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Mr. Wiggin: I take on board the point about the extra layer of bureaucracy but, in reality, the letter that the Secretary of State receives would simply be passed on to the Environment Agency, which is not an insurmountable layer. If people disagreed with the Environment Agency's decision, they would appeal to the Secretary of State in any case. We are missing a trick by not allowing that to be clearly stated in the Bill. My main fear is that we are empowering an unelected agency.
Mr. Morley: The appeal would not go to the Secretary of State, even under the hon. Gentleman's suggestion. If people were unhappy with the
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Environment Agency review, the next step would be a judicial review.
Mr. Wiggin: I am grateful to the Minister for that comment, but it flies in the face of the argument about adding another layer of bureaucracy.
I am deeply unhappy that the Environment Agency is being empowered in this way. I suspect that this will have to be addressed again at a later stage. The Minister should take on board our fears about empowering agencies. However, at this stage, I am grateful for what he has said, although it does not give me as much comfort as I would have liked.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 96 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 97 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 98
Adoption of lateral drains
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
The Chairman: With this it will be convenient to discuss new clause 19. New clause 19
Power to require adoption of private sewers
'After section 102 of the WIA there is inserted—
''102A Power to require adoption of private sewers
(1) The Secretary of State may be regulations establish a scheme to enable a sewerage undertaker to be required to adopt a sewer to which this section applies.
(2) A scheme under this section may apply to any sewer which is—
(a) situated within the area of a sewerage undertaker or which serves the whole or any part of that area; and
(b) not vested in a sewerage undertaker.
(3) Regulations under subsection (1) may amend section 105 so as to extend the appeals procedure to the scheme, provided that the appeal shall be heard by a person other than the person imposing the requirement to adopt.''.'
Paddy Tipping: I am pleased to discuss new clause 19 and to have the support of some long-standing campaigners on the issue that it addresses; my hon. Friends the Members for Stroud, for Falmouth and Camborne and for Birmingham, Northfield (Richard Burden), as well as my hon. Friend the Member for Rugby and Kenilworth (Andy King) who has the important and unique distinction of being the chairman of the all-party sewers and sewerage group. While I am giving out accolades, I should also mention Stephen Battersby, who runs an organisation called the Campaign for the Renewal of Older Sewage Systems. He has been a strong advocate of the need to make progress on the issue of private sewers.
Sometimes amendments are described as probing. Let me be clear; this is a prodding amendment. I want to prod the Minister, who needs no prodding on the issue. Since he took on his extended post, he has shown a great deal of interest, commitment and action on the issue. The problem is a long-standing one, which has been around since the privatisation of the water industry back in 1991. I looked at the Water Industry Act 1991; the Committee sittings took place
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in this Room 12 years ago, and I suspect that similar discussions to those we are about to have took place at that time.
The position is perfectly simple. Throughout the country there are a large number of properties with sewers that are not adopted. In the ambit of Newark and Sherwood district council—an area that part of my constituency covers—there are more than 1,400 properties that are not connected to adopted sewers. I should put on record my thanks to Newark and Sherwood district council, and particularly to Jeremy Hutchinson, one of its environmental health officers.
Mr. Wiggin: Will the hon. Gentleman clarify his point about the number of houses that he said were not connected to an adopted sewer? Are they connected to a sewer that has not been adopted, or are they not connected to any sewer at all?
Paddy Tipping: They are connected to sewers, but those sewers are not adopted by the sewage undertaker. That is not just a problem in the Sherwood area.
Andy King (Rugby and Kenilworth): They are eventually connected to a public sewer, which is adopted.
Paddy Tipping: We are talking about the bit in the middle, a subject that has been considered by consultants W.S. Atkins who were commissioned by the Minister and reported in June. The report is important and interesting. It shows that there are between 80,000 and 200,000 km of unadopted sewers. There is a big variation between those figures, which reflects the difficulties of the matter. Atkins also looked at the call-outs that took place; the number of calls that local authorities received from householders with blocked sewers that were found to be private sewers. It reported that there were 108,000 such reports in any one year.
The research went further and suggested that the number of calls, if the sewage undertakers are taken into account, was 282,000. It is a big, long-standing problem and we need to do something about it. The Atkins report provides a basis on which to do solve it. In fairness to the Minister, he put the report out for consultation in June with a closing date of 26 September. We are beyond that closing date, and perhaps the Minister will tell us the number of organisations that have replied.
I gently chide my hon. Friend the Minister; I was in front of him on the matter and tabled a parliamentary question that was answered on 16 October. I simply asked whether he would list the number of people who had replied to the consultation, and give us a feel of their responses. I am grateful for his reply, in which he said that the consultation period of the paper, which was published on 1 July, extended until 26 September. He said that the responses from organisations or individuals that were not marked confidential would be placed in the Library and a summary of responses would be published when ready. That adds an awful lot to the debate, but we might go a little further.
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I suspect that, during the consultation, people have responded in favour of the Atkins option, which, in a sense, passes the ownership of the sewers to the sewage undertakers. That is the clean and clear way of dealing with the problem. That discussion took place back in 1991, but the then Government neglected to take the issue forward. There are costs involved, because if that approach, which I favour, is adopted, sewage bills will go up across the country. Everyone who pays a water bill will take on, over a period of time, collective responsibility for the cost of adopting the sewers.
All that I would say at this stage is that this is a big problem, and not one that an individual householder can sort out. The sensible way forward is to bring sewers up to adoptable standards. Again, sewage undertakers have been more relaxed, careful and thoughtful in their approach to that. But private sewers often affect not only individual householders but a group, in which case there is a collective cost across that group. It takes only one householder to decide not to continue with the scheme designed by the local authority or sewage undertaker to put the kybosh on it. That problem has existed for a long time.
We are on the road to progress, and many of us would like to make progress more quickly. I am sure that the Minister and his officials have looked carefully at the new clause. At the end of the day, it provides a permissive power—a hook in the Bill—so that when the consultation has finally finished, the Minister has the opportunity to introduce by regulation any scheme that he thinks fit. No option is closed off and no specific option is included, but the means is provided to sort out a long-standing problem. If we can achieve that, there will be cheers across the country. This is a tough issue, which causes much concern to many thousands of households.
Mr. Key: I commend the hon. Member for Sherwood for introducing the new clause. Logic says that the Government should reject it; pragmatism says that they should accept it. The hon. Gentleman did not mention the practical impact on thousands of families up and down the country who buy a house on a private development, ignorant of the fact that the sewer is unadopted, and then face sewage flooding winter after winter. They are then told that all that they have to do is to make their sewer, which links into the main sewer, up to standard; but they cannot afford it, and the problem continues.
I have experienced that all over my constituency, as have other hon. Members. I am thinking of the villages of Winterslow, Alderbury and most recently, Beech grange in Landford. Once again, Ofwat is involved. Southern Water has said that there is a double or triple sewerage problem on that estate because it was built on wet ground where there are land drains and another water main and a main adopted sewer crossing it. All the intermediate parts of private sewer linking together cause the problem because when there is a flood in winter, the sewerage cannot accept the ground water, which causes flooding.
Southern Water has sealed 12 manholes on the estate so far to try to solve the problem but that has just meant that the poor people at the lower end of the estate have twice as much sewage in their garden every
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winter. However, the company says that it has asked Ofwat for increases to its budget to allow it to undertake work. Ofwat has said no, as that would be too expensive for the consumer. I am sorry, but the consumer will have to pay more one way or another. The individual families—often elderly couples with very low disposable incomes who are hit, in particular, by the council tax—simply cannot afford it.
What are we going to do about that? Will we say, ''No, logic must prevail; it must be down to the individual householder''? How do we get the owners of 60 or 70 houses in the middle of the countryside—some of them are retired, or live exclusively on benefits—to raise hundreds of thousands of pounds to put the sewers right?
It is in the public interest that there should be a responsibility on the sewerage authorities to spread the cost across their customers in the way described by the hon. Member for Sherwood. I simply see no alternative way out of the problem. I hope that the Minister will not just say no. We all have to grasp this issue; we all have similar problems in our constituency, and here is an opportunity to do something about it.
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