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Flood and Water Management Bill

My Lords, we have had a good and interesting debate this evening. It is pleasing to reflect that, particularly so close to a general election, we have such an important and significant Bill before the House and such widespread support for it from all corners of the House. That is a tribute, first, to the work of the Environment Agency in helping to bring us to this point. I will say from these Benches that it is a tribute, secondly, to the way in which the Government have approached the Bill, particularly in the other place. As the Minister said in his opening comments, there was a collegiate approach and a willingness to listen, to consider concerns, to reflect on them and, in a number of cases, to come back and address them before the Bill left the other place. All that is welcome and contributes to the general support that the Bill has received this evening. Nobody has said anything other than that we all wish to see the Bill on the statute book as soon as possible. I repeat the commitment given by my noble friend Lord Greaves when he opened from these Benches that the Liberal Democrats will do all that we can to co-operate and ensure that the Bill reaches the statute book by the end of this Session. However, the debate has been going on because there are still concerns. Many of them have been raised and many questions have been asked. Many references have been made to what we must explore in Committee but, with the exception of my noble friend Lord Greaves, we have been carrying on as if what we know is going to happen is not going to happen at all: the general election and the dissolution of Parliament. If the general election is to be on 6 May, then dissolution must take place not later than 12 April, which is the Monday after Easter Monday—in other words, immediately after the Easter Recess, or quite possibly before that. Time is very short and we do not realistically have time to go through the normal processes of this House in examining and scrutinising the Bill. That is a great shame and a matter of great regret, because the Bill has so much general support. That might sound contrary, but what this House does particularly well is asking questions and probing the Government not so much on what will happen but on how it will happen. That is where many of the concerns still arise. They are not about what we are going to do, as there is broad agreement about that, but about how we are going to do it, as that is still unknown and untested. What this House does well, partly because we do not have the time constraints that the other place has, is pressing the Government to make them think about that and work through the process not just in Committee, where the questions are asked, but on Report, when some of the answers come back—even at Third Reading we can come back and make a good Bill an even better Bill. I regret that we almost certainly will not have time to go properly through that process. I am tempted to ask the Minister to give us the date of the general election. I suspect that he probably will not, so I shall try another tack. Can he tell us when Parliament will be dissolved? If he will not do that—and I suspect that he will not—I hope that he will give as much reassurance as he can that there will be a Committee stage for the Bill. There is a suspicion that the Bill is having its Second Reading because it must in order to get into the wash-up. None of us would dispute that, but once it has had its Second Reading it does not need to have any further consideration because there is such general support and it will be carried through during the wash-up. I therefore press the Minister, not with great expectations, to indicate to us what dates the business managers have in mind for Committee, should the Prime Minister allow us to have one. I hope that the Minister will do that, because the Committee will be an important part of the consideration of the Bill, even if we are not able to go further with it. It will guide us in the discussions that will take place in the wash-up. There are a number of outstanding concerns, most of which have been aired tonight. I lead for our party on local government, so let me start with some of the concerns coming from local government and from the Local Government Association. At this point, I have to declare my interest. I do not own a pub—sadly—but I am a London borough councillor. The London boroughs have been unitary authorities since they were created 45 years ago, so I do not have a personal interest in districts and counties and two-tier authorities. However, that is one of the concerns about the approval process for SUDS—I cannot help wondering about SUDS and wash-ups at this stage. As my noble friend Lord Greaves said—he is a district councillor and a former county councillor, so has far more experience than I have—to give the power to approve SUDS not to district councils, which are planning authorities, but to the county authorities, which do not usually become involved in development control matters, must at best be a recipe for delay, for more bureaucracy and for more duplication. It is not sensible. That view is quite strongly supported by the Local Government Association, which represents both district councils and county councils and often declines to take a view where there are such disagreements. There is a strong measure of agreement on this important issue and I hope that the Government will consider it further. The next issue that all local authorities would raise at any time but particularly given the financial outlook ahead is the funding burden. I agree entirely with the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, that no one will try to hold up either the enactment of the Bill or more particularly its implementation while we try to resolve the funding issues. The Local Government Association regrets—I am sorry, rejects, although it also regrets—Defra’s funding model on two fundamental grounds. It is not necessary to set them out tonight because they are well known to Defra. In Committee in the other place, the Minister gave a commitment to set up a group involving Defra and the LGA to assess the costs and to look at how they are funded. I understand from the LGA that, although that commitment was given in Committee in the other place, the group does not even have its terms of reference yet, let alone the call to its first meeting. I therefore hope that the Minister can give us some encouragement about the progress that will be made in setting it up so that it can get on with trying to resolve these important issues, even if we accept that the Government are not going to delay enactment or even implementation. Other concerns will be referred to the group, but because the group does not yet exist they cannot have had any attention paid to them. One concern is about the skills and training that are needed for the new flood authority role. Another is the sustainable funding system for SUDS. I hope that the group will be convened soon to look at those issues and that we will have news of progress during the Bill’s consideration, whatever that will be, in this House. A number of other issues were raised, including the community groups and the concessionary charges to which the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Exeter and my noble friend Lord Addington referred—I sometimes think of my noble friend as a boy scout, so perhaps that is where this comes from—and the role of Ofwat in all this. These are important issues and if we can have a proper Committee stage we can tease out more from the Government. My noble friend also talked about the "may/shall" issue. In other words, is this voluntary, as it is in the Bill, or should it be statutorily compulsory? That is not an unusual question when we consider legislation and it is particularly important here, so we need time to consider the matter. Reservoirs were talked about and my noble friend Lord Greaves pointed out exactly what 10,000 cubic metres means. We sat in the Royal Gallery and said that we do not have a concept of what 10,000 cubic metres is like. The NFU described it as a small reservoir. I do not have the knowledge of reservoirs that the noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, has. What is a small reservoir? It was explained to us that it is one and a half times the volume of the Royal Gallery, which gave me some concept of what it might be. Any catastrophic incident and flooding from it on that scale would have very serious implications for anyone living or with a business anywhere in the region. The Environment Agency is pretty clear that the vast majority of such reservoirs are unlikely to pose any risk at all. The noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, illustrated one reason why that might be. However, if any of them do, of course they should be registered and of course we should know about it and of course something should be done about it. Questions of insurance have arisen again, which need to be probed and resolved. I was particularly interested in the speech by the noble Baroness, Lady Fookes. I speak as a small vegetable gardener—the vegetables are quite small, and so is the garden—in suburban London. I understand well the problems of hosepipe bans and the watering difficulties in suburban London. It was irritating to have lush green lawns while my vegetables were withering; nobody seemed to be doing anything about it. Issues like that need to be addressed. We need time to consider this excellent Bill and to address the concerns and questions raised in this debate. I hope that the Minister can give us some comfort on that. However, at the end of the day, we will pass this Bill and it will go on the statute book.