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Flood and Water Management Bill

My Lords, I hesitate to stand between noble Lords and their dinners but I want to give a brief history lesson on reservoirs. In the middle of the previous decade the Environment Agency acquired additional responsibilities under the Reservoirs Act. It was pretty shaken to discover what a poor condition many of our reservoirs were in and how rickety the legislation was. Therefore, I very much welcome this legislation which will bring into being the very thing that many noble Lords have demonstrated is necessary; that is, a reservoir-by-reservoir risk assessment. Starting from a threshold of 10,000 cubic metres, each reservoir could be given a quick assessment to find out whether it poses a risk to property and human life. Then the appropriate framework could be put in place. All the examples given of what might or might not be included demonstrate that you can do this only on a reservoir-by-reservoir risk assessment—which is what this schedule attempts to do. The noble Duke, the Duke of Montrose, referred to the threshold and said that the Pitt report had not said very much about reservoirs. However, when the Pitt report was being prepared staff at the Environment Agency were running around like demented ferrets rapidly bringing into order the reservoirs that were their responsibility as they were so taken aback by just how poor the standards were in some cases. Noble Lords may recall that during the 2007 floods, had a certain reservoir burst its banks we were faced with the awful prospect of shutting a major motorway for a very long period. I suppose that it is a cheap joke to say that size does not matter but that is absolutely true as regards reservoirs. What matters is their location, what they lie adjacent to, how they are constructed, whether they are above ground and above habitation, and their maintenance standards and levels. Therefore, I hope that noble Lords will accept that this is a rather good way of constructing reservoir safety legislation for the future.