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Water Strategy

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship today, Mrs. Humble. I concur that the best beaches are in the north-west of England, particularly in your constituency. I offer the traditional congratulations to the hon. Member for Truro and St. Austell (Matthew Taylor) on securing this debate and raising this issue. It is somewhat intimidating when the hon. Member who leads an Adjournment debate clearly knows much more about the subject than the Minister who responds. I pay tribute to the hon. Gentleman. I am sure that the former hon. Member, Sir Percy Harris, would have been extremely proud of him. I send him my best wishes. Let me answer the questions as best I can in the brief time available to me. It is best if I start by responding to the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Martin Horwood). Our review of the charges is not about whether there should be change, but about how it should be brought about. Therefore, the hon. Member for Falmouth and Camborne (Julia Goldsworthy) can be reassured that this is part of a process to change policy and not a review about whether we should be changing policy. The decision and the direction of travel are clear; I put that on the record. I shall try to get through the policy points and answer the questions. Clearly, policy has to change because of the points that hon. Members have made about water supply in parts of the country, water affordability and the equity of water bills—given the modern circumstances that we are in—and because of the important point, made by a number of hon. Members, about the relationship between water use and energy efficiency in the home and in buildings. The lowest hanging fruit is energy efficiency, and the lowest hanging fruit in that regard is better use of hot water. We need to tie the relevant policies together, and my strategy does exactly that, as the hon. Member for Truro and St. Austell suggested. Climate change is the issue that will force us to change. If we do not get our policies in place, we will suffer the consequences. So that is important as well. Hon. Members mentioned that 2008 is a critical year for water policy. That is so. The ““Future Water”” strategy, which a number of hon. Members mentioned, sets out our high-level vision for the water sector in England. The main goals of the policy are to improve the quality of our rivers and lakes and the wildlife that they support; to manage sustainably the risks from all types of flooding and coastal erosion; to ensure a sustainable use of water resources and fair, affordable and cost-reflective water charges; to cut the greenhouse gas emissions associated with water supply and use; and to make adaptation to climate change and other pressures part of the business-as-usual activity in water policy and management. That strategy is not a blueprint, but it sets out the priorities for water management and some of the steps that we need to take. On the Ofwat price review, I want to say a few words about the latest periodic review of water company price limits, or PRO9. The review process is explained in detail on Ofwat's website, as hon. Members know. Last year, I published a statement of obligations for companies and regulators to bring together and describe the environmental drinking water legislation that will apply to the water industry over the PRO9 period. Looking to the longer term, alongside ““Future Water””, we published draft statutory social and environmental guidance to Ofwat. That answers the point made by the hon. Member for Truro and St. Austell about what happens upstream. I concur on that point and will answer in more detail if I have time.