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Water Management: S&T Report

My Lords, I am very pleased to have the opportunity to make this maiden speech on an issue of such importance and one that ties in with a whole range of my interests, including the environment, science and, of course, health. I may also mention international development, not purely because water and the disposal of waste are matters of life and, all too often, death in the developing world, but because we are joined together due to climate change. There is a further international dimension, which I will come back to in a moment. In making this maiden speech, I also take the opportunity to say thank you for the welcome and friendliness that I have received from all parts of your Lordships’ House, as well as from the officers of the House and all the staff. It is very good to have one’s simple and ignorant questions answered with such tact and friendliness and very nice to be welcomed at the door of the Chamber in such a friendly manner. In researching this speech, I also had the opportunity to make use of the Library for the first time. I asked the staff about previous times when water management was an issue of national importance. I am not going to talk about sewers and Bazalgette, despite the obvious health interest, but in the information that I was given I was struck by the fact that the drainage of the fens took over 1,000 years, caused economic and environmental damage as well as benefits and was highly contentious. I was given an extract from the 1911 edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica, which said that the drainage of Whitham fen was finally concluded, "““although not without much rioting and lawlessness””." I imagine that we can learn something from history, but perhaps the main point here is to urge all parties that we should make progress as quickly as possible with the least economic and ecological damage and with the least contention. Let me make three points about this excellent report, which I think will stand the test of time in drawing out the important questions and pointing to the important directions to be taken over the next few years. The first point has already been made and concerns transparency and the importance of engaging people, as there are many parties here, including the public. I was pleased to hear what was said about the economic level of leakage and the changes that have been made. Although what has been done may be a useful technical measure, I imagine that this sounds to some parts of the public like a rather slippery way of describing waste. Of course, the public are also involved in connection with the point that the noble Lord made about profligacy in the use of water. Many parties need to be brought together for us to have a coherent picture of what we are trying to achieve, and as yet that has not happened—the story is not yet told. My second point, which the report makes strongly, concerns the fact that there are many official parties, each with their own purposes, with some overlap and with some conflicting incentives. There needs to be change if we are to see decisions made in the longer term about what is needed. As the report says, there is a great need for a much more holistic approach. All of that brings me to my final point. As I read the report, I was struck by two things. The first is the level of innovation. There is an enormous amount of innovation, whether in recycling, the handling of waste or the technology of the materials that are used. That relates to my international point. This issue affects everybody around the world—in some parts more than perhaps here—and there is a question about whether we in Britain are learning from what works elsewhere in the world and whether we are hearing and understanding those lessons. It seems to me that over the next five years, let us say, we will see some significant changes. We will see more innovation. Some of the standing conditions that the report talks about may have shifted. We may have seen the weather getting worse in the way referred to earlier by a noble Lord. But we may also see the balance of the economy and the environment change over this period so that decisions may be different. My first observation on the report is the level of innovation and how fast it is moving. But my second observation is the inability to make the long-term decisions. We do not have the framework, as the report describes, to make the long-term decisions that are needed. In commending and congratulating the noble Earl and Members of the Select Committee on providing such a good, wide-ranging report, I come to my final conclusion that while the report sets out all those issues, the challenge is for all parties, not just for government, to determine how to make use of the innovation that we see everywhere and how to make the decisions that are needed so that there is not a long period of economic and environmental damage and a great deal of contention.