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Flood and Water Management Bill

On behalf of my noble friend Lord Taylor of Holbeach, I beg to move Amendment 82 and speak to the other amendments in this group standing in our names. I hope that the Committee will bear with me. We have tried to hold all the amendments on reservoirs together in one group, so I have landed up with rather a shopping list of questions. We hope that this will help to speed things up. Amendments 82 and 83 centre around what the whole scope of the legislation surrounding reservoirs should be and whether the Bill’s proposal to reduce the qualifying criterion to 10,000 cubic metres will result in gigantic overkill. Admittedly, in the first instance, the involvement will require only an inspection and then a classification into those that are considered of high risk. It would take some fairly exceptional circumstances for a 10,000 cubic metre reservoir to constitute a risk to human life. Can the Minister tell the Committee what estimate the Government have made of how many reservoirs will have to be inspected? There are two concerns. One is that the powers in the Bill are such that the concept and regulations could be gradually extended until any of these sites would require constant recording and monitoring. The other is that this will bring a whole new world of regulations into play for those wishing to construct relatively small reservoirs, some of whom may be market gardeners, farmers or managers of parks or golf courses. I think that I have expressed my interest in this area. The UK has had legislation in regard to reservoirs for some 80 years triggered by the failure of a couple of dams in 1925. Since then there has been no loss of life caused by the breach of reservoir embankments. The current legislation, the Reservoirs Act, has been in place since 1975. It seems to me of some significance that the Pitt review—at ES95—states quite categorically that the UK now has an excellent record of dam and reservoir safety. It asked only that the Reservoirs Act be amended to provide better risk-based criteria. Can the noble Lord tell the Committee whether at any point the Pitt report recommended the reduction in capacity that is proposed? My honourable friend in another place, Anne McIntosh, put an amendment before the relevant committee suggesting that a threshold of 15,000 cubic metres could be considered as a compromise. The Minister said in reply—at col. 380—that his discussion had coalesced around 12,000 cubic metres, so how have the Government come up with 10,000 cubic metres? Amendment 83 relates to the Minister’s ability to amend by order the volume of reservoirs to which the Act should apply, as we have discussed. I am quite prepared to see that there are a host of measures for which it is only sensible that a Minister may introduce new criteria by order. We have discussed this at length this afternoon. However, I wonder whether I can persuade the Minister that in this case it would be a step too far. Of course, at this stage we cannot tell whether a Minister might in the future want to increase or decrease the volume, as is proposed in the Bill. However, this issue has had the full scrutiny of both Houses of Parliament and in the end we will make a decision on which the Act will be based. I am sorry to see that the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, is not in his place because I think—