Water Industry (Financial Assistance) Bill

Jim Fitzpatrick Excerpts

Wednesday 29th February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Jim Fitzpatrick (Poplar and Limehouse) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Miss McIntosh), who as Chair of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee obviously speaks with great authority on such matters. As one of her vice-chairs on the all-party parliamentary group on local environmental quality, I am used to following her—I have certainly done so for the past couple of years. Perhaps in future I will get ahead of her, but that is something to hope for.

I shall not speak for long. I want to raise two issues, the first of which is the Thames tideway tunnel and how it will impact on my constituency. I am grateful to the Minister who has responsibility for the natural environment and fisheries for the letter he sent to London MPs yesterday to explain how the Bill will help. The second issue relates to water for fire sprinkler systems, which we have discussed before. It could be referred to in the Water Industry Act 1991, which the Bill amends. This might be a missed opportunity to amend the Act further to deal with that issue.

I shall deal with the constituency matter first. As a former Minister in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and a former Minister for London, I am familiar with the challenges facing the Government in dealing with the problem of massive sewage discharges into the Thames. Since the formation of the coalition Government, all the political parties, as well as the Select Committee, have considered the matter and concluded that something needs to be done.

In my constituency, Thames Water’s original plans would have taken nearly all of King Edward memorial park, which, given the population density, is one of the very few green open spaces in Tower Hamlets in east London. Not surprisingly, the plans caused considerable outrage—and that hostility continues today—and it led to the formation of the Save King Edward Memorial Park campaign. It comprises local residents, freeholders, leaseholders, council and social tenants, and residents from the new expensive blocks on the river as well as from the established estates and nearby. All were determined to protect the park from being destroyed by Thames Water.

I pay tribute not only to the campaign officers but to all residents, local councillors and officers of Tower Hamlets council, as well as to the local papers, the East London Advertiser and The Wharf, for the campaign to save the park. The campaign officers are Carl Dunsire, Emma Dunsire, Robin Milward, Toni Davey, Mahbub Mamun Alam, Raihan Islam and Mark Baynes. They have all done an excellent job bringing the community together and lobbying Thames Water and myself—and I have been in discussions with DEFRA, so the campaign has clearly made an impact. Local celebrities, including Sir Ian McKellen, Lee Hurst and Helen Mirren—to name but a few—have also registered their support.

I must also pay tribute and give credit to Thames Water. That will not go down well in the constituency because it is still regarded pretty much as the enemy, but to its credit, it has engaged with us, understood and several times changed its plans for King Edward memorial park. Mr Phil Stride and his team deserve credit for that. Some months ago, Thames Water also engaged as a consultant our former colleague, Mr Martin Salter, the former Reading MP. That has helped the consultation process with local residents. Also, I recently chaired a constituency public meeting to which more than 100 people turned up.

The Save KEMP campaign, which, as well as local residents, comprises people of professional standing—for example, Carl Dunsire is an engineer—identified an alternative brownfield site on Heckford street. That proposal was put to Thames Water a considerable time ago, and since then the company has floated it as a secondary option. Having said that, the company’s preferred option remains to build out on to the river from the foreshore of King Edward memorial park, rather than in the park.

John Biggs, the Greater London assembly member for east London, and I wrote to Thames Water this week seeking the latest consideration of the two options and the costings. Heckford might be slightly more expensive but given the disruption to the local community, the support for the project and everything else, if the costs were equitable, the local community would be strongly in favour of Heckford.

[Frank Dobson]

Will my hon. Friend bear it in mind, when talking about the extra expense, that Thames Water, over the past six or seven years, has made profits totalling £1 billion, which have been paid out to its currently Australian shareholders and before that its German shareholders?

[Jim Fitzpatrick]

My right hon. Friend makes an important point that will be a matter for scrutiny in Committee. I expect it to be raised in Committee in due course.

East London assembly member John Biggs and I are seeking Thames Water’s latest considerations, and obviously the Bill would affect the building of the Thames tideway tunnel. The local community is resolute on this issue. My only concern about the choice between the Heckford street site and the Thames foreshore site is that building the interceptor to the sewer on the foreshore would mean much more traffic by water, on the Thames. If Heckford street is chosen, there will be several thousand heavy goods vehicles on the streets of Tower Hamlets and further east for several years. That would not be a welcome dimension, but these things are in the balance, and obviously we are pressing for the best possible outcome for the local community.

The second issue that I want briefly to mention is fire sprinklers. I pay tribute to the Minister, who is always courteous and efficient. I am grateful for the meeting that he afforded me and the officers of the all-party group on fire safety and rescue to discuss the matter only four to five weeks ago. There is a myth perpetrated by the media—mostly in adverts on TV and in the cinema—that when a fire in a building activates the sprinkler system, every sprinkler right across the building is activated and the whole place is doused in water and damaged. The reality, of course, is that the only sprinkler activated is the sprinkler head immediately above the seat of the fire, as the heat generated by the fire melts the soldered link, causing the blockage to fall away and allowing the water to act as an extinguishing agent. The problem with the myth is that people are frightened of sprinklers, because they think that if they install them in their building and they are inadvertently activated—we know that smoke detectors can go off because of burning toast—their home would be damaged. However, that is not the case, and the cost to society of not installing sprinkler systems in buildings includes the hundreds of millions of pounds lost to schools damaged by fire every year—a cost that is often passed on to local council tax payers, as most local authorities self-insure.

[Mr Slaughter]

My hon. Friend is making a good point about a matter that was brought home to me recently. Hon. Members will remember the serious fire that closed Wood lane, opposite the BBC in Shepherd’s Bush—perhaps that is why it got so much publicity. The consequence of such events in major buildings with no sprinkler systems is not just the risk of loss of life, but often the permanent loss of jobs where buildings cannot reopen and the huge damage to industrial and public buildings.

[Jim Fitzpatrick]

My hon. Friend anticipates the point that I am coming to, immediately after I make the point that when a school burns down, the problem is not just the damaged building, but the disruption to the education of the students at that educational establishment and the impact on parents, who have to take their kids to schools further away, with disruption to friendships and the rest of it. As for the point that he correctly makes, when there is damage to an industrial or commercial premises, there is not only the damage to the building, but the cost of insurance for the company, a loss of production and, more often than not, unemployment costs to the individuals who work on those premises, because it takes months and sometimes longer to rebuild or replace, if at all possible.

Most critical of all is the loss of life. Fire deaths affect the most vulnerable in society. The majority of people who die in fires are the most vulnerable—the old, the sick, the young, people with social difficulties or people with addiction problems. The most vulnerable are the ones who predominantly die in fires. Tragically, we have recently seen a number of major multiple fatalities across the country, most recently in London—in what was formerly Brent East—where a mother and five children died in a fire. However, the experience of local authorities where fire sprinklers are the norm is entirely different. There is a district in Arizona called Scottsdale—one of Phoenix’s five districts—that is the fire sprinkler capital of the world, as I am sure the House will be pleased to learn. Scottsdale has had a city ordinance for 30 years that says that if someone builds something, they have to install a sprinkler system. One person has died in a fire in Scottsdale in 30 years. Scottsdale has 250,000 people. They smoke, they cook, they burn candles and they probably have heating too, despite the desert climate. Sprinklers save lives. That is now becoming the UK experience. More local authorities, more registered social landlords and more developers are recognising the benefits of sprinkler systems.

There has been extensive correspondence between the all-party group and DEFRA on the Water Industry Act 1991. If I may, I shall quote from a letter from former chief fire officer Ronnie King, who is a highly regarded officer in the fire service, as well as being the active administrative secretary of the all-party parliamentary group on fire safety and rescue and the chair of the water liaison group. In reference to the Act, which the Bill amends, he says:

“To this end I outline in this letter a proposed change to section 57 on the provision of water for firefighting. Section 57 covers the duty to provide water for firefighting and currently this duty is limited solely to providing water from designated fire hydrants. Increasingly householders are seeing the benefit of installing sprinkler systems, which will lead to significant reductions in fire deaths and injuries if they could be more widely used. Under the current legislation such supplies are classified as non-domestic supplies and are subject to agreement of terms and conditions on a case by case basis. An amendment of section 57 to include as firefighting water that taken from service pipes connected to a sprinkler system will clarify the status of connections to the water system for automatic fire sprinkler purposes. The current ambiguity is a barrier to the proliferation of sprinkler systems.”

I acknowledge that the Minister has asked his officials to examine that matter and to report on it. If nothing can be done in this Bill, we would be grateful if it could be considered for the water Bill that is coming along not far behind it. I also want to acknowledge that the vast majority of the water companies already do the right thing in co-operating, without the legislative clarity that the proposed amendment would provide. An amendment to the Water Industry Act 1991 in the Bill would be welcomed by the fire service and the fire industry as another major step towards a safer society, but I recognise that that might not be possible yet. School fires are increasing, and I am told that 10% of schools are affected by vandalism involving fires each year. More fires are occurring during school hours, and it is only a matter of time before there is a major tragedy. Most fire legislation is reactive and retrospective, drafted on the back of a major loss of life. The amendment that I have suggested could take us forward significantly, and protect our children in the future.

In conclusion—and as a complete aside—we really need to hold a fire evacuation drill in this place at some point, because we need to give leadership to the rest of the country on these issues. I am grateful for your indulgence, Mr Deputy Speaker.