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Water Supply

My Lords, I have two interests to declare: first, I am a farmer and landowner with a licence to abstract water who has had a reservoir constructed on his own land. Secondly, I live in one of the drier areas of the country where we enjoy the benefits of inter-river basin transfer, so that, although Essex may have less rainfall than Kent, it is not as badly off in terms of water supply. I was a little disturbed at what the Minister said early in his remarks about reservoirs. He implied, if I understood him correctly, that they remove water from availability for use. The fact is that a reservoir is specifically designed and always used to take water in times of surplus and to store it so that it can be used in times of shortage. If it is not built for that purpose, it is not built for any useful purpose at all. I think that we should be clear about that. My question is this, however. I acknowledge all the success that there has been over the last few years in replacing the water infrastructure, although much of it is still extremely old. However, is the Minister satisfied that, despite that success, sufficient allowance has been made over the last one or two decades—certainly since privatisation, during which time we have really seen the huge expansion in funding for this work—to provide adequate resources to deal with the particular problems that we face and the monotonous regularity with which droughts occur?