| Water Bill [Lords]
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Mr. Wiggin: I am grateful for that confirmation. I have already heaped praise on the IDBs. I believe that they are threatened by regional drainage boards, but I suspect that we will discuss that later in our consideration of the Bill. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment, by leave, withdrawn. Sue Doughty: I beg to move amendment No. 182, in
The Chairman: With this it will be convenient to discuss the following amendments: No. 183, in
No. 202, in
Sue Doughty: I shall not detain the Committee for long, unless we decide to rush to a vote. The aim of the amendment is to try to define what the Government mean by ''serious damage''—a loose term. I am concerned that someone may claim that certain damage is ''serious'', and that the matter will go to law, which would be an unhappy event. Solicitors will become rich discussing what is serious and what is not. In reality, we quite understand the need for emergency abstraction, especially as defined in new subsection (2A)(a), as occurring when there is a risk
It is clear that that is serious. However, what is ''serious damage to works'' or
Will the Minister clarify what that means? We believe that the replacement of ''serious'' with ''significant'' would help the legal definition, but these are strong powers, which must have some justification. We would welcome his response. Mr. Morley: I am happy to deal with that point. I appreciate that the hon. Lady seeks clarification of the term ''serious damage'', but amendments Nos. 182 and 183 would relax the test that applies to abstraction, whereas amendment No. 202 would tighten it. The two groups of amendments do two opposite things. I am Column Number: 070 sure that that was not the intention, as amendment No. 182 is a probing amendment.The Environment Agency, in conjunction with English Nature and DEFRA, is currently working on formal guidance on the interpretation of these terms according to the circumstances where each is used. That will have to go through consultation. I can give the hon. Lady an idea of the time scale. We plan to have the guidance available early in 2004 and we intend to consult on it towards the end of that year. We understand the points that the hon. Lady makes. The guidance will have to go through the proper consultation procedure because there will be a lot of interest in how it will apply and how it will be interpreted. That is why we are drawing up the guidelines now. There will be an opportunity to discuss them. Sue Doughty: I thank the Minister for those comments. This is the sort of information that we are seeking. We need a much clearer definition of the sort of damage that would require emergency action. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment, by leave, withdrawn. Mr. Wiggin: I beg to move amendment No. 19, in
I simply seek to ensure that the Environment Agency reacts with the same speed as the person who is abstracting during an emergency. Under the Bill as drafted, someone undertaking an emergency abstraction must give notice to the Environment Agency within five days. It seems only reasonable that if the Environment Agency decides that it is not an emergency it should give him notice of that within five days. It is an equitable amendment and I hope that the Minister will adopt it forthwith. Mr. Morley: There is a slight problem with the amendment, which I will be happy to explain to the Committee. I understand what the hon. Gentleman is saying. He proposes that once an abstractor has informed the agency of an emergency extraction, the agency must give notice to the abstractor that the abstraction should not or should no longer take place for emergency purposes within five days. The amendment would restrict when the agency can make a decision about when an emergency abstraction should not or should no longer be allowed. It would also appear to restrict the abstractor if the notice had to be provided from the time he informs the agency of the emergency abstraction. That would allow an emergency abstraction up to a maximum of five days. The clause applies when there is a life-threatening situation or one that would cause damage, when people who do not have a licence have to take immediate action to extract, such as when pumping out. That emergency abstraction, for whatever reason, may need to continue for longer than five days. The clause allows the agency discretion over when it would serve such a notice in the light of the particular circumstances. In some cases the emergency abstraction would have to be limited to one or two days. In other cases it might need to be for a longer period. I know that it is not the hon. Gentleman's Column Number: 071 intention, but the amendment would unduly restrict the flexibility that the clause allows in emergencies.Mr. Wiggin: I am grateful to the Minister for that explanation. I saw it coming. I do not agree that the amendment would restrict the abstraction to five days: it would restrict it to 10 days. The person carrying out the emergency abstraction can give notice on the fifth day and the Environment Agency would also have to give notice on its fifth day, so 10 days' extraction could take place. However, this does not relate exclusively to the risk to human health. There is serious damage to the environment. This is similar to what we dealt with earlier. One of the arguments that the Minister used was that we need to be quick when dealing with emergencies involving the environment, and particularly human health—death, personal injury and harm to health. I envisage situations in which a churchyard may be flooded. I hoped that the Minister would have a few examples of his own, but I do see that the proposal would restrict the agency. If the Minister can convince me that people at the agency will not pursue emergency abstractors because they have not given them notice that the abstraction is not lawful, it will be right to withdraw the amendment. Otherwise, I hope that he will take it on board that the Environment Agency must be limited by some period as to what notice it gives. Five days may be inappropriate. I chose five days because that is the notice period that the agency has itself set in the Bill, but if that period is not appropriate, perhaps we can, by order, have a different period. If serious damage is being done, we need to take the notice period seriously, too. Mr. Morley: I can certainly assure the hon. Gentleman that I have every confidence that the Environment Agency will use its judgment in the particular circumstances. That is why we are allowing it some discretion over how it applies the provision and how it deals with situations. Mr. Wiggin: I expected the Minister to say that, too. I am not completely comfortable with it, and we may have to revisit the issue, but I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment, by leave, withdrawn. Mr. Key: I beg to move amendment No. 163, in
Unless we amend the Bill along the lines that I suggest, or the Minister suggests an alternative, I fear that we are about to make a mistake in the legislation. ''Warping'' appears to be a local dialect term that is not used throughout the country. It is unlikely to have an established legal basis. It certainly has different meanings in different parts of the country. What is down in the Bill as ''warping'' is known in my river catchment area as flooding. Further downstream on the Hampshire Avon, in the tidal part by the sea, the term ''warping'' is used, but it refers to tidal flooding, which is different from what we are discussing. I understand that in the Minister's constituency ''warping'' means digging out the silt from channels Column Number: 072 and putting it on the land, which is not what I understand by the term ''drowning''.The Department has produced a definition in the explanatory notes to the Bill. Paragraph 53 on page 12 states that warping is
However, that is only part of the story, as I shall explain. There was a discussion in the other place about drowning. A distinction was drawn between fortuitous warping and managed warping. Fortuitous warping happens when a river overflows in a flood and deposits. Managed warping happens when we impound water and control it before putting it back into the river that we took it out of in the first place. I had better declare my interests, none of which are financial, other than being a disbenefit to me. I am a subscribing member of the Harnham Water Meadows Trust in Salisbury, and I am a member of the council of Salisbury cathedral, which owns the Harnham water meadows. In other words, I am intimately familiar with water meadows and have been since I started paddling in them in Salisbury at the age of about 2. I have been ankle high to a crayfish in water meadows all that time. However, we are not talking only about Harnham water meadows, Woodford Valley water meadows, the Chalke Valley water meadows or elsewhere on the Hampshire Avon. We are talking about a feature of the watery landscape of England, from north to south and east to west. If we do not amend the Bill, we will damage the prospects for existing systems of drowning or warping and discourage new projects. After all, a licence application will cost £100, but the annual fee is dependent on the volume. That is hugely significant. The volume of water, which depends largely on the weather, can vary hugely. A watercress grower in my constituency told me only yesterday that he has a licence for some 1.128 million gallons a day. As much as 4 million gallons of water a day flows through the stream past his watercress beds, but it can drop in the summer to 200,000 gallons a day. Then, water has to be lifted by pumps to keep his business going. It is all very well saying, ''Let's licence it,'' but the cost implications could be substantial. What would it mean for a heritage charity seeking to restore water meadows in a wet year?
4.30 pmThere has been a huge revolution in the management of water basins in my lifetime. I regret to say that it has not been a glorious revolution. Since the era of water bailiffs, drowners and weed-cutting machines, we have completely changed our philosophy. In my childhood on the Hampshire Avon, the philosophy was all about keeping the water back, conserving it, using it and doing all that one could with it before it ran down to the sea. We therefore had water meadows and systems of weirs and sluices. The philosophy now is to get the water off the land and into the sea as quickly as possible. The sluices Column Number: 073 have been taken out, the weirs have been dismantled, and now—this is where we are about to make another mistake—it is impossible to flood the water meadows when the river is low, because one cannot impound the water. If it is not possible to impound the water, why are we talking about charging an abstraction fee? That is why this is a rather dangerous piece of legislation.When it comes to the debate about the historic water meadows, Salisbury has made a famous major contribution to the landscape. I am talking about the Constable water meadows, for goodness' sake. The problem is that DEFRA is, on the one hand, busy giving grants of public money to encourage heritage organisations to restore water meadows and sluices while, on the other, the legislation says that we will now tax them at the other end by introducing licences and applications. That simply does not make sense. The impact of those provisions was recognised by the only Member of the other place, during their debate on the subject, who really knew what he was talking about, my fellow Wiltshireman Lord Carter, who raised the problem of there being no more drowners or sluices. That is important, because, as I said, in the interest of flood prevention most of the old weirs and sluices were removed to permit the easier release of flood water in times of high rainfall. We are talking about the chalk landscape of England, and we need to make a huge distinction between springs and the run-off of rainfall and the rising of the water table. They are completely different, and they happen at different times. We can have a fortnight of cloudburst, and the water will run off, but if the water level rises because of the springs, we will find 10 days later that the springs have risen and the villages are flooded. We must be precise about what we mean. The trouble with removing all the sluices is that, at times of low water levels, we simply cannot retain sensible water levels all the way up the main streams, and therefore cannot control the level of the river as we used to. The hatches have gone in the Harnham Mill area of the Harnham water meadows, the controls on the Nadder at the old Fisherton mill have gone, and also those on the Avon at Normanton. There is a big impact on the whole river catchment area. If we were discussing—dare I mention it—the water framework directive and catchment management, the very thing that we are trying to discourage would encourage better management. There is a huge problem, but there are answers. In the other place, Baroness Young of Old Scone suggested in Grand Committee, on 1 April at page 103, that there might be '''meadow-explicit' agreements.'' The wildlife trusts have also suggested that a transfer licence could be used to impose less onerous conditions when warping—let us call it that for the sake of argument—is concerned. It is important that we do not all roll over and say that this matter is unimportant because we are not talking about a lot of water or money. We have seen such a huge revolution in the attitude to water management in the catchment of the Hampshire Avon in my lifetime and, although I may be pushing up the daisies when it happens, I suspect that the Column Number: 074 pendulum will swing back and that we will return to managing water in a way that we have now apparently lost.We are not just talking about silt fertilising the grass or about flood control; there is another important benefit of water meadows, which was not mentioned in the other place. They can ameliorate the temperature of the ground on which the new grass grows. If a field is flooded with water, it will not freeze, so the grass will provide what farmers call an early bite for ruminants. We should not sniff at that. The old way of working is with natural fertiliser. The land level is built up by a small amount and flooded to a depth of a quarter or half an inch of water, which flows along the ridges and down the gullies back into the river. That provides a natural fertiliser and allows silt to build up the ground and warmth to encourage the grass.
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