Chalk Stream Abstraction

Debate between Lord Benyon and Charles Walker

Friday 1st February 2013 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Richard Benyon)]

The House does not need to be told that my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker) is passionate about this issue, and it is a passion that I share. I compliment him on his eloquence and look forward to addressing some of his points, but, more importantly, to being judged by my Department’s actions as we seek to resolve these issues.

My hon. Friend will know that I have form on this issue. I cut my political teeth trying to address over-abstraction in a chalk stream, the River Pang, which I am lucky enough to have flowing through my farm. I was a councillor at the time and I was asked to set up an environmental body that brought together local authorities, parishes, the local community, Thames Water, and the then National Rivers Authority, to see what could be done to improve the habitat around the river, to achieve better flows and to protect the environment. It was a passion that I had then over 20 years ago, and it is one that I now bring to this job as I seek to do precisely what he wants, which is to see rivers such as the River Pang and the ones he described in his part of the world restored to health.

One of the trends in conservation now is something that some people thought would never happen, and that is when green non-governmental organisations work with business to achieve a result that both desire. One of the best partnerships that I have come across in my job is the one between WWF and HSBC. Their Rivers on the Edge campaign seeks to restore chalk streams and is doing great work, and I feel both held to account by it but also passionately involved in making sure that it works.

My hon. Friend rightly says that our water resources are under pressure from development and a growing population, changes in lifestyle and changes in the climate, but there have been a number of changes in recent years that may just put us more in the right direction. One of them is the clear driver towards sustainable development. To me, that means developers having to prove as part of the planning process that what they are doing will at the very least have a minimal impact on the environment. In terms of water usage, that includes the demand end of the water supply in the home right through to the impact on the environment. That is key in terms of our catchment approach to river management.

At one level, I come before the House and say that we want to restore the health of these rivers because we have to comply with the water framework directive. But what a paucity of ambition that would be if it were the sum total of what we seek to do. We want to restore the health of these rivers because we want to restore them. They are, as my hon. Friend describes, part of our culture, part of our heritage. He described them as a divine gift, but whatever hon. Members believe, they are something that this country has and if we believe in good stewardship of our natural resources he is absolutely right: we must turn around these failing rivers and make them flow again and be vibrant environmental features for future generations.

There is a problem in Buckinghamshire and Hertfordshire. Public water supplies come predominantly from the chalk groundwater—the same groundwater that flows through our chalk streams. Many of our chalk streams are in a poor state, and restoring flows is essential to increasing the diversity of plant, invertebrate and fish species found in those rivers.

My hon. Friend had some hard words for the Environment Agency. I am not complacent; I am not saying that how Government approach the issue has always been right. However, we do need to balance that argument with what is happening.

[Mr Charles Walker]

I shall give the Minister a specific example. As we speak, the River Mimram is being downgraded from “over-abstracted” to “over-licensed”. It is clearly over-abstracted. May I ask the Minister to look into that redesignation and come back to the House or write to me in response?

[Richard Benyon]

I certainly will. I have had my ear bent about the Mimram in the past, and I will make sure that I respond to that specific point.

The Environment Agency is working closely with local groups and environmental bodies to carry out habitat restoration to improve chalk streams. All rivers have targeted plans, actions and resources to remedy the poor conditions, so that local people can tell whether or not we are achieving what we set out to do.

Just over a year ago, we published our water White Paper, which set out a vision for a resilient and sustainable water industry and for future reform of the abstraction regime. We know that the current system is not flexible enough to cope with the challenges of climate change and the increased demand from a growing population, which my hon. Friend so eloquently described. The condition of our chalk rivers acutely highlights that.

The new system needs to be sustainable, resilient and ensure that water remains available to support growth, supply households and protect the environment. Reforming the regime is complex in both economic and environmental terms. Tackling over-abstraction and the damage that it causes is a priority, but we need to recognise that the water is being abstracted for uses that are critical to the operation of businesses and for households.

[Mr Walker]

Of course water is required by industry and households; that is why we need to build more reservoirs. We had the chance to build a major reservoir at Abingdon, but that project seems to have fallen by the wayside. We must start building major reservoirs in the east and south-east; it is the only environmentally responsible thing to do.

[Richard Benyon]

My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State recently went to the Abberton reservoir in East Anglia. It has just been enlarged by a vast percentage of its original size by Northumbrian Water, which owns the water company in that area. There is extra capacity there, but I entirely agree with my hon. Friend.

Over generations, we have decided that the cheapest way to provide water for homes and businesses is to suck it out of the ground. That is how we have kept bills low for households and businesses. Successive Governments have wished, perfectly reasonably, to keep water bills low. We continue to have that ambition, but we also have environmental ambitions. It is a question of whether we have the balance right, and I am prepared to concede that we do not. I urge my hon. Friend to read our White Paper to see how we set out the importance of a resilient water industry and sector. That will become clear as we develop the issue not only in the water Bill, but in other measures that do not need legislation.

Reforming the abstraction regime is complex, in both economic and environmental terms. Tackling over-abstraction and the damage that it causes is a priority. However, any change that we make will affect people’s livelihoods, so it is important that we take time to get the reform right and work with abstractors to understand and minimise the potential impacts. That is why we aim to legislate for that early in the next Parliament, rather than including specific abstraction measures in the water Bill that we hope will go through Parliament in the next Session. The key point is that we can start to address, without legislation, my hon. Friend’s concerns in many areas.

We are working closely with our stakeholders to understand the potential impacts of reform, from our national advisory group to the people on the ground who actually use the water. Through the year, we will be starting a number of dialogues with different groups, using social and digital media, in the run-up to our formal consultation at the end of the year, so that everyone who shares our passion for these rivers can be involved in this process.

Right now, we are tackling over-abstraction. Abstraction reform is only part of the story. We are able to take action to tackle the kind of abstraction that is damaging our rivers, and we want to make better use of the tools we already have. The Environment Agency has reviewed thousands of licences and changed many of the most damaging. Through the restoring sustainable abstraction process, the agency is working closely with water companies—the largest abstractors in Buckinghamshire and Hertfordshire—to improve flows in these rivers. Their work on restoring sustainable abstraction, together with catchment-scale investigations to identify these and other issues, such as diffuse pollution, will give us early notice of the issues we need to tackle in the next river basin management plans, starting in 2015, when there may well be a requirement for new upstream water storage, such as reservoirs.

[Mr Walker]

Will my hon. Friend join me in congratulating my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs Gillan) and my hon. Friend the Member for North East Hertfordshire (Oliver Heald) on all the work they have done in support of local chalk streams, and my hon. Friend the Member for Meon Valley (George Hollingbery), who is chairman of the all-party angling group, on his efforts?

[Richard Benyon]

This House is full of people with a real passion for these environments. As the MP for a constituency that contains a number of chalk streams, I know about the leadership that has been given over many years by the hon. Members my hon. Friend mentions, and by others who are no longer in this House. He referred to Martin Salter, a former colleague on the Labour Benches, whose work with the Angling Trust is very important in raising these matters. I join my hon. Friend in paying tribute to our colleagues who campaign on this.

We want water companies to begin to prepare new water resources management plans for consultation in spring this year. We want them to include in those plans actions to address sustainable reductions where investigations have shown that these are needed or likely to be needed. Last year we published guiding principles that can be used by the Environment Agency to assess whether abstractors are causing serious damage to water bodies. This will enable the agency to use powers to modify the most damaging abstraction licences without the need to pay compensation. This is a major change and a major step forward.

We are also developing better tools and incentives to help water companies to manage their abstractions sustainably. We are working with Ofwat on something that we are calling our abstraction incentive mechanism, which was developed with WWF and several others, and which will encourage water companies to abstract their water from more sustainable sources. This is about making an environmental evaluation as to whether water abstraction is damaging or less damaging in terms of where it occurs. I commend it as one of the measures that we are taking in the next periodic price review process which will start to address the problems that my hon. Friend describes. We are also working with the Environment Agency and Ofwat to change how water companies are funded for changes to damaging abstraction licences. This offers us a real opportunity for a way forward.

I have had time to touch on only some of the measures that we are taking. There are other, more technical, means that I am happy to discuss with my hon. Friend and the all-party group. I am constantly trying to find new and better ways to make sure that over the next few years we reverse the decline in these extraordinary ecosystems. We are not just talking about the channel where the river flows through, beautiful though that is; rich in habitat, when healthy, though it is; and wonderful though it is for people like my hon. Friend and I who enjoy fishing. We are also talking about the whole catchment —the whole environment of the valley that the river flows through. It is absolutely vital that we in the Government, with voluntary bodies, local authorities, and, most importantly, water companies and other abstractors, work towards a solution in which these extraordinary habitats are restored to how they justly should be, so that people can come from all over the world to see a really special environmental feature.

Question put and agreed to.