Water White Paper Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
Thomas Docherty
Main Page: Thomas Docherty (Labour - Dunfermline and West Fife)Department Debates - View all Thomas Docherty's debates with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
(12 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
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Richard Benyon
One of the core principles that motivates us in DEFRA is food security. We are deeply indebted to the farming community for the innovation that it has shown and for its ability to cope with changing weather patterns, while continuing to produce quality food. During the drought last year, we engaged with abstractors, many of them from the farming community. We found that the Government have many tools at hand to deal with the problems now. There was some very innovative work by the Environment Agency, the National Farmers Union and other organisations on that. The White Paper addresses the urgent and available methods, but also considers a new, changeable abstraction scheme for the long term that encourages farmers to continue to produce food.
Thomas Docherty (Dunfermline and West Fife) (Lab)
I think that there will be concern at the failure to separate the retail arm of competition for non-domestic customers. May I press the Minister to set out the timetable for the introduction of a zero-threshold market for all non-domestic customers?
Richard Benyon
That is a clear priority. We hope to have a water Bill to take those methods forward. We looked closely at the recommendations of the Cave report and those from a number of other quarters about retail separation. We are making substantial changes on competition, but we were not persuaded of the need for wholesale reorganisation and separation. We want to ensure that the water sector remains open to increased investment. We hope to make changes with a water Bill in the next Session of Parliament.