Water Bill

Neil Parish Excerpts

Monday 25th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Miss McIntosh]

I do regret the amount of time that it is taking.

The Select Committee was very disappointed to hear how little maintenance and dredging of watercourses has been taking place. While it is always pleasing to see capital expenditure increase, the evidence that we heard was more than anecdotal: it is an absolute fact that, were there to be regular maintenance and dredging of the main and even the minor watercourses, floods could be prevented. I urge the Government to spend more than just £20 million per annum in England for that purpose. I also urge them to allow the drainage boards, which do such excellent work, to keep the money rather than passing it to the Environment Agency, and to agree a work programme with the agency but use their own drainage board engineers for the maintenance and dredging.

[Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)]

I agree wholeheartedly that drainage boards could do much more work. The money that they spend often goes a great deal further than the excessive amount spent by some public bodies. As the Secretary of State is aware, the Parrett and Tone rivers in Somerset are completely silted up and they need to be dredged quickly.

[Miss McIntosh]

I am sure that the whole House, including the Secretary of State, has heard what my hon. Friend said. Dredging little and often can prevent floods. The drainage boards have an army of volunteers, a huge fount of knowledge and, probably, more engineers than the Environment Agency.

I am delighted that the Government have authorised the pilot schemes, and the Select Committee will observe the outcome very closely. I commend the Pickering pilot project, which is one of those schemes at which this country excels. It has already slowed the flow, it is creating new peat bogs, and it is holding water back so that it cannot flood Pickering. If we can succeed with a combination of slowing the flow and building a reservoir, not only will Pickering be safe from flooding, but the benefits of the pilot can be used elsewhere, and resilience to flooding and possible water shortages can be improved.

I believe that the 2014 price review gives us an opportunity to invite Ofwat to reward innovation, which it is not doing at the moment. Ofwat should invite water companies to show that they can bring positive benefits to consumers by creating innovative flood defence and water supply schemes like the Pickering project, and to include such proposals in their business plans. I regret that that did not happen in earlier price reviews and this is a unique opportunity to do that.

I also invite the Government to engage much earlier with EU directives. I yield to no one in respect of the benefits they can bring, but they can be very costly. If we sign up to very short-term, tight timetables, that adds to the costs. My right hon. Friend will be aware of the EU water framework directive, the bathing water directive, the drinking water directive, the urban waste water treatment directive and others. We have to get in there early and put our views across. Their aims and objectives are laudable, but they must be affordable and done on a realistic timetable.

--- Later in debate ---

[Richard Benyon]

There is provision in the Bill to establish an inset regime and allow new entrants to design innovative infrastructure, which can link into the water system. Moreover, under the capital allowance system, farmers can invest in new reservoirs and have the right to give the surplus of that water to their water companies. In dire circumstances, the Environment Agency can purchase that water to keep rivers flowing. Real opportunity exists for people. I am not saying that that will resolve our water resilience issues; many farmers will need to build many reservoirs for that to happen. None the less, there is a genuine opportunity.

I have one plea. Yes, we can get involved in lengthy debates about whether we should have a primary or a secondary sustainability duty, or whether the robust new resilience duty—I urge hon. Members to read about that—will provide an added incentive; but if the rivers do not flow, our reservoirs are empty and our economy suffers, we should be absolutely determined to concentrate on the outcomes. I appeal to Members in this Chamber and in the other place not to get stuck on the tokenism of any duty, but to consider the outcome that it can deliver. I am relatively agnostic about whether Ofwat should have a primary or secondary duty to deliver sustainability. I am much more concerned about the outcomes, and I have yet to be convinced that just changing the wording will make a huge amount of difference. A really important gain in all this is the resilience duty on Ofwat.

[Neil Parish]

Like other Members, I thank my hon. Friend for all the work that he did on the Bill when he was Minister. Does he not feel that the one thing we are missing in this country is the recycling of water? It would be good to use recycled water to grow crops, as it contains a huge amount of nutrients. When we get a wet year, we forget about all the dry years that we have had or may have in the future.

[Richard Benyon]

My hon. Friend is right. I see this in household terms: my simple view is that if a builder wants to build 1,000 houses in the Test valley—I do not know why I am picking on the Test valley; I could pick on any number of catchments in the south or east of England—for that to be considered sustainable development, he should have to prove to his local authority that he is hardwiring into his thinking recycling rain water, greywater systems and permeable membranes outside the houses. In fact, he should think of everything to ensure that the development’s water demands are as low as possible.

An important change is being made that will assist investment in our water sector, by cracking the problem with the investment cycle that we have faced for years. I am grateful to British Water—the organisation that represents supply chain companies—for drawing my attention to how investment fell off a cliff edge a year or so before the end of a price review period. That is a problem. Britain is losing jobs, losing skills to abroad and losing much-needed infrastructure investment. Three changes will make a difference in that regard. The first is the resilience duty, which I have already mentioned. The second is the requirement on water companies to invest for the long term, particularly through the 20-year reviews of their water needs. The third is the need for a six-year investment programme, which is a major step forward. Over time, the cycle of investment will level out rather than fall off that cliff.

We need to think beyond the Bill on sustainability. I am pleased, for example, that improvements to the building regulations include a standard daily usage of 125 litres per head. The code for sustainable homes refers to 105 litres per head. We use 155 litres per head in this country—a figure higher than almost anywhere in Europe. We must consider the demand side as well as the supply side.

I hope that that clause on flood insurance goes through with the support of all parties. All Members with constituents who live at risk of floods feel strongly that the statement of principles, worthy though it might have been when it was drawn up, was full of faults. There was no affordability element. Our constituents face excess charges that are at times more than £10,000—an impossible situation that cannot be allowed to continue.

I have the scars of the negotiations on Flood Re on my back—I pay full tribute to the ABI for the constructive way in which it negotiated—but I think we have reached a point at which we can address the needs of the 500,000 households that are at the highest risk. It will limit the cost, and as best it can, it will link that limit to people’s ability to pay. Linking the scheme to council tax banding is the right way to do that. Excess charges will be capped at somewhere between £250 and £500. That is a major win for those people who come to see us in our surgeries and tell us that every time it rains their stress levels rise considerably.