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Flood and Water Management Bill

My Lords, the Pitt review did a good job. It pointed out the overarching requirement for the clear and appropriate allocation of roles and responsibilities for the management of the different sources of flood risk. As the noble Lord, Lord Smith, has just said, the clarification of responsibilities is a key requirement. This Bill sets out how this allocation of roles and responsibilities is to be determined, which is clearly to be welcomed. It is a great privilege to follow the noble Lord, Lord Smith, who is chairman of the Environment Agency, and to recognise the key role that the Environment Agency is called on to play as the delivery body for the strategic overview for England and Wales. It is perfectly appropriate that that role should lie with the Environment Agency and that the responsibilities for risk management should be shared with a number of other organisations—local authorities, whether unitary or district council, internal drainage authorities, water companies, highway authorities, consultative committees and the like. This Bill clearly helps to determine just how these responsibilities are allocated. Sir Michael Pitt was asking for an integrated approach to flood risk management, which is what the Bill sets out to achieve. However, there is a slight problem in that the legislation is not integrated. The Minister has recognised that this Bill is only part of the draft Bill that was being looked at earlier in the year. We understand why that is. Time would not allow a fuller look at the other parts of the legislation, which an incoming Administration will have to deal with. Others have pointed out that this is just an instalment, but it is an important part. Another even more perplexing bit of legislation, which we dealt with in a rather cursory way in December through a statutory instrument, implemented the EU flood risk regulations. My noble friend Lord Taylor had a debate on this last month. Again, the timing was forced on the Government simply because a bit of well intentioned legislation coming out of Europe to ensure that flooding across the borders of member states could be dealt with in a coherent way had to be implemented into national legislation by December 2009. As so often happens with any Government, two years passed rather faster than expected and the statutory instrument was enacted just a month before this Bill came into this House. That was a great wasted opportunity. No sensible negotiation was able to take place with the Commission to point out that in England and Wales you cannot possibly have cross-border flooding so it is not really an issue for the EU to worry about. We could have said, "Give us a little bit more time and let us take advantage of the opportunity of discussing this Bill to ensure that the measures that the statutory instrument requires on flood risk regulation are appropriately enacted". I know that the Government had originally intended that this Bill would take into account the EU flood risk directive, but the transposition is already happening and you cannot enact that directive in practice without some of the measures in this Bill. Therefore, the legislation is not integrated, although we understand why we have the cart before the horse. Clause 3, headed "Risk management", has in subsection (3) a helpful list of examples of things that might be done to manage flood or coastal erosion risk. There are 10 measures listed, including maintaining and restoring natural processes and carrying out work in respect of a river or other watercourse. The ninth measure, which I would like to dwell on a bit and which the noble Lord, Lord Smith referred to in passing, is, ""preparing, gathering and disseminating maps, plans, surveys and other information"." This is absolutely central to assessing flood risk. I would like a requirement in the Bill for the Environment Agency to prepare water catchment maps, showing where risks have been identified, who is the manager of each river, highway, bridge, area of land, reservoir or whatever impacts on the risk, and who is responsible for managing the risk. This should all be put in a spatial form. It would feed helpfully into the water framework directive because, when that is implemented, we will require that scale of mapping. In practice, the Environment Agency would require the input of the other risk management authorities to draw up these maps. Highway authorities would have to play a large part, as would the other authorities responsible for bridges and roads and a number of other organisations. This geographical data would have to be kept rigorously up to date as development and changes of other kinds take place. Inevitably, the data would be generated by Great Britain’s national mapping agency, the Ordnance Survey. I am concerned about whether we will be able to continue to rely on the Ordnance Survey to keep its mapping service up to date. A proposal from the Department of Communities and Local Government is currently out for consultation. It would make data from Ordnance Survey freely available. That is highly commendable: there are all sorts of reasons why society would benefit from having the information more widely accessible. I am sure that there will be enormous benefits. However, if you tell the Ordnance Survey that it will have to give up selling or licensing its data or products, and if it is still required—as it certainly will be, not just because of this Bill but for many other reasons—to keep its maps and spatial information up to date, there must be an alternative income stream. It will not get any cheaper to do these surveys and, although the consultation has not been completed—it is due for completion on 19 March—I am alarmed to read that implementation is expected in April. That does not leave much time to consider the far-reaching implications of taking out one of the main funding streams from the Ordnance Survey and requiring it to put in a new business plan. It is not clear what role the Government will play in helping to make good the missing income stream. We need an assurance from the Minister that whatever happens—and I hasten to say that I do not dissent from the idea of Ordnance Survey data being more freely available—if we are going to keep a national mapping agency, which clearly we need, the income stream will be replaced if the proposal goes through. I will say a word about sustainable urban drainage systems, which have been widely welcomed by other speakers. I had the privilege of chairing a House of Lords Science and Technology Committee inquiry on UK water management some three or four years ago. We were greatly impressed by SUDS schemes elsewhere—mainly overseas. As always, the issue is who will maintain them. We need further thought on this issue. What we have is clearly a great improvement, but, as the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, suggested, we have not bottomed out the funding responsibilities that will stretch for decades ahead. We must make sure of the commitment from the relevant authorities. Sustainable drainage systems have an enormous contribution to make, but when the guidance that the Government promise on what is meant by sustainable development comes to address sustainable drainage, it must be made clear that sustainable drainage does not mean connecting SUDS to a foul sewer. By definition, that is not sustainable. As the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, reminded us, if you have sewage backing up and coming into your house, you will never forget it. I hope that the guidance will be specific on that issue.