Water Abstraction Regulations — House of Lords, 2018-01-15
Topic: Agriculture
John Lawrence Whitty (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend on raising this issue and on the forensic way in which she approached the analysis of the regulations before us and the history of how we got to this position I also thank the noble Baroness, Lady Byford, who was my opposite number for a large number of years. I was responsible for taking the 2003 Act through this House, in the teeth of her forensic analysis, and we came to a compromise, in effect. I asked my officials at the time why on earth there were still licences which provided for unrestricted abstraction and why there were significant exemptions. Logically, neither of those should have existed if we were going to have a rational approach to the management of water, particularly in the upstream areas which have such a dramatic effect downstream, both in relation to agriculture and to droughts and floods The answer was that, as far as the exemptions were concerned, there were relatively small companies—farmers, miners and quarriers—who would be very severely affected by removing the exemption. We accepted that argument, and we also accepted at the time that there was the possibility of technological solutions, in particular in mines and quarrying but also in relation to farming, primarily if the Government could be somewhat more encouraging of storage of water for those parts of agriculture which were likely to be hit by shortage of water at particular times of year and where the intensity of water use, unfortunately, usually coincided with the least precipitation and the least access to water—namely, the summer months While the mines and quarries, I am informed, have actually restricted and reduced their use of water, and some farmers have restricted their use of water and some storage has existed, actually, government policy never, under any Government, came closer to encouraging, as part of an agri-environment scheme or whatever, that storage of water would be provided. This was particularly important for the horticulture sector, and it has not happened The reason we did not immediately move to consult on ending the exemptions after the passage of the Act was principally that we needed time for those changes to take place. The Labour Government did, of course, consult in 2009, and part of the result of that consultation was that not enough had changed for the industry to be prepared to accept the change Most of the House will have completely forgotten this, but for one very brief period during the coalition Government I sat on the Front Bench when water legislation was being introduced at that time. That was mainly about introducing competition within the water industry, which has not gone quite as smoothly as it might have done and as we all hoped it might at the time. At that time, we also received assurances from the Government that we would have a strategic approach to abstraction. Indeed, there was some hope of new measures at the upstream end of water, which might involve water trading and possible trading of licences, so that we could gain efficiency at that end in the same way that we are trying to gain efficiency by introducing a degree of competition at the retail end. None of that has happened either, as the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, has just said Effectively, the coherent approach to abstraction reform has been put well and truly on the back burner. All we have, therefore, is these regulations to do the easiest bit of it, albeit that it is a slightly painful bit for some abstractors—namely, to end exemptions. It seems to be sensible that we do that. It is, however, now 14 years on, as people have said, and we have also missed the deadline under the water framework directive. Generally speaking, the water framework directive is regarded as a good exemplar of European legislation because effectively it is outcome related and is not overprescriptive, but it is a relatively good piece of European legislation, one which we would have thought we would be very happy to comply with. We have actually failed to comply with it in a number of important respects, some of which are being put right by these regulations tonight.