Water Bill

Debate between Lord Krebs and Earl of Lytton

Monday 31st March 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Krebs (CB)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, for suggesting that my committee acquires an additional job. I do not wish to speak at length about it but simply say that, were we to be asked to carry out the role he outlined, it would fit well with our current statutory duties. We already collect and analyse data on the number of properties at flood risk and the time trends. If we were to carry out this role there would be a couple of provisos. We would need access to the data held by the Government, Flood Re and the wider insurance industry. There might also be some modest resource implications for the work carried out by the committee. With those provisos I certainly think that the committee could very well carry out the job, as outlined by the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester.

[The Earl of Lytton]

My Lords, I shall make a short contribution on this amendment. Noble Lords will remember that at Second Reading I made the point that there was no equivalent to a Cambridge Econometrics study into the numbers that lie behind this. For that reason alone, there is some merit in this amendment to look at the hard science so that we get away from what has been described to me, by somebody who will remain nameless, as voodoo numbers that have been floating around. The absence of the degree of expertise that is regularly produced by the committee of the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, has needlessly increased doubts and concerns that might otherwise not have been there. Therefore, this is quite a good idea, although I am less clear whether I shall follow the noble Lord if he decides to divide the House on this issue.

Water Bill

Debate between Lord Krebs and Earl of Lytton

Tuesday 11th February 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Krebs]

My Lords, I too support the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Shipley. I have already declared an interest as the chairman of the adaptation sub-committee of the Committee on Climate Change. The sub-committee has a useful data set that could be brought to bear were this review to happen. It has developed a set of indicators, which are published, for the resilience of planning decisions in relation to present and future risks from flooding, particularly from future impacts of climate change. For example, it has looked at the implementation of SUDS, at the implementation of household measures that could provide protection at the individual property level and at planning decisions to develop in the flood plain. As has already been said by the noble Lord, development in the flood plain has been going ahead faster than development elsewhere, but this is not necessarily a bad thing. If the properties are appropriately protected, either by community-level measures or by individual household measures, the risks can be managed. The sub-committee has a data set and a set of indicators that could be useful were the Government minded to accept the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Shipley.

[The Earl of Lytton]

My Lords, I welcome the opportunity to debate this important point. I declare a professional interest in aspects of planning. The question of planning policy and its co-runner, which it informs, development control, raises some important issues on the ground. These need to go beyond the question of new-build developments alone. I do not know whether the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, intended to address just new-build developments but if he did, perhaps I could digress into the area of what we do about some of the existing building stock, which I flagged up at Second Reading. I alluded then to the desirability of making conditions concerning the containing of surface water run-off within existing individual properties, as opposed to just allowing each to discharge it on to the next property downstream.

I wondered whether this might be made retroactive to a degree, perhaps by requiring extensions and alterations to existing properties to incorporate, in appropriate circumstances, a surface water attenuation scheme. I do not believe that this is a general requirement but there are precedents. For instance, if you renew the roof covering of your house, you are often obliged to upgrade the insulation of the roof of your property. There is an analogy there. Surface water attenuation on a per property basis could also be combined not only with water conservation, but with habitat-friendly outcomes. The same thing could apply to the principle of reducing vulnerability of the property itself—a point made earlier by the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter—in connection with quite ordinary adaptations that can be put in place to prevent properties being so severely affected by flooding, should it happen. There is also the question of community-based schemes to protect groups of buildings. I referred to the Lower Don Valley scheme, but there are others.

One of the things that has come out—sorry, that is probably a bad term—or rather, has arisen recently is the question of making foul drainage systems safer, so that if flooding does happen, flood water does not turn into a solution of dilute sewage, adding health hazards to all the other problems of clean-up. That requires special measures, not least because shared sewer pipes that are on private property but are ultimately connected to a public sewer are now the responsibility of the statutory sewage undertaker. I have this terrible feeling that they have no idea of the routes, the condition or the materials of half of these pipes for which they have now inherited responsibility. They have my sympathy in that respect.

The noble Lord, Lord Krebs, referred to building on flood plains. My only point there is that protecting properties so that they are themselves secure against flooding is one thing. Transferring risks to properties elsewhere is self-defeating. My difficulty is that I am not sure that a holistic approach is taken to dealing with the totality of flood plains. Often, these may be in more than one local planning authority area, so there may be problems of co-ordination. With regard to that, the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, referred to the competence and capacity of local government and the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, referred to reductions in Environment Agency budgets that might affect its ability to have this overarching, integrated view. I worry about that. It is vital that the sort of report that the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, has in mind covers all these aspects. If we start leaving bits out, we shall be no further forward in a few years’ time than we are now.

I draw attention to the catchment area management plan referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours. I have some experience of this, not all of it edifying. In at least one instance, I found that half the catchment area concerned, the upstream half, was missing from the plan. The only fact that I could ascertain was that the owner of the missing part was the National Trust. I am unsure what conclusions I should draw from that, but if you have a catchment management plan, the boundary of it has to be drawn along the watershed. No other boundary is possible. The simple arithmetic that was drummed into me, probably from O-level geography onwards, has not escaped me. Making up rules to suit as one goes along will not wash. I am sorry for that terminology as well.

Some time ago, I attended a professional lecture on restoring part of southern Exmoor to a peat bog so that it would hold more water and release it more slowly into the River Barle and the River Exe systems. It had something to do with pumping and repumping water back into Wimbleball reservoir, which I shall not go into. I nicknamed the scheme the “Exmoor sponge”. I do not think anyone else has used that term. There is nothing wrong with such projects, but if they do not have durable management structures that are proof against misuse for commercial objectives, neglect because of spending cuts, simply being forgotten, or participant landowners deciding that there are better land uses that they would rather adopt, they will fail. There need to be more durable ways of dealing with these things. That is the sum total of the points that I wish to make. The last of them probably goes a bit beyond the amendment proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, but it was worth mentioning in the context of what was said by the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours.