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Flood and Water Management Bill

The Bill has received thorough scrutiny in the other place. We have listened to both stakeholders and parliamentarians and now have before us an even better Bill than that introduced three months ago. I think that all parties recognise the importance of the provisions. I am looking forward to working with the House in maintaining momentum, ensuring that this vital Bill makes it on to the statute book. Noble Lords will be aware that the core of the Bill implements Sir Michael Pitt’s recommendations requiring urgent legislation from his review of the devastating floods of 2007. Although climate change projections suggest that severe weather events will occur more frequently in future, we all know that flooding can happen anytime. The recent floods in Cumbria were a stark reminder of that. We will have to continue living with the threat of flooding. One in six homes in England and Wales are in flood risk areas, including vast swathes of major cities such as Portsmouth and Hull. We cannot write off these areas. We are an island nation that is becoming ever more crowded, yet we want to see more new homes built, new businesses founded and communities thrive, and rightly so. That is why the Bill is so important. The risk of flooding will not go away, so we must manage it. Just as we must help to protect people from the dangers and costs of too much water, we must also protect and manage the supply of water to the consumer. Therefore, where opportunities have presented themselves, we have also included priority water legislation in the Bill. We recognise that there is still much proposed water legislation to bring forward from the draft Bill, and from the recommendations of the recent reviews by Anna Walker and Professor Martin Cave, and we remain committed to bringing forward further legislation at the next opportunity. Part 1 of the Bill is about defining roles and responsibilities for all sources of flood risk. The Environment Agency will have a duty to develop a national strategy for flood and coastal erosion risk management in England, and Welsh Ministers will have a similar role in Wales. County and unitary authorities will lead on managing all local sources of flood risk, including surface water flooding, and will ensure that local flood risk management strategies are developed. As the House will know only too well, water pays no heed to political boundaries, so the Bill encourages partnership working by introducing a duty to co-operate and by enabling all flood risk management authorities to enter into agreements with each other. This is crucial, as flood risk will only ever be successfully managed if all those involved succeed in working together. In conjunction with wider works powers and the adoption of a risk management approach, these national and local strategies will ensure the effective management of flood risk and the delivery of wider objectives. Regional flood defence committees will be replaced by regional flood and coastal committees with a remit that is extended to include coastal erosion. These committees will retain their executive function in determining the use of the local levy and will approve the regional spending programme of the Environment Agency. Schedule 1 gives powers to protect assets that perform an important role in protecting communities from flooding or coastal erosion. The schedule provides for compensation where powers of entry are used unreasonably and requires comprehensive appeals mechanisms to be set out in regulations. Schedule 2 makes important but detailed changes to existing legislation, including provision for local authority overview and scrutiny committees to hold to account all flood risk and coastal erosion risk management authorities in their area. Schedule 3 will help us to manage the risk of surface water flooding by encouraging the use of sustainable drainage systems. New developments and redevelopments will need to have their drainage approved by the county or unitary authority. In addressing a key recommendation of Sir Michael Pitt’s review, there will no longer be the automatic right to connect surface water to the sewer system. Having listened to debate in the other place, we have amended the Bill so that we can ensure that applications for the approval of drainage are processed in a specified time, so the planning system is not held up. We have also been speaking to Water UK to clarify how water companies will feed information on sewer capacity into the development process. Sustainable drainage systems that drain more than one property will be adopted by the county or unitary authority. We are committed to ensuring that this new burden is funded, and we will publish a clear way forward that takes account of the circumstances faced by both local authorities and developers in time for the implementation of these provisions. Reservoir legislation must be brought up to date so that reservoirs are regulated on the basis of the risk that they pose and not on how large they are. This will make communities living near to reservoirs safer. The criteria that will be used to determine what constitutes a high-risk reservoir will be set out in regulations and guidance, on which there will be consultation. Part 2 of the Bill contains a variety of provisions, including powers for the Environment Agency, local authorities and internal drainage boards to carry out flood works for nature conservation or cultural heritage. This complements the provision in Part 1 of the Bill that places a duty on flood risk management authorities to contribute to sustainable development objectives in their flood risk work. Similarly, it builds on the risk management approach in Part 1 by amending the Building Act to enable any future regulations requiring flood resistance or resilience to apply to smaller repairs as well as major work. Part 2 of the Bill also contains priority measures that would better prepare us for times of water shortage, and protect water supplies to the consumer. We have widened the list of uses of water that water companies can control through hosepipe bans during periods of water shortage, and the UK Government and Welsh Assembly Government can remove uses from the list, as well as add to it. There are also several other measures around the regulation of water companies, including reform of the special administration regime and the introduction of a new regime for the delivery of large, complex or unusual infrastructure projects. Water companies will be able to introduce concessionary schemes for surface water drainage charges. I know this is a provision of particular interest to the Bishops and others, as it will safeguard religious and community groups from unaffordable rises in their water bills—a feature known to the House in the not so distant past. We go further in this Bill to address water affordability. The other place seized the chance to enable water companies to bring forward other charging schemes, including social tariffs to help vulnerable groups in society who are struggling to pay their bills. We have also taken action to alleviate the burden of bad debt in the water industry, which increases the bills of normal law-abiding citizens by an average of £12 per year. For household customers, water companies will now have a named person responsible for paying bills, when the occupier of the property is not the owner of the property. This will help lessen leaver debt, which is responsible for about 44 per cent of the bad debt problem. These were priority recommendations from Anna Walker’s review of water affordability, and we intend to consult on the best way to implement them, just as we intend to consult on the rest of the review as a whole. Part 3 of the Bill contains a power which allows for other consequential amendments to existing legislation to be made. We have included this provision in order to pave the way for unifying floods legislation at the next opportunity. Throughout the course of the Bill, we have strived to work through the concerns of stakeholders and parliamentarians. The Government brought forward several amendments to reflect stakeholder concerns and those of the opposition Benches in the other place. In other cases we have been able to provide assurances off the face of the Bill. Funding is inevitably a key concern. I reiterate that we are fully committed to funding all net new burdens for local authorities that will arise from the Bill. We are establishing a joint implementation review panel with the Local Government Association to keep costs and assumptions under review, and oversee skills and capacity issues to see what more can be done. Another significant area of debate has been the continued provision of affordable insurance for those who live in flood risk areas. This is something that both the Government and the insurance industry are committed to maintain, and we continue to work closely with the Association of British Insurers to discuss the future of flood insurance. I know that my colleague in the other place, the honourable Member for Ogmore, has a meeting in place to look further into this issue. We have met representatives from the Fire Brigades Union on the subject of a statutory duty for the fire and rescue service, and with the Horticultural Trades Association about the code of practice for temporary hosepipe bans during periods of water shortage. We have also been working with representatives from the farming industry and others with reservoir interests, to assure them that the reservoir provisions will not create onerous burdens, especially for small landowners. I hope that this demonstrates to noble Lords our willingness to work through wider concerns related to the Bill outside of this place. I now look forward to working with noble Lords to scrutinise and deliver this Bill to the statute book. I finish by praising those who have piloted the Bill through its stages in the other place, especially the Secretary of State, and the Minister for the Natural and Marine Environment, Huw Irranca-Davies. It has progressed swiftly but steadily to this House, and in a collaborative manner, which I am sure will continue in our deliberations. I commend the Bill to the House.