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Flood and Water Management Bill

My Lords, this has been a very interesting debate and I am sure that the horticultural industry will be heartened by the very eloquent speeches made in defence of its interests. There are very few Members of your Lordships’ House who know more about this matter than the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Holbeach, and I bow to his superior knowledge of the industry. This clause replaces the existing provisions in relation to hosepipe bans in Section 76 of the Water Industry Act 1991. The clause lists the uses of water which a water company may temporarily ban under its own powers, extending existing provisions which enable water companies temporarily to ban the watering of private gardens and the washing of private vehicles by hosepipe or similar apparatus. This is in order to manage actual or anticipated serious shortages in public water supplies. The noble Lord, Lord Taylor, referred to the problems of the 2004-06 drought. The existing powers, which allow water companies to restrict the watering of private gardens and the washing of private motor cars by hosepipe or similar apparatus, gave rise to much criticism of the water companies by their customers. The focus of the powers was seen as unfair and unreasonable, since very heavy uses of water, such as the filling of private swimming pools, were able to continue. The powers had not been updated since they were originally enacted in 1945 and no longer reflected modern, non-essential uses of water. Widening the scope of the existing hosepipe ban legislation would therefore enable water companies to conserve more water for the public water supply at an earlier stage during a drought, thus helping to ensure that public water supplies for essential needs can be maintained whatever the severity and duration of the drought. It could also help defer or avoid the need for non-essential-use drought order powers, which impact more widely on businesses such as the horticultural industry. Ultimately, emergency drought order powers, which would have significant cost for domestic customers, businesses and the environment, could be avoided as well. A number of your Lordships referred to a statutory code of practice on restrictions. I point out to the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, that a voluntary industry code has already been adopted; it sets out broad principles of consistency, transparency and so on, but it is not right to set it out in prescriptive detail in the Bill. However, discussions with the horticultural industry are already under way. My honourable friend the Minister in the other place, Huw Irranca-Davies, met representatives of the HTA and Waterwise on 23 February to hear their concerns about the code of practice. He undertook at that meeting to work with the water companies, through the statutory drought planning process, to ensure that their revised drought plans set out clearly how they anticipate using their powers, including their broad priorities for conserving water and the types of concession or phasing that they propose to introduce, and to ensure that they took account of stakeholder and customer views of the sort which we have heard reported in the Committee today. The Minister suggested that, by way of a first step, and following Royal Assent—but not, I am afraid, before it—he meet water companies to explore how they could work together and with stakeholders when developing a framework for managing the flexibility that these powers could give them to manage water shortages, and how they could best communicate their draft and final proposals to stakeholders and customers and obtain their views. That meeting will follow immediately after Royal Assent to ensure agreement on the sort of code of practice which we think should be in place.