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Water Strategy

I did use the word ““personally””. As my hon. Friend said, 2008 is a crunch year in relation to setting policies for the decades ahead. The Government's water strategy is at a critical point. There is shared awareness that our current approach to water is unsustainable and that climate change will make the need for action only more urgent. Several environmental organisations have come together under the umbrella of the ““Blueprint for Water”” and identified a series of policy opportunities that will be present in 2008 that could put us on a more realistic and sustainable path. First, the Government's water strategy provides a welcome opportunity to review social and environmental guidance to Ofwat. The issue of surface water drainage will coincide with the final report of the Pitt review and the Government's response to it. As 600 households in my constituency were flooded last summer, I am particularly interested in those documents. The control of the amount of phosphates in domestic laundry products, which sounds like a narrow issue, is a welcome reminder that climate change is not the only environmental issue that we face. Other policies this year will have an impact on water usage, including the finalisation of regional spatial strategies. In Gloucestershire, the RSS response to the widespread flooding there was to increase its housing allocation to 56,000, thereby increasing urbanisation and, quite possibly, the risk of flooding. That is a strange and unjoined-up piece of Government thinking. The EU water framework directive requires all member states to restore the ecology of their rivers, lakes and wetlands by 2015, for which member states' draft plans, including that of the UK Government, are needed this year. The mid-term review of the common agricultural policy will provide a Europe-wide opportunity to address pollution and ecology in relation to agriculture, which impacts on water. Above all, the periodic review of water prices—PR09—provides a blueprint for water that identifies an opportunity to"““protect nationally and internationally important wetland sites by amending or revoking damaging abstraction licences and taking action on water quality; take forward large-scale water efficiency programmes; and tackle water quality problems at source through catchment management initiatives that offer many benefits for biodiversity and the environment.””" Those comments chime with what my hon. Friend said in his speech, and I commend them all to the Minister. Currently, there is not a good example of joined-up thinking. Perhaps the combination of PR09 and the water strategy offers something deeper: the opportunity for a complete rethink on the role of Ofwat and its relationship with the water companies, consumers and the environment, which is needed. My hon. Friend spoke about the need for a more imaginative approach to land use from Ofwat, to deliver clean water at lower cost and with a lower environmental impact. I commend that idea to the Minister. Let me give an example from Gloucestershire. During last summer's floods, Severn Trent reassured the Gloucestershire people that the guaranteed standards scheme would compensate them for the loss of their water supply following the loss of the Mythe water treatment works. However, it later reneged on that assurance, denying compensation that would have cost it about £10 million, simultaneously assuring City investors that their £300 million profits would not be unduly affected by the floods. Astonishingly, Ofwat has so far backed Severn Trent—I say so far because my conversations with Ofwat on this issue continue—on the grounds that the floods were beyond its control. That is true, but all floods are beyond the control of water companies, and they are explicitly included in the guaranteed standards scheme. The submissions to Pitt from the police and others show that Severn Trent's response to the flooding of the Mythe contrasted quite sharply with National Grid's ability to notify emergency services in time to protect the Walham substation and prevent flooding there. Perhaps the fundamental problem is that Ofwat's remit is from a bygone era of privatisation, when the economic viability of water companies was the top priority, rather than consumers' interests and the protection of the environment. The Government's water strategy statement, ““Future Water””, looks complacent on that front, because it baldly states that the"““current regulatory framework for water works well and has delivered real social and environmental benefits.””" However, I have some more examples. Ofwat still pursues the concept of an economic level of leakage, as though the millions of gallons of water that are leaked by the likes of Thames Water would be acceptable if that could be proved to be economic. The energy used to clean and pump water is wasted entirely if a huge percentage is leaked. That is no longer acceptable in the era in which we are supposed to be tackling climate change. Energy is also wasted if a huge proportion of the water that reaches people's houses and offices is flushed down the toilet. I acknowledge that the Government are beginning to take action on that issue, but that is happening painfully slowly. Why are not rainwater harvesting and grey-water recycling, which are relatively cheap to install in new builds but expensive to fit retrospectively, compulsory in all new buildings? My hon. Friend pointed out that metering would help. He also explained how it could be combined with increasing block tariffs to safeguard the less well-off in society. The Government accept that fitting meters will, on average, reduce household water consumption by about 10 per cent. Priority areas for water metering should be those where water is scarce and where bills are high, such as in the south-west, but if we factor into the equation energy use, as well as water use, the argument for universal metering becomes unanswerable. But on this issue, again, despite years of discussion there is to be yet another review. The combination of metering and the laissez-faire regulatory approach will have social impacts. I do not have time to explore the relevant options except to commend many of the recommendations based on combining tariffs or benefits and learning from the affordability pilot in the south-west. Obviously, the answer to many of the questions will probably be yet more consultation, but the Government must be aware, after years of debate on such issues, that consultation is not a substitute for action but a recipe for continued social and environmental harm, while we all wait for them finally to act.