Part of Private Business. – in the House of Commons am ar 18 Chwefror 1935.
Lieut.-Colonel Sir ARNOLD WILSON:
I beg to second the Motion.
There are a few additional facts which would like to submit to the House. The annual turnover of this farm is approximately £30,000. The wages bill for the last ten years has averaged something like £10,000. About 100 men are employed there from one year's end to the other, icluding 14 apprentices who are working for wages and are there because there is no other place in England where they can receive such fine technical training. It is true that if this Instruction were carried and the reservoir were not to he built in that place some time would elapse before a new site could be found, and it might cost more money. But I have no doubt whatever that if those who feel that the employment of labour should have first place—and I am one of those—will balance the prospects of 100 men permanently employed as against temporary employment being found for 200 or 300 men for perhaps two years—and that is just about all that one can expect to employ upon modern works where a vast amount of excavating and other machinery is used—it will be found that there is a very strong case for the selection of an alternative site.
May I turn to an alternative line of thought which I suggest should be of interest to the House? The Minister of Health has, within the last two months, notified his decision to appoint a Water Survey Committee to advise on the progress of measures undertaken for a comprehensive inland water survey. That was on the 7th December. I suggest that pending the result of the labours of that Committee—a very highly qualified Committee—both the House and the Metropolitan Water Board would be very well advised to hold their hand in relation to this scheme. The board have done magnificent work in the past. Their plans were so magnificent that they stood up to the unparalleled drought of the last two years. Surely it is a reasonable risk not to anticipate an equally unparalleled drought during the next 12 months or two years? Royal Commissions have invariably been appointed to consider the problem of London's water supply, which has never been regarded as a local but as a national matter. There have been two Commissions in the last 30 years, the second of which, under Lord Llandaff, reported in 1897 that:
the supply from the Thames should be sufficient in quantity and quality up to 1941.
They added:
It remains for consideration whether it is advisable regularly to deplete the Thames of so large an amount…(300,000,000 gallons)…of water, and whether it would not be well to search for supplies outside the present limits of supply.
I think the time has come for us to go back to the wisdom of our forefathers, who were just as capable of planning as we are now, and to consider whether London should not meet its future needs by the construction of a pipe line from South Wales, which would render these reservoirs unnecessary. The cost was estimated by the Royal Commission at something like £20,000,000, to be spread over 10 years. London is the only great centre of population in England, I believe, which has not found it desirable to draw its water, or a portion of its water, from areas beyond its own locality. The Welsh scheme was very strongly supported in the 'nineties and in the first decade of this century, and were we to undertake it now, with the close co-operation of the Metropolitan Water Board, not only would London get
a sufficient supply for the next century, but it, would be possible to supply a large number of towns and villages between South Wales And London—of course at an additional cost, but much less than the present cost of some of these very elaborate schemes of purification and pumping which are now necessary. Anyone who will take a map and draw a line from South Wales to London will see that it passes through a large number of centres not all of which are well supplied with water.
I do not think I am out of order in suggesting that that scheme put forward by the Royal Commission 30 years ago is beyond practical politics to-day. This is not really a national question. Meanwhile we have to face the problem of today and to-morrow. I am not satisfied from the reports of the Metropolitan Water Board that there is any real urgency for this reservoir. Nothing they said or did during the last 12 months gives me any reason to think that they are really nervous; and, of course, this Bill was drafted before the Minister ever reached a decision to take a broad and comprehensive view of the national water supplies. We hear a good deal of national planning. Those who believe in it should be prepared not merely to pay lip service to it but to request and require the Metropolitan Water Board to come into line with the general scheme for Great Britain as a whole, and to consider dispassionately and deliberately, with the assistance of its own experts and those from elsewhere, whether it should continue indefinitely to rely on the Thames. There are other cities besides London on the Thames. There is the question of sewage disposal, which may or may not become serious. The more water that is pumped out from the river the more has to go back in the form of sewage—after being purified, of course, but never quite the same from the point of view of the fish. This land has been in possession of one man since 1919—a portion only of the land.