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Flood and Water Management Bill

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Duke, the Duke of Montrose, for that explanation of the opposition amendments. I hope to persuade him that the Government now have it right. On the Government’s amendments, while I accept entirely what the noble Duke says about the excellent work that the committee does on government legislation, one reason that I sought to explain them is that, often, the committee is particularly constructive when it sets out how the Government can make their intention more clear while the Government had exactly the intention that the committee is describing. That is one of these cases. We are grateful for the work that the committee has done because it has proposed how we should amend the Bill to achieve our intention more accurately. The government amendment confines the powers to statutory functions, and this makes the powers exactly consistent with our intentions. In the memorandum that we submitted to the committee, we expressed our intention and the committee translated it rather more successfully than perhaps we did originally in the Bill. However, the power that we propose cannot be used to create a new function. I shall go into the debate about the new function that the noble Duke, the Duke of Montrose, suggested when we reach the relevant part of the Bill. We will be having quite a considerable debate about functions, so he will forgive me if I am not drawn too far down that road yet, for the same reason that I indicated on Amendment 1—that is, we ought not to run before we have begun to walk with regard to these early clauses. I have sought to emphasise that because the risk management authority cannot produce a new function but can only add statutory functions. The statutory functions have already been considered by Parliament, otherwise they would not be statutory. That is why we conceive that this order-making power should be subject to the negative resolution procedure. We agree entirely with noble Lords opposite that if we had not constrained the power within this statutory framework, then the case for affirmative orders would have been unassailable and would have been entirely right. In fact, I flatter Ministers and the officers who serve them so well that that is how we would have conceived of things. We think that, because the power is constrained to statutory functions, the negative procedure is perfectly proper. I hope that the noble Lord will understand why we think we have now answered the issue with the amendments that I have proposed and that he feels he can safely withdraw his.