CentreForum that
“many companies, especially the private equity infrastructure funds, have paid out excessive dividends to their owners.”
He went on to argue for some form of dividend control. That was echoed by Jonson Cox, Ofwat’s chairman, who has called for water companies to share unintended gains with consumers, arguing that the profits and tax- reducing corporate structures were “morally questionable”. I can understand why.
Let me give some examples of the profiteering that has gone on. Northumbrian Water is owned by Cheung Kong Infrastructure Holdings, which is based in Hong Kong. Last year its operating profits were £154 million, but it paid nothing in tax. Its debt was £4 billion. Its chief executive, Heidi Mottram, received a salary, bonus and benefits worth £595,000. Yorkshire Water is owned by Citi, a US company, GIC, which is based in Singapore, Infracapital Partners and HSBC, based in the UK. Last year its operating profit was £335 million, but it paid only £100,000 in tax. Its debt was £4.7 billion. Its chief executive, Richard Flint, received a salary, bonus and benefits worth £800,000.
Anglian Water is owned by Canadian Pension Plan, Colonial First State Global Asset Management and Industry Funds Management, which is based in Australia, and 3i, which is based in the UK. Last year its operating profit was £363 million, but it paid only £1 million in tax. Its debt was £6.9 billion. Its chief executive, Peter Simpson, received a salary, bonus and benefits worth £1,024,000. Thames Water is owned by Macquaire Group, which is based in Australia, China Investment Corporation and Abu Dhabi Investment Authority. Last year its operating profit was £577 million, but it paid minus £70 million in tax, because it is receiving grants from the Government, as the right hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes) pointed out at the time in his article in the Standard on behalf of the Liberal Democrats. Its debt was £9 billion. Its chief executive, Martin Baggs, received a salary, bonus and benefits worth £845,000.
South Staffs Water is owned by Alinda Capital Partners, which is based in the US. Last year its operating profit was £16 million, but it paid only £200,000 in tax. Its debt was £488 million. Its chief executive, Elizabeth Swarbrick, received a salary, bonus and benefits worth £202,000. Sutton and East Surrey Water is owned by Sumitomo Corporation, based in Japan. Last year its operating profit was £17 million, but it paid only £1 million in tax. Its debt was £219 million. Its chief executive, Anthony Ferrar, received a salary, bonus and benefits worth £290,000. Those are obscene levels of profiteering at the expense of the consumer.
Why is the borrowing level so high? It is not because it is all going into infrastructure. It has now been exposed that some of the borrowing is being used to pay dividends to shareholders and high salaries to chief executives and board directors. That was not the intention of the Thatcher Government’s original privatisation—well, it was not the stated intention. Privatisation was meant to reduce prices, increase investment and make the industry more accountable to the wider public through shareholding. That has not been the case. It is not more accountable through shareholding, because most of the companies that now own British water are owned by overseas shareholders. It does not make it any more efficient for the consumer, because prices have gone through the roof in recent years, which people are angry about. It does not make it more accountable to the taxpayer. In fact, the taxpayer is being bled dry as a result of tax avoidance and the various scams that have been going on, which have been explored by Richard Murphy, the tax justice expert.
Corporate Watch has produced an excellent report on some of those issues. It reports that six UK water companies took high-interest loans from their owners through the Channel Islands and then converted them into euro bonds. They then lent them back to the companies and paid virtually no tax on them whatsoever. This is a tax scam for which these water companies are used as a vehicle. Corporate Watch found that the six companies it looked at—Northumbrian, Yorkshire, Anglian, Thames, South Staffs, and Sutton and East Surrey—had borrowed £3.4 billion using this method. It highlights Northumbrian Water as “the most brazen case” as it paid 11% on just over £1 billion of loans it had taken from its owner, the Cheung Kong group, a Hong Kong-based conglomerate run by the world’s ninth-richest person. No wonder he is the world’s ninth-richest person—we are making him so. This is a scandal. The Bill does not go any way near addressing this rip-off of the British consumer or tackling some of the tax evasion and tax avoidance by these companies that has gone on. People are angry about this. In recent reports in the media there has been exposure after exposure, and people expect this House to act on these matters.
Dan Rogerson
I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. As he is not always an enthusiast for what water companies do, it means all the more that he is prepared to offer those words of congratulation. It is fair for hon. Members across the House to express clearly their view that water companies should offer a fairer deal to consumers. That is what the Government want to see as well. That is why I am pleased that water companies are responding positively to the process.
Hywel Williams
The Minister talks about fair deals between water companies. Is he satisfied with the terms for the supply of water from Wales to Severn Trent, especially given that Severn Trent is apparently selling on 30 million litres of water a day to Anglian Water at commercial rates? Of course, that is happening on the back of Welsh resources.
Dan Rogerson
The hon. Gentleman hopes that his new clause would require further reports to be made to the Secretary of State. However, that information is already in the public domain. That is why supporting new clause 11 would not be helpful. I understand and respect his desire to ensure that the industry is as transparent as possible. I understand the ambition behind the new clause, but I do not share his enthusiasm for the wording that he has chosen.
The privatisation of the water industry has been a success story in terms of investment. Helpfully, the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington pointed out that I represent a constituency in the South West Water area. The coalition Government have recognised that there were a few flaws in the privatisation process, so there is now extra money to support bill payers in the south-west, who paid for the clean-up of the beaches around the south-west peninsula.
As was pointed out by my predecessor, my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Richard Benyon), there has been huge investment in infrastructure since privatisation. That is one of the key successes that we want to build on and not jeopardise. The stable regulatory framework for the water sector has enabled companies to attract more than £111 billion of low-cost investment to upgrade water and sewerage infrastructure and to improve customer service and environmental standards.
I agree that we should be putting pressure on the water sector to act as transparently and responsibly as possible. Ofwat is already doing excellent work on the issues that have been raised by hon. Members. I do not believe that duplicating the reporting requirements would help. For that reason, I believe that new clauses 11 and 14 should be resisted.
New clause 12, for which the hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife argued, would place a duty on Ofwat to have regard to the charges to household and non-household customers. That would simply duplicate Ofwat’s existing duty.
I turn to a number of technical amendments, which the hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife charitably referred to. I will move amendments 13 to 50, 52 to 54 and 60 to 87 formally at the appropriate time. They will mainly make changes to schedules 5 and 7. Schedule 7 makes consequential changes to the Water Industry Act 1991 and other primary legislation as a result of our reforms, and schedule 5 makes further changes should the Welsh Ministers decide to adopt the reforms being introduced in England. Amendment 59 and new schedule 1 will provide the Secretary of State with the power to produce transitional orders that allow us to deliver retail and upstream reform separately.
Taken together, our amendments will provide Ministers with the maximum flexibility to commence the different market reform provisions transparently and in stages, as per our commitment to stagger the implementation of our retail and upstream reforms. They will enable the current arrangements to continue without diverting attention from the immediate priority of preparing for the opening of the reformed retail market in April 2017.
Hywel Williams
We have had an interesting debate, and I was glad to hear the contributions of the Chair of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Miss McIntosh), and the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell), with whom I yet again agreed entirely. I was also glad to see the hon. Member for Newbury (Richard Benyon) taking an interest in his former beat, and to see the hon. Member for Brecon and Radnorshire (Roger Williams) in his place, although essentially in a non-speaking role.
I was disappointed by the lack of contributions from Welsh Members, and disappointed that the hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Thomas Docherty) did not make any reference to my new clause 1. Pretending it is not there does not mean it will go away.
Thomas Docherty
The hon. Gentleman should have intervened on me if he was concerned that I had not covered his new clause. I echo the point that the Minister made—the Silk commission is examining the issue and will report in the spring. [Interruption.] We think that will be the right time to consider the matter properly.
Hywel Williams
My hon. Friend the Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) asks from a sedentary position, “What do you think?” The Minister might choose to enlighten us, but possibly not—he would prefer to listen to the Silk commission.
My hon. Friend the Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr (Jonathan Edwards) made a point about legislative competences and borders. In Northern Ireland the matter is not considered problematic, because the national or state boundaries are followed; nor is it considered problematic for legislative competences to cross the border in the case of Wales. Legislative competence seems to become a problem only when proposed by Plaid Cymru. Of course, it is also proposed by the Labour Welsh Government, but they are not here to make that point. That does not seem particularly fair dealing.
The Minister said that the status quo is the status quo, and that the matter is not devolved because it is not devolved, and presumably it will not be. He gave us no indication of what the Government would eventually propose following Silk. We look forward to that with interest.
On a personal note, I missed many of the sittings of the Public Bill Committee—
Hywel Williams
The shadow Minister is very kind. I was disappointed to have missed those sittings, and I apologise to Members of the Committee. Unfortunately, it was unavoidable.
It is my pleasure to press new clause 1 to a Division.
Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.
Water Bill
Hywel Williams Excerpts(11 years ago)
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Mr Paterson
A new source of water is one that is not currently being used, so that could mean opening up old boreholes, or farmers building new reservoirs, or water companies building new reservoirs—we have not built a new reservoir in this country for over 30 years. There are all sorts of new sources of water. Around 95% of the water that lands on this country ends up in the sea. We want to manage it better before it gets there.
Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)
The Secretary of State has just referred, as he did earlier in his speech, to “this country”. Which country does he mean?
Joan Walley
Indeed. One difficulty is that we are looking at the provision of water for the whole of the United Kingdom, despite the different administrative arrangements that have been put in place by the Parliaments in the different Administrations. The way in which the money is reinvested in Wales is hugely beneficial. As I have said, we should be thinking outside the box in regard to how we incentivise the necessary investment in our water industry.
Hywel Williams
We are talking about non-distributable profit. Any profit that is made is reinvested in the system and in creating lower prices. I am not here to praise Dwr Cymru Welsh Water in particular, but its price rise next year will be 1%. Given that that is lower than inflation, it will effectively be a price cut.
Joan Walley
That just shows that there are all kinds of different ways of looking at this, and that we do not have to depend on the present traditional arrangements. The Bill should really be looking at the challenges that we face, rather than promoting business as usual.
With more than 2 million households in England and Wales being forced to spend more than 5% of their income on water, it is clear that the Government’s approach is not working. The Bill should do something about that. We need a national affordability scheme to help those struggling to pay their bills, and it should be funded by the water companies themselves. The fact that water bills are rising by 1.8% above the rate of inflation when we are seeing investor returns of 17.5% across all the companies demonstrates just how unfair the whole structure is.
Given the challenges of climate change and the likelihood of increased flooding, balancing affordability with our wider environmental commitments to mitigate and adapt to flooding will involve ever-greater calls for the right kind of investment in the water industry. This will require a cross-cutting response from the Government, and detailed policy measures that will require the Treasury, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, the Department for Education and the Department for Communities and Local Government to be equally committed to the measures coming out of DEFRA. As we approach future challenges, and the final implementation date of the water framework directive, households and businesses will need to access affordable water supplies. Key changes will be needed throughout the passage of the Bill.
The Government will need to make a step change in regulatory, social, environmental and fiscal policy, but the water companies, businesses, farmers, householders, local authorities and the regulator will also need to refocus on their long-term objectives and on delivery mechanisms if we are truly to value water as a natural resource and a vital component of everyday life.
Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)
I will certainly bear your comments in mind, Madam Deputy Speaker. It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Newbury (Richard Benyon). His beat as a Minister did not really include Wales, of course, but I came across him in the Science and Technology Committee. His sincerity and commitment were manifest in those meetings. Let me also pay tribute to the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Joan Walley) and say how much I agreed with her remarks about sustainability and fracking, which my hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) would also have endorsed had she not had to leave.
Water has a huge significance for people in Wales. Our way of looking at water must be framed by Tryweryn and the other valleys that were drowned to provide water, largely for conurbations in England. I am also aware that I am standing on the shoulders of others who came before me, such as Cynog Dafis, the Member for Ceredigion and, with due respect to my hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Pavilion, the first Green MP —although he was a Green-Plaid Cymru coalition MP.
Joan Walley
I cannot help pointing out that the former Member for Ceredigion served with great distinction on the Environmental Audit Committee.
Hywel Williams
Indeed. I was aware of that. He is a friend of mine and I think highly of him.
My party’s stance has always been that it is up to the people of Wales to decide on the sustainable use of its natural resources. As scarcity bites, the economic case for Wales exporting water is growing. If so, Wales should be compensated fairly and the benefits should go to the people of Wales.
There is a point which has not yet been made— the territorial significance for Wales of the current water companies. Labour in government, through the Government of Wales Act 2006, failed to act on that. Much of mid-Wales is served by Severn Trent Water. Part of north-east Wales is served by Dee Valley Water. As a consequence, perhaps, part of Herefordshire is served by Dwr Cymru Welsh Water. One of the aims of my party is to regularise that situation. The lines should be redrawn. That is something that I will talk about in Committee if I am fortunate enough to be appointed to it.
As for the current arrangements in Wales, to paraphrase L P Hartley, Wales is another country: they do things differently there. That is a slightly over-used phrase, but in Wales we have a different situation. We have a water company, Dwr Cymru Welsh Water, which is a third sector company, as I mentioned earlier, with a non-distributable profits model. The previous company, Hyder —or Hi-dere, as the BBC used to insist on calling it —was run on conventional commercial lines. Glas Cymru reinvests its profits in a better system and in lower prices. As I said, its current price rises are below inflation.
Roger Williams
The hon. Gentleman will know that price rises since Glas Cymru was formed in 2001 and up to the present day are below the rate of inflation. It is the long-term situation.
Hywel Williams
The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. Provision of water in Wales is a difficult matter. The geography is against us, but Glas Cymru has done a fine job.
There have been concerns about large profits in the industry, overcharging and a lack of investment, alongside high gearing and a low tax take. I read a report to that effect in the Financial Times on 27 October. Hence the need for greater competition. A water industry insider put it to me thus: some water companies are over-geared, they are over-reliant on cheap finance, which is not going to be there for ever, and they are run as cash cows. This is not a sustainable model. Dwr Cymru has the lowest gearing in the industry and, as I said, all its profits are ploughed back. Unsurprisingly, this third sector company has reported customer satisfaction levels of well over 90%.
Another way in which things are different in Wales is the Welsh Government’s stance on competition, which essentially is against it. Under the Bill, businesses and non-householder customers will be able to switch their water and sewerage suppliers, but the Bill’s provisions on competition are confined to England. I refer the House to the report by the Welsh Assembly Environment and Sustainability Committee chaired by Lord Dafydd Elis-Thomas. When questioned, 113 large-scale users—using over 50 megalitres per annum—said that a price differential of 10% to 15% would be required to tempt them to switch. By the way, that was also the stance of small and medium-sized enterprises.
A price differential of 10% to 15% is substantial, and it is significant that none of the large users that have the ability to switch in Wales have done so. Customer service is important and that is a central element of the water service that we have in Wales. Either Dwr Cymru is doing a cracking job, or switching is unlikely to hold much appeal other than, perhaps in theory, to Ministers.
Competition could be extended to Wales if the Welsh Government so wished. Dee Valley Water’s evidence to the Welsh Assembly Committee noted that competition in the non-domestic sector might be cross-subsidised by the domestic sector—that is, the public would be paying. That point was made earlier, and the answer, I think, is transparency. I understand that the Government in Cardiff do not wish competition to be extended to Wales. Can the Minister, when he winds up the debate or later in writing, clarify whether under the 2006 Act the Government in London have a veto on Welsh decisions on water? Will that continue to be the case, or is the Cardiff Government’s right to choose not to introduce competition an absolute right? I would be grateful to hear from him on that matter.
Other Members have posed the question of how we can incentivise companies to alter the way they manage their systems and water and sewerage networks to improve efficiency and to encourage the development and deployment of innovative technologies that can cut costs and lower the sector’s electricity usage and its carbon footprint. The point has not yet been made that water companies are heavy users of electricity. I am not sure whether competition and the price instrument will achieve all these aims. I hope we will able to discuss this further in Committee.
Lastly, on affordability, the question is how the bottom 1% of the population pays for its utilities. Overall, the Bill is a missed opportunity. It has no specifics on sustainability or the decarbonisation of the water sector. The point about fracking has already been made. There is no legal obligation on people to pay their bills. In other countries, there is a voucher system for vulnerable groups. The Bill is also lacking in specifics on water management. The current UK system is luxurious in that there is no separation of clean and grey water, which could be achieved in the future. That is a formidable list and I hope we will have the opportunity to address these matters in Committee.
Thomas Docherty
Oh dear me; the Minister has obviously forgotten his own position. He will still be a member of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee for a little longer, so perhaps he can set out which side of the argument he agrees with—that expressed by the Select Committee of which he is a member or that in his new role as a Minister.
The hon. Members for Arfon (Hywel Williams) and for Newbury (Richard Benyon) mentioned retail competition, and the Opposition support non-domestic competition. It has been a success in Scotland, and like the Select Committee of which the Minister is still a member, we believe that, implemented properly, it will work in England. Like the Committee, however, we think there are technical improvements that we intend to explore further in Committee.
Hywel Williams
Has the hon. Gentleman any estimate of the cost of introducing competition in Scotland, where it is already under way, or in England? How much does he reckon that it will cost?
Upland Sheep Farmers
Hywel Williams Excerpts(11 years, 7 months ago)
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Glyn Davies
I very much agree with the right hon. Gentleman, although today I will try to avoid dealing with some of the consequential commercial issues relating to the current position. What I want to address—I will come to this—is what I see as the disconnect between hill sheep farming today and what the wider general population thinks. If I can, I will keep away altogether from what might be deemed to be political issues, where there might be divisions of views.
The impact of the recent snowfall on the sheep-farming uplands remains, despite the snow having gone. It has not gone away with the snow. Today it is not about digging out sheep from under snowdrifts; it is more about collecting and disposing of the dead bodies of sheep and planning how to put businesses back together. I am probably one of few MPs—I might not be the only one—who has been out digging sheep out from under 10-foot snowdrifts. I particularly remember 1963, when the United Kingdom experienced far more snow and far colder conditions, and for much longer than this year. I was a teenager working on the family farm when the drifting snow buried hundreds of our sheep as they sheltered near walls and hedges. My father and I spent days searching under the snow for them. It was heartbreaking work. Most heartbreaking of all was having to stop at nightfall, knowing that there were still hundreds of sheep asphyxiating beneath our feet.
What was particularly devastating about the recent snowfall was that it was so late in the year. In 1963, the snow fell on Boxing day and lasted until early March, but this year it fell at the end of March, which is the traditional lambing season in the uplands. As the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Mr Llwyd) has pointed out, the sheep sector was already facing what the Prince’s Trust called a “perfect storm” of negative influences in March. I shall not go into all the details, but the upland sheep farmers were already facing severe problems, and the impact of what has happened has been devastating.
I want to make it clear why I have sought today’s debate. Initially, I had not intended to make any public comment. Agriculture in my constituency is devolved to the National Assembly for Wales. Naturally, I was in conversation with friends and members of the farming unions about what had happened, and at first I was heartened by the fact that the Welsh Government Minister had arranged to come to Montgomeryshire to meet local farmers and union leaders. However, when farmers contacted me after the meeting, I was horrified by the Minister’s approach, which had been totally unsympathetic and dismissive. Everyone was deeply upset by that.
I felt that that was unacceptable, and I discussed the matter with the Assembly Member colleague in Montgomeryshire, Russell George. Together, we set about seeking to change the tone of the debate. I posted my thoughts on my blog, “A View from Rural Wales”, which had quite an impact, and resolved to seek a debate in this House as soon as Parliament returned from the Easter recess. My Assembly colleague raised an urgent question in the Welsh Assembly. For whatever reason, the Welsh Government Minister responded with a far more sympathetic approach, and made a realistic and positive statement. I congratulate him on that. The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr Heath) also published a statement here last Thursday, and again it was realistic and positive. So the terms of the debate have changed to some extent. It is clear to me that both Parliaments, in Cardiff Bay and in Westminster, now recognise the scale of the disaster that has struck upland sheep farmers.
I should also make it clear that I am not calling for more compensation or more subsidy for sheep farmers. Some might wish to do that, but I do not want to do so today. There will be other debates about agricultural support, and in particular about how British agriculture can remain competitive with the subsidised agricultural systems across the European Union. There might be an occasion for a debate in Wales about the controversial issue of hill farming subsidies, but I do not want to deal with those matters now. My aim today is to address what seems to be a growing disconnect between the business and tradition of farming in the uplands and the rest of the population.
Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)
I am glad that we are having this debate today. What is the hon. Gentleman’s assessment of the level of support given to farmers in other parts of the UK, given that agriculture is a devolved matter? I have seen correspondence from representatives of various countryside organisations in Wales pointing out to the Minister in Cardiff that there are advantages to be had in other parts of the UK. What is the hon. Gentleman’s assessment of the situation?
Glyn Davies
I have not made such an assessment. I have seen two of the statements, but I have not looked at what has happened in Scotland or in Northern Ireland. I know that there are differences, however, and it is inevitable that they will be pointed out. At one stage, I thought that I might do that today, but I specifically decided against it because it would inevitably have led to the kind of debate that I did not want. I am probably a bit unusual in that I did not want a debate with a great deal of confrontation. Instead, I want to highlight the issue so that people can understand what has happened.
I want to say something about the sort of things that happened when the snow fell and re-formed itself into huge drifts. Yesterday, in a sort of surgery, I talked to union leaders and upland farmers at Welshpool livestock market. I spoke to one farmer who had just sent 72 dead sheep away in a lorry. He had also picked up another 72 dead sheep and they were awaiting collection. That illustrates the scale of what is happening. To make a terrible situation worse, he will have to pay several thousand pounds to have them taken away. That is not an uncommon experience.
On Sunday night, I switched the television on and watched the excellent Adam Henson covering the scale of the deaths on “Countryfile”. I caught the latter part of the debate. There was a large pile of carcases in the corner of the yard, but it was noticeable that the image was blurred to accommodate the sensitivity of the viewers. It was felt that they should not have to see all those dead sheep piled up like that. However, the vision of piles of dead sheep is not blurred for the owners of the dead sheep. For them, it is all too real. If people are to understand the impact, they need to know what is happening.
Glyn Davies
I was not going to make that point myself, and I thank the hon. Lady for making it. I am very pleased that the Welsh Government have given half a million pounds to charities that are in a position to identify and support those who are suffering from stress. They can do that better than a Government could ever do it. Although I was disappointed by the approach taken in the first three or four days, I think that the Minister’s response since then has been entirely positive, and I congratulate him on it.
The fact that animals have died under the snow is not the only issue, although that has received a lot of attention. There are also the issues of the other animals that have died, the loss of the grass that has been killed off by the snow and the consequent widespread shortage of feed.
Many people who do not understand hill farming do not understand that hill ewes will not readily take to artificial feed, as lowland breeds do. There will be heavy losses from snow fever and twin lamb disease, and as a result of animals that simply will not eat feed when their natural grass has gone. Huge numbers of animals will be dying from mineral deficiencies. The inevitable shortage of milk will result in lambs succumbing to illness and dying, too. They will be crushed into confined spaces, where there is much greater incidence of disease. Lambs will die in large numbers of joint ill and infectious scour, which can go straight through a flock. I remember when I had my whole flock in as a result of adverse weather conditions, but I had to turn them out into the snow, because disease arises when the animals are crammed into small spaces. Hill farmers are not used to that. They are geared up to lambing in April and lambing out. All of this adds to the direct losses from snow.
The Governments in Cardiff Bay and Westminster have responded with statements, both of which are positive and hugely welcome. I want to inject that positive note into this debate.
Hywel Williams
The hon. Gentleman will be familiar with the concept of cynefin—[Interruption.] My right hon. Friend the Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Mr Llwyd) tells me that the word in English is hefting. There will be difficulties and costs involved in replacing these sheep. This will not be a one-off incident; the effects will be felt for many years.
Glyn Davies
I entirely agree. I remember that when foot and mouth disease spread on to the Brecon Beacons, huge flocks were lost, and were lost for ever.
Most of the farmers I have spoken to are unsure what to do with their dead animals, of which they have large numbers. Normally, they would have them collected, at considerable cost, and taken away to be incinerated, but the National Fallen Stock Company could not reach the farms because of the snow and the farmers were told by the Welsh Assembly Minister that he was considering a derogation from the relevant EU regulation to allow farmers to bury dead animals on their farms. My understanding, however, is that that derogation is a matter for local government and that there was no requirement for farmers to wait for an announcement from the Welsh Minister. All that was needed was an agreement with the relevant local authority. That situation seems odd and I find it confusing. I hope that the Minister will be able to clarify the position.
Rural Communities
Hywel Williams Excerpts(12 years, 7 months ago)
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Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)
I will be brief, as you requested, Sir Roger.
This is a very worthy and great subject for debate, but we have not debated it often enough. Had there been time, I would have talked about a large number of issues, including fuel, taxation, transportation, post offices, broadband and much else. I will, however, confine myself to two issues that are particularly important to my constituents and, indeed, to constituents elsewhere in north Wales: health care and unfit housing.
I am glad the hon. Member for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire (Simon Hart) has raised this issue, and I warmly congratulate him on securing the debate. He has a fine record in Wales and, indeed, throughout the UK, on standing up for rural communities, and he is to be praised for that.
As I said, a couple of issues are particularly important in my constituency. The first is health care, which is very problematic. Some hon. Members might wonder why I, as a Welsh Member, am raising the issue of health, given that it is devolved. During the recent debate on health, however, sufficient attention was not given to the fact that many people in north Wales and mid-Wales access treatment on the other side of the border. I have raised the issue with Health Ministers over the past few weeks, but I am unsatisfied by their response. I have also raised it with the Secretary of State for Wales, who had a better understanding of it, but I still do not think it has been tackled properly.
The issue of health impacts on people in rural areas. Most of north Wales, and particularly north-west Wales, is rural. People from north-west Wales travel two and, sometimes, three hours just to access specialist treatment. Most of us will have had briefings on the debate, with references, for example, to an ambulance response time of just a few minutes. The reality in the area I represent is travel of two or three hours. I had a response from the Minister suggesting that we need to think of the issue as a problem of people registering with GPs just the other side of the border; but it is a great deal more than that. I ask him to bear that in mind. He will have a great many points to respond to, but I wish that the Government would take the matter more seriously. I see that the hon. Member for Ogmore (Huw Irranca-Davies) will speak for the Opposition, and I wish that the Welsh Labour Government would take the matter more seriously too.
Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire (Simon Hart) on securing the debate. Before leaving the question of health, does the hon. Member for Arfon (Hywel Williams) agree with me on the importance of dispensing doctors practices in rural communities? They are particularly important for getting treatments to elderly and infirm people in rural communities such as the towns and villages south of Scunthorpe, which are served by the Riverside practice in my area. That is an important part of health care provision in rural areas.
Hywel Williams
Briefly, there are GP surgeries in my area that dispense, and that has been a vital part of the service to the population. It does not take two or three hours to travel to a pharmacy, but it is highly inconvenient, especially when bus services are so patchy.
I want to refer to housing, and to mention that we have many unfit houses in Wales. However, the repair and renovation of housing is subject to VAT, and I think that that is wrong. VAT is charged on repair and renovation, but it is not charged in the same way on new build. Plaid Cymru has repeatedly called for a tax cut. It might surprise some hon. Members to hear that a usually left-of-centre party has called for tax cuts, but that is a particularly useful one. It is a matter of equality between people, such as a young couple renovating their first house—adding a kitchen and bathroom to the back of a pre-1919 terraced house, and being charged VAT for it—and someone retiring, say, from the City to the home counties, and building a retirement home, free of VAT.
Mr Gray
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that some particularly unfortunate small print in the Budget was about VAT on the restoration of historic churches and houses? Because of that, it will be necessary to do away with the restoration of the church at Castle Combe in my constituency.
Hywel Williams
The hon. Gentleman makes a fine point. I had a hugely confusing conversation with the Welsh Government, some time ago, about historic and listed buildings being free of VAT. The conclusion, after 20 minutes of discussion, was agreement that they were free of VAT—but only for new build. Given that we were talking about historic and listed properties, the idea of building them anew seemed somewhat peculiar to me, to say the least.
I will conclude by saying that we have social housing in Wales, as elsewhere. Social housing is extremely valuable, but often it is of the wrong type, and in the wrong place. The ability of social landlords and local authorities to let houses in rural areas has been severely curtailed. In many villages in my area, social housing has been sold. It is not available. The proposed changes in housing benefit are unlikely to help. More people under 35 will be looking for houses in multiple occupation, of which we have few in rural Wales.
Sir Roger Gale (in the Chair)
Order. Before we proceed, I now have a fairly definitive list of hon. Members who have applied to speak. Although it is exceptional to do so, it may help if I give the names of those people, so that hon. Members not on the list may consider whether to intervene. From the Government Benches, in the order of application, speakers will be Mr Rory Stewart, Caroline Nokes, Sheryll Murray, Glyn Davies, Roger Williams and Neil Parish; and now that Mr Hywel Williams has spoken the only name I have from the Opposition Benches is Mr Ian Paisley. Any hon. Member not on the list has not so far indicated a wish to speak.
Bovine TB
Hywel Williams Excerpts(12 years, 11 months ago)
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Mrs Spelman
The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. I understand that this issue excites strong emotions, but for those who feel strongly about it I point to the Farm Crisis Network report, which shows the devastating emotional cost to the farmers who lose their cattle. It is probably right at this point to pay tribute to the work done by Adam Henson and “Countryfile” to make members of the public more aware of the cost to farmers of the slaughter of their animals as well as of the impact on wildlife.
Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)
The Secretary of State will know that the previous Welsh Government had intended a cull but the current Welsh Government appear to have had a change of mind. Has she discussed the reasons behind that change of mind with the Welsh Government? Furthermore, will she discuss the contents of her statement with the Welsh Government, given the substantial trade in cattle between England and Wales?
Mrs Spelman
Yes, I can give that assurance to the hon. Gentleman. The Minister of State is in regular contact with the Agriculture Minister. We meet regularly at Agriculture and Fisheries Council meetings that I invite the devolved Ministers to attend and at which we have ample opportunity regularly to share our approach to the control of TB. I shall have that opportunity at the Agriculture and Fisheries Council tomorrow.
Waste Reduction
Hywel Williams Excerpts(13 years, 6 months ago)
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Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)
I am glad to have secured this debate, and that at least some hon. Members are hoping to contribute. This is a timely debate given the Government’s review on waste policy. It is also real nappy week; later, I will explain my reasons for referring to that. There is a pressing need for action. When launching the Government review, the Environment Secretary stated:
“There is an economic and environmental urgency to developing the right waste strategy.”
Or, to adapt the Prime Minister’s own words in another environmental context, the house is burning down. Given my views on incinerators, that is perhaps not the best analogy.
Waste is a pressing problem. One could refer to many of its aspects, such as the unrequired and/or excessive use of materials in packaging, the ubiquity of single-use items to which we seem to be addicted, or products that cannot be repaired, reused or used in a different way. Some products are difficult to recycle because of their complex use of materials. When preparing for this debate, I read about changes in the automotive industry where the use of plastics has been simplified so that recycling is easier. There are problems of inefficient energy recovery, and of waste being disposed of when it could have been treated differently.
As hon. Members will recognise, there is a hierarchy of waste disposal methods that runs from the most favoured options such as prevention or the preparation of something for reuse, through to recycling, other methods of recovery including energy recovery, and finally disposal. Much of the emphasis in the media and popular discourse concerns recycling, and in particular hitting—or missing—recycling targets. Such issues have obsessed us; I will refer later to targets in the context of Wales.
The popular debate also looks at inefficiency and the mystifying use of recycled materials. Some hon. Members will have seen pictures of ships full of plastics being sent to China. There is public disbelief that such things happen, but it is a relevant issue. I have also heard rumours about compostable material going straight to landfill. Last night, one of my constituents called me to say that compostable material in my local authority was being carried by lorry to Skelmersdale for dumping. I checked this morning with my local authority, and I was assured that that was not the case.
Controversies surround issues such as incineration and overflowing landfill sites, and when new landfill sites are proposed there are often local protests. I recently had experience of that in my constituency because a large quarry had been used for waste disposal for many years, and some people argued that it had been leaking into a local stream. That site has now been capped and closed, but finding a landfill site for the short period before another permanent site is found has been fraught with difficulty. I hope the problem has now been solved.
Much less popular attention is given to reducing the amount of waste generated by producing and using a product—from source to end of life—and I would be glad if the popular press gave that issue more attention. Less attention is also given to the construction industry, for example, which generates a large amount of waste. On a more positive note, efforts have been made by some areas of industry to achieve significant reductions in waste—I referred earlier to car manufacturers that have taken steps to reduce the numbers of plastics used, thus simplifying recycling.
Hon. Members may raise other issues this afternoon, but I would be interested in the Minister’s comments on what the Secretary of State described in her statement as
“new approaches to dealing with commercial waste and promoting ‘responsibility deals.’”
Nicky Morgan (Loughborough) (Con)
I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this debate. He spoke about businesses disposing of waste. I have found that despite paying business rates, local businesses in my constituency are often asked to pay more and discouraged from recycling things such as paper, which we probably recycle automatically when throwing out our household waste. Because of the financial penalties, businesses are actively discouraged from taking a full part in recycling and reuse.
Hywel Williams
The hon. Lady makes a good point. We should not discourage recycling, but that should not necessarily be the first choice; generating less waste in the first place might be a wiser course of action. Some local authorities have withdrawn their charges for waste produced for the reasons mentioned by the hon. Lady.
I want to look at how we can prevent waste in the first place and at reuse, and I intend to use the example of real nappies—it is real nappy week. First, however, I will look broadly at the waste review, and it will be useful to refer to Wales as well as to England. I am a Welsh MP, and as hon. Members may know, in some respects Wales is well ahead of the game as far as the UK is concerned. The Welsh and UK Governments can learn much from each other, and the waste review provides an opportunity for that.
What happens in one country is bound to have an effect—perhaps a profound effect—on the country next door. I hardly need point out that incinerators in Wales near to the border are bound to raise concerns downwind. For decades, farms in Wales suffered from the effects of the wind that blew from Chernobyl, and farms in my constituency suffered restrictions for many years. The wind blows as it pleases.
Nicky Morgan
The hon. Gentleman is generous in giving way again. He talks about incineration, and hon. Members from all parties will know constituents who feel passionately about that issue once an incinerator is proposed on a nearby site—I am thinking of Shepshed in my constituency, where Biffa wants to place an incinerator. A couple of weeks ago, an article in the Sunday Express stated that the Health Protection Agency is going to work with researchers from Imperial college in London to look at the health effects produced by incineration and the health worries felt by those who live downwind from an incinerator.
Hywel Williams
Again, the hon. Lady makes an excellent point. We have long experience of such things in Wales. In the south-east an incineration plant caused tremendous worry to local people for many years because of the release of polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs. As I understand it, there are proposals to place a large incinerator in Merthyr Tydfil. There is also talk of an incinerator in the Wrexham area, which is upwind from large English conurbations and could have implications for people outside Wales. There has been much controversy over those plans and the possible health effects, and any research on the subject will be welcomed.
I want to refer to a recycling partnership that exists in my constituency between the local authority and social enterprises, and to the employment opportunities that that has provided. The Government have said that they have two ambitions: to have a zero-waste economy and to be the greenest Government ever. Obviously, tackling waste offers an opportunity to create a more resource-efficient and competitive economy, to create jobs and to save money.
It is gratifying that the generation of household waste continues to decrease and that the public’s enthusiasm for recycling is clearly growing. Recycling sites now rival garden centres at the weekend as places to socialise—I had a peculiar experience in that regard the other day. The recycling rate in England is 40.3%, according to the latest figures from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. However, that figure is behind the best in Europe—our ambition is to be the best, and the best rate in Europe is 70%-plus. The rate for Wales in the third quarter of 2010 was 45%, so in Wales we are slightly ahead of the game as far as England is concerned. The figure for the last quarter of 2010 in Wales was 42%. Of course, there is a drop-off in the winter months because there is less garden waste, but in Wales we are still somewhat ahead.
Andrew George (St Ives) (LD)
I want to refer back to a point that the hon. Gentleman made earlier. Does he not think that a more appropriate measure for any Government, be they a devolved Administration or the UK Government, involves consideration of waste arisings, rather than recycling? As he said, the issue is avoiding waste going into the waste stream in the first place, whether it consists of products for recycling or otherwise. For example, rather than recycling products through recycling banks, one could take part in a bottle deposit scheme, as I do in respect of my doorstep milk collections; reusing bottles rather than recycling them is surely a better option than simply measuring recycling rates.
Hywel Williams
The hon. Gentleman makes an excellent point. Of course, there are questions about the durability of the bottles being recycled. Will we get the right bang for our buck by recycling? There are questions about transportation, the weight of glass and so on. However, the thrust of the point is excellent. I am old enough to remember getting a penny, or a penny ha’penny, back on a bottle of lemonade and I look back to those days with—well, I am showing my age now.
The targets for Wales are 70% recycling by 2025 and zero waste by 2050, so they are very ambitious. Without praising the previous Plaid Cymru-Labour Government too much, I shall say that Wales is the first country in the UK to adopt statutory recycling targets for municipal waste, following a Measure passed by the Assembly. It was one of the first measures that the Assembly managed to pass on its own. The Waste (Wales) Measure 2010 received royal approval in December. The first statutory recycling target set under that Measure is 52% by 2012. Clearly, therefore, there is a pace of activity in Wales that I am sure will be interesting to people over the border.
Wales is also the only country in the UK in which every local authority offers a separate food or food and green waste collection. That is the case throughout the country. It was the first country to introduce the landfill allowance scheme and it looks as though it will be the first to introduce a carrier bag charge, in October 2011. We will see, of course, but that is the intention and it has widespread support. My local authority, Gwynedd, achieved a recycling rate of 44% in 2010-11 and, I hope, will achieve the target of 52% in 2013.
Mr Jamie Reed (Copeland) (Lab)
Will the hon. Gentleman tell us a little about how the clearly more progressive, more advanced policies in Wales are being received by the general public? What binds the general public to those higher aspirations?
Hywel Williams
Speaking generally, I think that there is a political consensus in Wales anyway. In the recent election, it was sometimes difficult to see the difference even between a party of government and a party of opposition. There is a consensus on these issues and there is a tradition. I was talking to someone about this the other day. We used to call the rubbish not the rubbish, but the salvage—what we would be salvaging from rubbish. There is a long tradition of that. I have no idea what the basis is for what the hon. Gentleman refers to, but perhaps what is important is the outcome—a higher recycling rate.
My local authority is introducing weekly food collections. There had been concern about bi-weekly collections and possible dangers to health. The authority is bringing in weekly food collections, with a target for the amount collected by 2013. As I said earlier, it works with two third-sector organisations: Antur Waunfawr and Seren. They sort high-quality plastics and will be moving to lower-quality plastics quite soon. They also collect textiles. Those activities produce not only an income stream for the organisations involved, but 35 jobs for people with learning difficulties at Antur Waunfawr, so it is a win-win situation.
Antur also runs a furniture recycling scheme and a confidential waste shredding scheme for 450 customers throughout north Wales, including MPs such as myself, and it is now employing five young people on apprenticeships in recycling. There is a great deal of progress. The chief executive of Antur, Menna Jones, recently said to me—I am translating—“I don’t know about the big society, but small social enterprises are achieving a lot.” There is a good deal to emulate over the border.
At the same time, Friends of the Earth is pressing for another approach—halving residual waste by 2020. I would be interested in the Minister’s comments on that. Targeting the reducing of residual waste—black bag waste that cannot be recycled—would reward waste prevention, reuse and recycling, as well as reducing the use of landfill and incineration. Friends of the Earth argues that zero waste must not mean zero waste to landfill, with some being diverted to incineration. It points out the inverse correlation between incineration and recycling.
Denmark has a very high level of incineration but a low level of recycling. There might be a causal relationship there. Friends of the Earth points to other European examples. Flanders has a ban on landfill or incineration of unsorted waste; it also has a very big network of reuse shops. Irish local authorities can levy a charge on waste incineration, and similar taxes exist in Denmark, Austria, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden. There is a great deal that can be learned not only over the border within the UK, but from other European countries.
I said earlier that this is real nappy week; indeed, that is what led me to apply for the debate in the first place. Earlier this year, I visited a small company in my constituency called BabyKind. I should say that I have no particular interest in that company, but I was impressed by its enterprise, by its commitment to its products and customers and by its enthusiasm for the wider cause of promoting environmental sustainability.
Some people might think that my referring to real nappies in this debate is eccentric or even frivolous. However, the waste produced by throwaway nappies is a significant burden. The Nappy Alliance says that 3 billion nappies are thrown away every year—8 million a day—making up 4% of household waste. That is a huge amount—a huge negative contribution to the mountain of waste. Throwaway nappies that go to landfill add to the problems that we all recognise: the increased pressure on landfill sites, the waste of land, the potential water pollution and the increase in greenhouse gas emissions, particularly methane.
The Nappy Alliance also states that, according to the Environment Agency, the decomposition time scale for some of the materials and chemicals used in throwaway nappies is more than 500 years, so we are storing up problems for the future. In that respect, throwaway nappies are clearly misnamed when they are called “disposable”—they are far from disposable.
Debate on this matter has been distorted, although some would go further and say that it has been plagued by misinformation, unintended or otherwise. On Monday this week, an article in a national newspaper criticised local authorities for spending money on promoting real nappies. It claimed that
“taxpayers’ money was poured into real nappy campaigns even though the notion that re-useable nappies are better for the environment was discredited years ago.”
It further claimed that there was “overwhelming evidence” in 2007 that such campaigns “were pointless”.
I believe that that claim refers to the well publicised Environment Agency life cycle analysis report on nappies in 2006, which some Members might recall. The report was prominent in the press at the time—in 2006, not 2007—and it made similar assertions, if in a less striking way. However, when the report was revised in 2008, it showed that reusable nappies could be about 40% better for the environment than throwaways. News of that revision seems to have escaped the notice of Monday’s newspaper—although I am sure that it is simply the result of a busy journalist not doing his homework.
Real nappies will directly solve much of the landfill problem, being reused and even passed on to be used by other children, as recently happened in my family. Their use offers local authorities an excellent cost saving. According to the Nappy Alliance, the cost of disposing of throwaway nappies in England is £90 million per year. Real nappies also fit into the waste hierarchy at a much higher level than throwaways, which are poor fuel for incineration and tend to go for disposal. They are also higher in the hierarchy than recycling, and that too should be borne in mind, given that some look to incentivise recycling while ignoring waste minimisation and reuse. That is another point for the future.
I realise that I have ranged fairly broadly in my speech, but it is necessary to set the matter in context. However, I draw the Minister’s attention to the question posed by Friends of the Earth about the definition of zero waste. Is it zero to landfill, or is it in fact zero? I would also like to know what his Department is doing to promote the reuse of real nappies.
Andrew George
Before the hon. Gentleman draws his remarks to a conclusion, I wonder whether he would like to comment on the opportunities for business in recycling. For example, scrap metal merchants will be found in all constituencies and those who remember the Corona bottle referred to earlier will remember that licensed totters on every municipal site regularly recycled items. Those are honourable professions, but they are often pushed to the margins of society and treated badly. Does the hon. Gentleman not agree that those people and professions should be harnessed and given a central place in our business response to the need to reduce the waste stream?
Hywel Williams
The hon. Gentleman makes an excellent point. The Steptoe image is way out of date; indeed, it was out of date in the 1960s. There is clearly a huge market for reused materials, and if the constabulary keep an eye on our manhole covers I would be very much in favour of continuing with it.
Will the Minister assure the House that his Department is working closely with the Welsh and Scottish Governments and the Northern Ireland Administration, as well as on a wide range of matters in the European context? There is one small niggle, but others might raise it. Welsh authorities are doing rather well—for instance, Anglesey and Denbighshire are now recycling 57 %—but there is a sneaking suspicion that this might lead other authorities to slacken in their drive to reach 50% by 2020. I hope that that does not happen.
John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)
I wish to raise four matters that relate to my constituency or are of personal interest. I congratulate the hon. Member for Arfon (Hywel Williams) on securing this debate; as he has said, coming in real nappy week, it is timely.
The first of the four matters is landfill. I represent a west London constituency that still has considerable open spaces. It covers a large geographical area. For the past 40 years, it has been a site for gravel extraction, the gravel being used by the construction industry in London and the south-east. I have appeared at every planning inquiry for gravel pits in my area for at least 35 years, and only once did we prevent a gravel application from going ahead. Usually, the extracting companies are offered a five-year term for operating the site, but as more gravel is discovered, so permission is renewed and renewed again. In some areas, a whole generation can be blighted by mineral extraction.
Following extraction, the holes are used for landfill. Putting to one side the traffic and noise caused by gravel extraction, the landfill exercise generates more traffic, more noise and more pollution, particularly air pollution and dust. In that respect, I have had considerable problems in my constituency over the last 30 years. For instance, the Stockley site operated for a number of years after the second world war and into the 1970s, and we were plagued with dumping, which can be associated with illegal dumping, and then with methane fires under the ground. Because of such problems, we need to include stricter controls on the development of landfill sites. Under the Localism Bill, greater authority will be given to local authorities, councils and communities to have a say in refusing landfill developments.
The second matter is incineration, a subject which has already been mentioned. Planning permission was given to an incinerator at Colnbrook, which is outside my constituency but adjacent to it. In recent years, the site was given an extension. The prevailing wind means that pollution from the incinerator is blown across my constituency. I have often raised questions in the House about the health impact of the pollution from incineration during my 14 years as a Member.
Research has been undertaken into the high level of birth defects, most of which was refuted by the Department of Health, yet researchers still come up with increasing evidence of the association between incineration and local health problems. I urge the Government to use the review to ensure that the Department of Health supports additional research into the implications of incineration on the health of communities that live down wind. We heard earlier about the research that is being undertaken. It is still relatively small-scale, and I would welcome additional funding going to primary care trusts, or whichever body results from the health legislation, to assist them in undertaking research in areas with incinerators where pollution could have an impact on local communities.
The third of my concerns is about council provision. We have heard about excellent examples of recycling in Wales, but there is an inconsistency of approach between local authorities. We are all in favour of localism, but it would be welcome if the Government were to consider standardising the opportunity to minimise waste as well as recycling it. For example, there is still an inconsistency in my area in the number of recycling centres, and we do not have a food waste service, which is another inconsistency among the London boroughs. I hate to use the phrase, but there is a postcode lottery for policy on waste and for access to facilities to minimise waste or to recycle food waste, compost and so on. In my area, the figures are still significant. In my borough of Hillingdon, 44,644 tonnes of waste is recycled and 64,566 tonnes is disposed of either through incineration or landfill. Therefore, we are still disposing of more waste than we recycle. No attempt is being made to assess what could be achieved through minimisation and prevention, which leads me on to a personal campaign. I support the Nappy Alliance, which is a representative organisation of the reusable nappy sector.
My youngest child was in reusable nappies 15 years ago, which is when I became an advocate of reusable schemes, working through the National Childbirth Trust. It is blindingly obvious that we would have a big impact on the environment if we could promote the use of reusable nappies and provide disincentives for the use of disposable ones.
The Nappy Alliance has brought forward its own charter, which I support. It believes that there should be a 1p tax on disposable nappies to try to prevent the harm that they do to the environment. We should urge the Government to exhort local authorities to work with local community organisations to see what can be done to support the development of reusable nappies. We have seen the figures about the impact on the environment and the savings that could be provided.
The cost of disposing of disposable nappies is estimated to be around £100 million. If the promotion of reusable nappies leads to a 10% reduction in disposable nappies, we could save £10 million, which is worth considering. The savings could be significantly more as people begin to understand the benefits of using reusable nappies.
I urge the Government to enter into discussions with local authorities, the voluntary sector and private industry to see whether we can promote local schemes for reusable nappies. In that way, we will assist in reducing landfill, incineration and overall pollution.
Hywel Williams
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that if this is to be a long-term change, there needs to be a cultural change among young parents? It has taken many years for people to get out of the habit of using the old-style terry nappies. Therefore, we need a sustained effort by third sector organisations, charities, local authorities and central Government to achieve such a change.
John McDonnell
It requires a sustained effort, of course, but it should not be an arduous task. In fact, it could be a relatively easy exercise of advocacy. We could make use of the various mechanisms that already exist, particularly to improve the level of parenting. For example, the Sure Start centres and our local nurseries and schools could be used. The task could be relatively easy, if there were a concerted effort by local authorities and community organisations.
It is not like the old days, when we had to swill nappies around in buckets. The design of reusable nappies has moved on dramatically since then. Once parents have been introduced to them, they will see the benefit of them. Parents of younger children often look to see what wider goals there are in life. They want to ensure that they preserve the planet for their children, and they are just at that period in their lives when they are open to the arguments about waste prevention, the protection of the environment and overcoming climate change.
We need clear statements from national Government that this is an important issue that needs to be addressed and from local government about what can be done in the local area. They need to work together on a national plan that can be rolled out on a local level, with the support of the local voluntary sector as well as the private sector industries.
In my area, there are increasing pressures on our local environment as a result of illegal dumping. In their waste review, the Government must look at every measure they possibly can to minimise waste rather than putting the pressure on recycling. Certainly they must do everything they can to prevent landfill and incineration. In the past, I have been a supporter of the landfill tax, but I can see how that has resulted in further illegal dumping.
With the M25, M4 and the A40 all passing through my west London constituency, a large number of illegal dumpers have been able to take waste from central London, drive along the A40, the M4 or the M25 and then fly-tip the illegal rubbish in my constituency. No matter how much we put in place by way of detection and legal action against fly-tippers—some of the legislation that the previous Government introduced was excellent in giving us the tools to do that—the real solution is about minimisation and preventing the build-up of waste products. The disposable nappy might seem a small matter, but if we minimised its use and transferred to reusable nappies, we would be making a major contribution to the future waste policy of this country.