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Flood and Water Management Bill

My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken in this short debate. I am pleased to see that the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, is here to hear my reply to his Amendment 17. We already cover that area through the duty to consult the public; the issue was discussed in Committee in the other place, where the Minister made it absolutely clear that the timing of the consultation should be sufficient for the EFRA Committee, for example, to consider the strategy and that it would be arranged to avoid long overlaps with parliamentary recesses. Such timing should also provide sufficient opportunity for other parliamentarians to respond to the consultation without requiring the Bill to be amended. I think that honourable Members in the other place were reasonably satisfied by that ministerial reply. Amendment 19 would require publication of the strategy, as well as the summary already identified in the Bill. The decision to require a summary to be published reflects the need to ensure that the strategy document is accessible to the public and stakeholders. The full strategy might include more detailed analysis of areas that we would not necessarily expect to be published, because of the sheer size of the exercise involved. However, we would expect them to be made available on request, for example; that would be done by the Environment Agency. If anyone asked for the total document, they should have the right of access to it without any doubt at all. But there is also a part that we should have reservation about—such information that might be classified for security reasons, which could not be published. However, we accept entirely the principle behind the amendment, but the publication of the synopsis will be more valuable to the public in terms of the overall strategy. If a member of the public wants the full detail, they should have right of access to it, and we ensure that.