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Flood and Water Management Bill

I take my hon. Friend's point. The Secretary of State alluded to the potentially catastrophic effects if a reservoir had been affected, and the same could be said of the impact on critical infrastructure, including the electricity system. Many of us will remember the images of the emergency services desperately trying to protect the sub-station. That is a lesson for us all, and I want to come to the issue of critical infrastructure in a moment. The Bill takes forward recommendations from the review into the 2007 floods by Sir Michael Pitt. It is now more than a year since the Pitt review reported, with a comprehensive set of more than 90 recommendations. The Conservative party supported those recommendations and we are glad that we have the opportunity to consider legislation to implement many of them. I have consistently urged the Government to introduce legislation, so we welcome the Flood and Water Management Bill. All Members will be aware that the Select Committee on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs suggested that the Government should wait until the opportunity arose to have a comprehensive flood and water Bill. However, my view—and, I think, that of most hon. Members—is that we should not delay implementing essential measures, and the Government were right to bring the Bill forward. The recent floods in Cumbria sealed that view. We will therefore work constructively with the Government to ensure that the Bill is strengthened and reaches the statute book as quickly as possible. There are some key measures in the Bill that Conservatives have called for and that we will seek to ensure are sufficiently clear and robust. First, the confusing and overlapping roles of central Government, agencies, local authorities and the emergency services, which were evident in the 2007 floods, must be brought to an end. The Chief Fire Officers Association described the "institutional confusion" that beleaguered the recovery effort then. The Pitt review called for people and organisations to be held to account and for simple structures and clear outcomes. We must have clearly defined responsibilities. We therefore welcome the provisions in the Bill to give the Environment Agency strategic oversight and to spell out in law that, in most cases, the lead local flood authority with clear responsibility for flood defence will be a unitary authority or county council. In fact, that is something that the Government first advocated nearly five years ago, in their "Making space for water" document. We also welcome the measures to improve urban drainage and create requirements for new developments to incorporate sustainable solutions. For too long there have been barriers to establishing such systems, which, as the Conservative party's quality of life review highlighted, have the potential to reduce flood risk from surface water. By requiring new development to focus on permeable paving, ponds and soakaways, we can help to respond to the pressures of climate change, which will lead to more spells of prolonged rainfall. We also welcome the emphasis on information sharing, so that local flood authorities can better co-ordinate their responses. We will want to ensure greater transparency on flood information, so that local households and businesses get the information that they deserve. We also support the provisions in the Bill on reservoir safety, although we must ensure that they are framed in a way that does not impose unnecessary burdens on owners of small reservoirs, many of which pose no risk to people at all as they are sited on agricultural land. That is an issue that we will need to attend to in Committee. We broadly support the provisions on infrastructure in part 2 of the Bill that require large projects to be open to competition, which has the potential to help reduce costs to water customers. We are particularly glad to see clause 42, which deals with the problems of charging for surface water drainage—the so-called rain tax—that have caused so much difficulty for scouts, guides, places of worship and other community groups, which were faced with unacceptably high bills. The oversight role of the regulator still needs to be looked at, but overall the proposal is welcome. Back in July, we called on the Government to give companies the discretion that they needed to protect such groups and ensure that new charges were properly monitored by Ofwat. It took Ministers a long time to act, but I am glad to have encouraged them, because they got there in the end and I congratulate them on that. There are, however, some aspects of the Bill on which we seek clarity from the Government. Some legitimate concerns have been raised by third parties about whether the Bill, in seeking better to co-ordinate the response to flood risk, is too centralising. The National Farmers Union, for instance, has argued that the Environment Agency's role is "power heavy" but "duty light". The Environment Agency gains a strategic oversight role for flood risk management, which is certainly right in principle, but in practice we must ensure that it is framed so as not to sideline local concerns. As the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee argued, a national strategy is important, but it must not come at the expense of local knowledge, not least because flooding is, in essence, local. The Committee warned against over-centralising measures, stating:""We are concerned that the draft Bill establishes a rigid vertical structure, which potentially precludes pragmatic cross-boundary area-based approaches that accommodate local people's views and knowledge."" Flooding is a national concern, but it always impacts locally. That is why, for instance, local drainage boards are so important in harnessing local expertise and concern. It is therefore vital that we get clarity on how the national strategy will be drawn up and on how it will be approved. The Bill requires the Environment Agency to consult widely when drawing up the strategy, and requires the strategy to be laid before Parliament. Democratic oversight of the process will be crucial to public confidence, however, and ensuring accountability for such an important framework will be vital. We would therefore like Ministers to explain more about how they envisage the process of approval working. Will the EFRA Committee be able to scrutinise the strategy before it is agreed, for example? With regard to how the national strategy is applied, the Government need to be clearer about how it will fit in with local strategies devised by lead flood authorities. The Bill puts a responsibility on local authorities to develop their own local flood strategies, but it also requires those strategies to be consistent with the national strategy. In that case, how much discretion will local authorities have to diverge from the national strategy set by the Environment Agency? We also want further clarification on the measures in clause 38, which give the Environment Agency the responsibility to weigh up the competing interests of conservation and people's enjoyment of the environment, and the potentially harmful consequences of increased flooding or coastal erosion. That is a difficult balance to strike, but we must ensure that local people are involved throughout the decision-making process and that the process is fully accountable. We are also keen to consider in more detail schedule 1, which relates to the designation of features that could have a significant effect on flood management. The Bill enables the Environment Agency, a lead local flood authority, a district council or an internal drainage board to designate a structure if they believe that its existence or location affects a flood or coastal erosion risk. Following such a designation, the owner of the feature may not change it without the consent of the responsible authority. It is right that assets that could have a serious impact on flooding should be properly accounted for and managed responsibly, but we need to look closely at the implications of the Bill's drafting. Network Rail, for example, has raised concerns about the designation of its assets, and we will be keen to ensure that proportionality is maintained so that this process does not become complex or costly, and that an appeals procedure is in place. Beyond concerns over where the Bill might prove too centralising, we also seek clarity on the costs arising from certain provisions. We will seek more details from the Government of the costs that will fall on local authorities in taking on their new responsibilities, because that is worrying them. With council finances stretched, local authorities will need reassurance that additional duties can be afforded without increasing the burden on council tax payers. Similarly, we have questions on how the additional cost of maintaining sustainable urban drainage systems will be met. Ministers have said:""We recognise that longer term funding must be in place from around 2018, and are considering a number of options to address the funding of SUDS maintenance in the long term."" They have also said:""The Department will ensure that any increased costs to local authorities are fully funded to avoid upward pressure on council tax."" Despite assurances that medium-term costs will be covered by plans to transfer private sewers to water companies, it is by no means clear that that is the case. The Local Government Association has said that these assumptions are based on seven-year-old data from only 12 per cent. of local authorities, and so are hardly reliable. The provisions might also lead to water companies being hit twice: once for the cost of the sewer transfer and again for the long-term costs of maintaining sustainable urban drainage systems. These are sensible proposals to help to manage the risk of flooding posed by surface water drainage, but in the current economic climate, the Government need to give more detail on how they will be funded, rather than simply relying on historic and incomplete data, and on potential solutions that might emerge in the future. We welcome this legislation, but, in some respects, it does not go far enough. It will fall to a future Government to bring forward further legislation to cover those aspects that have not made it into this Bill. It was clear from the draft Bill, when it was published in April, that Ministers originally intended to legislate for elements of the Cave and Walker reviews into competition and affordability. The consultation paper said:""The UK Government and Welsh Assembly Government will each assess"" the recommendations of the reviews. It went on:""Where they believe it necessary to legislate to implement any changes as a result of these reviews they each intend to do so as part of this Bill."" But that has not been possible, not least because the Government started the reviews too late, and have therefore left themselves with no time. Many of Professor Cave's recommendations on abstraction trading, competition and legal separation will require legislation. Over a year after his interim report, which made a number of recommendations—accepted in full by Ministers—it is disappointing that this rare opportunity to legislate for them is being missed. The recently published Walker report contains a number of recommendations that link directly with the aims of this Bill, particularly the elements relating to efficiency, which could help to change the way people think about their water use and help to reduce the risk of the severe shortages that would require the temporary bans legislated for in the Bill. Referring to the consultation on the draft Bill, DEFRA implied that greater efficiency measures, including duties on companies, could be forthcoming in the Bill, but it will fall to future legislation to introduce them. The water industry is desperate for measures to tackle the rising problem of water debt, which the whole House should be concerned about. The problem disproportionately impacts on those low-income families who pay their bills and subsidise non-payers by £12 a year. Simple measures in the Walker report to provide for a named bill payer could have been introduced in this Bill, and would not have unduly slowed its progress or jeopardised the vital flooding measures. Such confusion firmly underlines the need for a new, joined-up approach to the water industry, which is why we are committed to introducing a White Paper to bring together the Cave and Walker proposals and take the opportunity of the current break in the regulatory cycle to make sensible changes to the way in which water companies are regulated, and put customers at the heart of the industry. We need to do more between floods, rather than just reacting to them when they happen. Reviewing our natural water flows and cycles, and slowing water down, will help to reduce flood risk. We therefore support calls made by many non-governmental organisations, including WWF, for an approach to flood management that places a much greater focus on the use of natural processes. That can have great benefits, as it can increase the storage capacity of the land and act to slow water down, both of which are important in militating against flooding.