---

Flood and Water Management Bill

My Lords, this group of amendments has a serious purpose. I hasten to assure the Minister that these are probing amendments which try to elucidate and gain clarity on a part of the Bill which I find slightly confusing. I need to start my explanation with Clause 7, which deals with the national flood and coastal erosion risk management strategy. That clearly lies with the Environment Agency. I have no difficulty at all with that statement except that, further on in the Bill, reference is made to a lead local authority, and below that we find a second layer of local authority, a district authority, which would have flood management responsibilities. My problem is not particularly with floods but with the other half of the responsibility, coastal erosion. I am an Essex man. I should perhaps explain that, during the 1951 floods, I was in America on an exchange scholarship, but many of my friends and colleagues were caught by the tidal surge which flooded a very large area of Essex and the south shore of the Thames estuary in Kent. It caused a great many problems. I want to be absolutely sure of where responsibility for dealing with these subjects lies. I am not convinced that the Bill is clear. Although Clause 7 is quite clear, subsection (2) states: ""flood and coastal erosion risk management functions that may be exercised by those authorities in relation to England"." My problem is with the word "may". Perhaps it allows differentiation between authorities which have coastal problems and inland authorities which do not. However, the word "may" also implies "may not". The question then arises, if they may not, where might they go? Or is the Environment Agency simply to retain responsibility for that aspect of the work? One of my amendments, which applies to Clause 9(2), would add words to make it clear that coastal problems can be the responsibility of both the lead local authority and, if need be, a coastal authority. My Amendment 41 is to Clause 13, which proposes that a, ""coast protection authority may, with the appropriate consent, arrange"," et cetera. My difficulty is that I have found no definition of a "coast protection authority". As far as I can see, that is the first and only time that it is mentioned in the Bill. I have tabled my amendments to make it absolutely explicit where these responsibilities would lie. They would allow the three clauses that I have mentioned to be cross-referenced. The coast protection authority’s responsibilities would be made clear, as would the lead local authorities’ and the district local authorities’. We would not have to worry about the Environment Agency anyway, because it is already carrying the can. I tabled these amendments to try to clarify the little bit of uncertainty in the drafting of the Bill. I am sure that the Minister—or anyone else who wants to get involved in this argument, but if not, the Minister——will be able to put my mind at rest, or at least to make explicit what the Bill is intended to do. That would be enormously helpful because what Ministers say on these occasions can matter in subsequent discussion, if there is such discussion.