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Flood and Water Management Bill

My Lords, I speak as a former chief executive of the Environment Agency and as a current member of the climate change adaptation sub-committee. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Giddens, for his kind words about the current and past management of the Environment Agency. Seeing this Bill come to the House is a bit like having one’s birthday and Christmas rolled into one. It contains a huge number of issues that I have worked on and lobbied for in my many incarnations in the past and which were then supported by the Pitt review and the work of Anna Walker. Therefore, it is a delight to see the Bill finally arrive here. I want to welcome a few of the cherries in the Bill and talk about some of the areas that I think still need clarification, as well as some outstanding issues that the Bill does not address. First, I very much welcome the proposals concerning reservoirs. There are a number of examples of incidents from reservoirs around the 10,000 cubic metre threshold. It is important to achieve that threshold but then to manage the process on a risk basis, taking into account that risk analysis and making sure that only reservoirs that pose real risks come under scrutiny and that unnecessary regulatory impact is reduced. Secondly, I turn to the registration of third-party assets. About 55 per cent of all flood defences—for example, railway embankments, house walls, warehouse walls and a variety of other things—are owned by someone other than a public authority. It is important that the Bill brings in a proper registration and management system for those third-party assets, which are fundamental to the future of flood defence in this country. Thirdly, I turn to a point that has not really been raised so far in this debate—that is, the proposed changes relating to habitat enhancement work. I know that they were rather controversial in another place but I hope that the provisions that are now in the Bill regarding consultation on these works will reassure noble Lords. Fourthly, the whole issue of sustainable urban drainage and the associated right of connection will, I hope, mean that we can move forward and produce a much more effective process for drainage management in this country. I also very much support the idea of social tariffs for water customers and the ability of companies to apply such tariffs. If we are to tackle impending drought in this country, particularly in the south-east, where there are further pressures from development and population, as well as from climate change, we will need to see a very fast move to near-universal metering in areas of water stress. Of course, although metering can reduce the consumption of water by up to 20 per cent, it can produce pressures for poorer households through increased bills. Therefore, it is important that companies are able to offer these social tariffs. The noble Baroness, Lady Fookes, reminded me of the importance of temporary hosepipe bans. Like her, I am a keen gardener and very much appreciate the work that the Royal Horticultural Society has done in looking at these bans. There is a whole range of other ways in which water can be saved. It is important that those are addressed as well to avoid and reduce the need for other bans. We want to see increased metering, as well as low-flow household appliances and fixtures and fittings. We want building regulations improved so that when houses are being refitted, they are refitted in a water-efficient manner, as well as a whole variety of other mechanisms that would take the pressure off temporary hosepipe bans. However, I appreciate the work that has gone in to clarifying when the hosepipe ban should be applied. The centrepiece of the Bill is the issue of clarifying responsibilities, particularly giving local authorities responsibility for the management of surface water flooding. I remember well the floods of 2007. One tends to remember events like that and I am sure that many of the people who were out of their houses for many months as a result of those floods, and indeed in the more recent Cockermouth floods, also remember them well. A substantial part of the flooding during the 2007 floods in places such as Sheffield and Hull was caused by surface water. This Bill is long overdue in giving clarity of responsibility to local authorities to tackle surface water flooding in conjunction with the Environment Agency and its responsibility for riverine flooding. Although I welcome the clarity of responsibility, there is still an area where there is a lack of clarity. I regret that the proposal to clarify the respective roles of the Environment Agency and the regional flood and coastal committees was removed from the Bill as a result of controversy in another place. There is still an element of lack of clarity about who actually carries the can, if that is not the wrong way to put it, in terms of flooding. Sometimes the most effective way of examining whether there is clarity in responsibility is to ask who we would blame if things went wrong. When I was at the Environment Agency, I felt very uneasy about what could happen when the Environment Agency proposed the regional programmes of flood defence but the committees had the role of approving them. In those circumstances, one could be led to believe that the committee had the ultimate authority and, therefore, would be the body to blame if something went horribly wrong. I assure your Lordships that that is not what happens. What happens is that everybody blames the Environment Agency. The reality is that there is good co-operation at a regional level between the Environment Agency and the regional committees. Therefore, that has not yet become an issue. However, I put a marker down that, if at some stage we were to have a catastrophic flood with substantial loss of life—and I hope we never do—we would have to revisit that area of lack of clarity about responsibility. Irrespective of the clarity that the Bill gives nerdy folk like you and I as to who does what, there are still many people and bodies involved in making decisions about flood risk management in this country. I suspect that the clarity in this Bill is not necessarily sufficient for the public. They will still feel very confused as to whether it is the responsibility of the regional flood and coastal committee, the Environment Agency, the local authority, the IDB or the water company. Although all those organisations may be working very well together, I wonder whether it is worth considering the propositions that were mooted some time ago of having a first-stop shop or single point of contact where the public can go and be led to the right authority by someone knowledgeable who understands the nature of the flood experience that they are having or the query that they are making so that they are taken through what will still be quite a complex system. The Bill does not resolve the issue of money, which has two dimensions. First, there is the issue, which I am sure will come up in Committee, of funding for local authorities for their new surface-water drainage roles and certain funding for local authorities in their new roles with sustainable urban drainage systems. Nevertheless, while the work of the committee announced by the Minister is undertaken, I hope that we can encourage local authorities not to sit and wait for resolution of the funding issue. I believe that the public are anxious that the issues of surface-water drainage and sustainable urban drainage are gripped now and I urge local authorities not to wait for the resolution of the funding issue but to begin to put in place the very necessary plans and programmes which will be required. The second money issue is the Environment Agency’s own long-term investment strategy, highlighting the need for about £1 billion of investment per annum in the next few years, if we are to tackle the challenges of decaying flood defences and increased pressures as a result of climate change. I know that asking questions about money at this time in the economic cycle is a waste of time; I am simply putting down a marker that those questions do not necessarily go away just because we are broke. The investment outlined in the long-term investment strategy was reasonable to counteract the worst risk, but not every risk. I hope your Lordships will enjoy this wonderful Bill. I hope its passage will be fast, as it is most important that the wretched thing gets on to the statute book so that everyone can work together to help to protect the nation from floods and to pick up all the other water issues included in the Bill.