UK Canals and Waterways

Ruth Jones Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd November 2022 Westminster Hall

[Ruth Jones (Newport West) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair this morning, Sir Robert.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Lichfield (Michael Fabricant) on securing this important debate on the future of Britain’s canals and waterways. He has campaigned tirelessly on this issue over the years, and with good reason. That was evident from his contribution and from the speeches and interventions by many others. It is not often that the Opposition are in full agreement with the hon. Member, but that is the case today. We should all congratulate ourselves on that.

I offer the apologies of my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North West (Alex Sobel), the shadow Minister, for whom I am subbing today. He is away from the parliamentary estate on shadow ministerial business, so I have been drafted in to guide us through the calm waters of this debate.

This country was the first in the world to develop a nationwide canal network that connected towns and cities, brought people together and developed and stimulated so much of the trade, industry and commerce that modern Britain was built on. I have the great pleasure of serving the people of Newport West, and in our neck of the woods we boast a unique flight of 14 locks, the Cefn flight, which rises 160 feet in just half a mile. That must have been an amazing sight in its heyday. Such locks and canals are a legacy of the engineering wonder of the industrial revolution, and they also make up part of the Monmouthshire and Brecon canal network, which is widely recognised as being one of the most beautifully located set of waterways in Britain. I give a shout out to the Monmouthshire, Brecon and Abergavenny Canals Trust for all the work that it does, and in particular to Councillor Yvonne Forsey and the other volunteers in Newport West.

Our canals are no longer the arteries of trade that they were 200 years ago. The car, bike, van and truck have all come through the middle of them—literally. Today, canals and riverways mainly provide other functions—possibly too many to list in the short time I have to speak, which only shows their importance. We have already heard that they offer free and accessible outdoor space and recreation for millions of people. Indeed, Adam Jogee, who works in my office, and his fiancée Alison Lawther, alongside two of their friends, Mark Streather and Allison Katz, took the chance to stay on a canal boat during a recent recess. It was Adam’s first time on a canal, and he said that although it was a little chilly at night they had a great time on the canals around Bosworth, Stoke Golding and Nuneaton. I hope the hon. Member for Lichfield is pleased to know that on this side of the House we do not just praise our canals but use and cherish them, too.

Our canals provide homes for boaters; importantly, they help to prevent floods; and they have given us a network of green corridors steeped in rich industrial history that is unlike anywhere else in the world. Our waterways are also home to tens of thousands of different species, including some of our most precious creatures, such as bats, water voles and dormice, all of which are at risk of extinction. This debate gives us an opportunity to air our concerns and bring attention to the fact that we all need to do more and go further. Given that the United Kingdom sits in the bottom 10% of countries globally when it comes to biodiversity, it seems obvious that we should do everything in our power to protect the unique habitats we have and the plants and wildlife that call them home. That is what His Majesty’s Opposition will do when we win the next election.

We are broadly at one on the issue, but I cannot let the Minister leave before I have raised a number of specific issues. I know she would expect nothing less. She knows that the job of protecting and developing our phenomenal canal and waterway network falls largely to the Canal & River Trust, so why have Ministers postponed the announcement of the trust’s grant, which provides around a quarter of its funding? It was due to be announced on 1 July. The fact that the Government—well, two Prime Ministers ago—were collapsing is no excuse not to ensure a sustainable and long-term programme of support for the trust, so why, as the final leaves fall from the trees, have we still not heard from the Government, despite their assurances that the overdue funding would be allocated in autumn? The delay is threatening the future of our canals and of all those who rely on them. Furthermore, it makes it more difficult for the trust to plan for the future and hampers the progress of a number of large projects that are designed to help to build and shape much-needed resilience to the harsh and increasingly frequent effects of climate change.

Indeed, the Office for Environmental Protection—a body set up by the Government only last year—has received a complaint describing the constant delays as being

“at risk of becoming the default culture within Defra”,

and just weeks ago the Government failed to meet their own legal deadline to introduce targets on clean air, land and water. There have been many more missed deadlines, quietly scrapped funds and delays to important legislation—I am thinking in particular of the Animal Welfare (Kept Animals) Bill.

As we discuss the future of Britain’s canals and waterways, I am conscious of the fact that, behind the grand environmental claims, Ministers constantly make the wrong choices. The Opposition believe that is unacceptable, and we want Ministers to be active and to speak out much more quickly. It is not hard to wonder whether the delay in the announcement of the grant for the Canal & River Trust is about whether to slash it or scrap it. If that happens, the trust has been clear that it will not be able to maintain its work of protecting our precious waterways.

At a time of ecological and economic crisis, Britain’s canals and waterways are a haven for wildlife and people alike. I ask the Minister to heed our calls, and the calls made by Government Members, and commit herself to protecting our heritage, saving our wildlife and preserving much-needed opportunities for future generations by properly funding Britain’s canals and waterways, and to do that today.

[Sir Robert Syms (in the Chair)]

Before I call the Minister, let me remind the hon. Member for Lichfield (Michael Fabricant), who introduced the debate, that he might get a minute or two to make a winding-up speech.

--- Later in debate ---

[Rebecca Pow]

I thank my right hon. Friend for that pertinent point. I will refer to it a bit later in my speech, but it is a really serious point. Of course, infrastructure is affected by climate change and extremes of weather, which are putting more pressure on some assets. As well as the opportunities around electrification, there are similar opportunities with active travel and the cycle networks along our canals, which allow people to get away from roadsides and travel in a much fresher and cleaner environment. If we can get more people to take to their bikes, it will help us reduce carbon emissions and tackle the net zero targets.

Let me go back to water security, which is really important. Our navigation authorities have an important role to play in this endeavour in times of both flooding and drought. They can help by managing water levels, and the long dry spells this summer have highlighted how the canal network could increasingly play a role in water transfer, particularly from west to east. My hon. Friend the Member for Stroud mentioned taking water from the wet west to the east. All these things obviously have to be carefully worked out, and I have spoken to the Canal & River Trust about how such opportunities would work. I particularly welcome Affinity Water’s plan to work with the Canal & River Trust to transfer water through the Grand Union canal, and I know others are looking at other such opportunities.

As has been touched on, the network has a really important historic value, with much of it being more than 200 years old. It matters a great deal to people and a lot of restoration work is under way. We have heard so much about volunteers and I, too, thank them. So many volunteers have played a key role in restoring sections of our canals, and I particularly want to mention that I had a wonderful trip to the Monty canal in Montgomeryshire, where I met lots of volunteers and saw the work they were doing. They have benefited from a £16 million levelling-up fund grant. Members have mentioned the levelling-up benefits of canals, and that money is being spent well in the community to restore the fantastic canal in the centre of town.

[Ruth Jones]

The Minister is talking about funding; when can we expect the funding announcement for the Canal & River Trust that was supposed to be made back in July? Rather than the parliamentary “shortly”, can we have an actual date?

[Rebecca Pow]

The hon. Lady mentioned that in her speech, as did others, so I will come to it now. Many Members mentioned the annual grant to the Canal & River Trust, so I want to explain a bit about the grant, how it happened and the history around it. The grant stands at £52.6 million until 2027 and currently represents about one quarter of the trust’s annual income, which means that the trust derives three quarters of its annual income from other sources. That distinction is very important, because one of the trust’s objectives when it was created in 2012 with charitable status was that it would be free of the public sector constraints that its predecessor, British Waterways, was subject to. Freedom from public sector constraints meant that the trust would be free to develop other income generation strategies, including by benefiting from charitable donations and legacies, charity tax reliefs, third-party project funding and borrowing on the financial markets.

It is also worth mentioning that in 2012 the trust was endowed by the Government with a significant property and investment portfolio, which is currently valued at around £1.1 billion, and the returns were to be used as income. The clear intent was that the trust would reduce its dependence on the Government grant and foster increasing self-sufficiency by providing access to income streams not available to public corporations and by stimulating new efficiencies.

I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Lichfield that British Waterways received more funding than the Canal & River Trust: indeed, that was the intent behind establishing an independent charity to undertake that function. However, it is important that we compare like with like when looking at the evolution of Government funding. British Waterways, a public corporation, was responsible for the waterways in England, Wales and Scotland, whereas the Canal & River Trust—which is a charity, with access to charitable benefits and tax breaks—is responsible for England and Wales only. Scottish Canals funding represented £10.5 million in 2011-12, and the existing grant increased by £10 million in 2015-16 and has been inflation-adjusted until April 2022. It is then required by the grant agreement to be flat for the final five years of the grant period.