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Greater London Authority Bill

My Lords, we support this amendment, as we did in Grand Committee. We have received a copy of the letter from the Secretary of State to the Mayor. To summarise it, this issue is in the ““too difficult”” tray. The letter expresses sympathy with some points but refers to problems such as the regulation regime and geographical difficulties. I do not think that the matter can be left in that too difficult tray; there are issues of water management that must be faced. To leave them to paragraphs and sections in other pieces of policy is not a satisfactory way of dealing with this. I guess that we are too late in the process of this Bill to deal with it but I urge the Government to think seriously about a subject on which public thinking is moving very fast. As the noble Lord acknowledged—by leaving space between the lines rather than by actually saying it—there is a great deal of public dissatisfaction with how our water is managed. These issues need to be pulled together. In the case of London having a level of regional government, that is where they should be dealt with.