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Water Strategy

I thank the hon. Lady for making that point. I certainly try to emphasise to constituents who come to my advice surgeries expressing concern about the difficulty that they have in paying their bills the potential benefits that the pilot scheme could bring. It makes me wonder whether the scheme has ended up being a lot more expensive than the Government had planned, because not only is it helping to improve the efficiency of people's water use, but it has highlighted how many people are not claiming the benefits to which they are entitled. That goes back to one of the points made earlier in the debate about the need to ensure that data are shared: certainly, a large number of households are not benefiting from entitlements that they should be receiving. There has been some progress, but I am afraid that this feels a bit like ““Groundhog Day”” to me, because that this is probably the third or fourth debate that we have had on this issue since I was elected to Parliament in 2005. In many areas, it feels like one is stuck going round in circles, or perhaps stuck in one of those telephone systems where different menu options keep being presented, but every time an option is selected, one ends up going back to another menu option that directs one back to the start. I would like to give a couple of examples of that type of problem. In addition to debates in Westminster Hall, we have had the opportunity of meeting with both Ofwat and Ministers. Those meetings have always been conducted on a cross-party basis, because there is a real strength of feeling across the whole of the south-west on this issue. On several occasions, Ofwat has directed us to the Minister, saying, ““We are just operating the regulatory framework, you will have to speak to the Minister.”” We then speak to a Minister in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, who says, ““Of course I can look at this, but ultimately it is the Treasury that decides.”” So then we try to meet a Treasury Minister, but we are directed back to DEFRA and back to where we started. That has been a cause of real frustration, and we are yet to secure a meeting with a representative from the Treasury. If the Minister can give us any kind of reassurance that that meeting might happen, many of us would be very happy. There is also frustration about the fact that water poverty is not recognised as being of equal importance to other poverty issues. Fuel poverty is the obvious example, and there are many clear parallels to be drawn with that in terms of the impact that water bills have on those with the lowest incomes and the benefits to the environment that could be achieved by improving water efficiency. I have concerns about how Warm Front operates as a national scheme and about its ability to identify isolated, vulnerable households. Fuel poverty is a problem that has been recognised; there is a winter fuel allowance. In 2004 the Government's ““Cross-Government Review of Water Affordability Report”” identified that by 2010:"““a single pensioner household living on the minimum Pension Credit and paying an average South West water and sewerage bill may be required to pay 7% of disposable income””." So we knew four years ago that, for those pensioners, water bills will be at least as big an issue, if not a greater one, than their fuel bills, yet there is no comparable scheme to provide assistance to them. I am not entirely sure why water poverty is not being recognised by the Government in their actions. The Government are also trying to hit their own target on child poverty. Tackling water affordability in the south-west is one of the key measures needed to allow the Government to hit that target, but responses to the parliamentary questions that I have tabled do not make it clear whether water poverty has any input into the working of the child poverty unit. I found it difficult enough to understand how the unit works, given that the Treasury is responsible for targets on child poverty, yet the answering Department for questions on the unit is the Department for Children, Schools and Families, and the Department for Work and Pensions takes a lead in providing resources for the unit. Again, one feels like one is going round in a circle when trying to work out whom to ask to ensure that water poverty is included for consideration by the Child Poverty Unit. When I asked that question explicitly in November 2007, the answer that I received was that:"““The child poverty public service agreement (PSA) sets out the strategic priorities for Government in tackling child poverty including…reducing poverty through raising incomes, and tackling poor living conditions.””—[Official Report, 26 November 2007; Vol. 468, c. 56-57W.]" A variety of other measures are given, but water poverty is not explicitly mentioned. Will Minister reassure us today that water poverty is actively being considered by the child poverty unit, and that his Department is making representations to the unit to ensure that water poverty is firmly on its agenda? I would like to give one other example from very recent experience of talking to people who have been affected by water quality problems and who are feeling real frustration about the way in which the operation of different Departments has made it very difficult to provide a joined-up approach to or even an understanding of the potential effect of the issue of water quality. On Friday, I spoke to some mussel farmers in my constituency who work on the River Fal. A series of areas that they work in have been downgraded by the Food Standards Agency because of the flesh samples that have been taken from the mussels, which means that the mussels must be moved somewhere else before they can be sold. That creates additional cost for the mussel farmers that threatens their livelihood. The FSA's analysis of the mussels clearly shows that the incidence of a harmful bacterium—E. coli, I think—is rising, which is affecting the water quality. However, the Environment Agency is saying that water quality standards in these areas are improving, so nothing is being done to try to tackle the underlying problem, even though it is manifesting in the quality of mussel flesh. Once again, there is frustration that different Departments and bodies are not working in a joined-up way, and people are finding themselves going round in circles. The hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and my hon. Friend the Member for Truro and St. Austell have gone into some detail about the type of solutions that we need to deal with water problems. The type of environmental solutions that my hon. Friend mentioned—the use of capital-intensive resources to purify water—would help not only water bill payers, but the mussel farmers in the Fal. Such environmental solutions are long-term measures that need to be actively pursued, and it is great to see them included in the Government's strategy.