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Flood and Water Management Bill

This may well be the last speech that I make on a piece of environmental legislation before I retire at the next election. I have the honour of chairing the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, and we have done a number of reports on flooding and the implementation of the Pitt review. We have also been involved in the pre-legislative scrutiny of this Bill, so I felt it only right to make a final and modest contribution to this debate. I am grateful for the kind words from the Secretary of State acknowledging the work that the Committee has done, and I should like to begin by putting on record my appreciation of the work done by the Committee's staff. The Clerks, the inquiry managers and our special advisers are the unsung heroes of parliamentary scrutiny work. They do not get the headlines or the opportunity to speak in debates like this, but pre-legislative scrutiny of the quality that we have been able to achieve would not take place without their efforts. Perhaps controversially in the light of observations made in the debate so far, our report recommended a delay in introducing this legislation. That was not because we did not want the Environment Agency and others to take on an important co-ordinating role in developing a flood-risk strategy, especially given the failure of the surface water arrangements that was exposed in 2007. We want that strategy to come into force, but our report was a way of putting down a marker. As so many contributions have already suggested, the issue of water cannot easily be disaggregated into a lot of little bits and pieces. As the Secretary of State's own policy document, "Making Space for Water", acknowledges, all the functions have to be integrated. For example, we must take account of Anna Walker's review of how water should be paid for, and how we can optimise its use and minimise its waste. We must also heed the other work that has been done on competition in the water industry, and the question of who is responsible for what in any aspect of the management of water. That inevitably means that this is a big and complex matter—as witnessed by the fact that the original Bill had 269 clauses. In contrast, the Bill before us today has been reduced to 49 clauses and four annexes. That is a remarkable piece of editorial activity, and I congratulate the drafters on their achievement.