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Flood and Water Management Bill

In that respect, the Bill does something. It extends the powers to enable releases from water company reservoirs to be controlled to help to manage local flood risk. I described the obligations on them to respond to that, so the Bill is helpful in those terms. I know that it falls short of my noble friend’s amendments and his concerns on the matter. In assessing whether a reservoir should be designated as high risk, the Environment Agency will be largely reliant on the reservoirs inundation map, which will identify all the areas in which people may be at risk, either at home or at work: the inundation zones of reservoirs. That is the issue: the risk to human life at home or at work. That is the main concern of the Bill. The noble Duke, the Duke of Montrose, spoke to Amendment 84AA on taking steps to ensure only that any flood flows could be retained on his lands. He can indeed negotiate with other landowners to take steps to do so if he so wishes. How far that is practicable and effective in minimising the risk to human life that might affect a reservoir’s high risk designation would have to be judged by the Environment Agency. I emphasise to him that we are here concerned with high risk—not with the size of the reservoir but the nature of the risk. I therefore hope that he will appreciate that we have considered those matters in drafting the Bill. Finally, the government amendments bring all but one of the existing delegated powers in the Reservoirs Act 1975 into line with our approach in paragraph 38 for the powers inserted into that Act by Schedule 4. There is one exception, which specifies how engineers who want to apply to become panel engineers must apply to the relevant Minister. That is a very minor part of the Reservoirs Act, and we did not think that that was appropriate in the Bill. All other matters have been transferred in that way. Essentially, that is what the government amendments do, and I shall move them in due course. I hope that noble Lords will forgive me for having rushed my reply to this important debate.