Part of Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill - Committee (13th Day) – in the House of Lords am 4:45 pm ar 18 Mai 2023.
My Lords, how sensible it was of my noble friend Lord Trenchard to degroup this amendment from the previous group, which already had 29 amendments in it. This is far too important an issue to be wrapped up in a comprehensive debate.
We should not be in the position of having this debate today. One of the reasons why we are is that the NRA was abolished. When we privatised water—I had the privilege of taking the Bill through this House—we set up the National Rivers Authority. There is nobody better at protecting species or habitat than former poachers, so we put into the National Rivers Authority those who had been in the water authority; one day they were the enemy, and the next they were the best gamekeepers you could possibly have. Under the NRA, there were distinct improvements within the water industry and it was a pity that it got amalgamated into the Environment Agency. It lost its focus and its speciality, and then of course the Environment Agency’s funding was cut.
Having said that, I thank the Government for what they have done. Credit must be given to them: they have a water plan and a storm-water reduction plan, and they have now given powers to Ofwat to consider the environment, which is a huge step forward. They have supported the catchment-based approach and, in particular, they are supporting the national chalk stream restoration group.
We have been in a similar position many times before. There have been lots of reports and discussions, but maybe—just maybe—this time we might get it right. Everybody is on the same page and singing the same song. They are supported by the Government, who have said that the door is slightly ajar. Let us barge through it now and do something for these chalk streams.
The restoration group, as my noble friend Lord Trenchard said, is there to drive progress by government and regulators, water companies, landowners, NGOs, river associations and individuals passionate about their rivers. Are we not lucky still to have people such as Charles Rangeley-Wilson, who is chairing the group and has given hours of his life to chalk streams? The Government must make better use of this input. We are so lucky to have those individuals, and I thank them.
I reiterate what my noble friend said about the one big wish. This amendment is designed to help push that one big wish through into beneficial action for the chalk streams. They are hugely important. I have to admit that they were not important in my life until recently; I was much more concerned about the tumbling rivers in the north of Scotland than chalk streams. But how we manage chalk streams is the litmus test of how the Government are going to handle all the difficulties around improving the environment.
One of the big problems in chalk streams is sewage, which has been in the headlines nearly every day for many months now. We had a “sorry” from the water authorities yesterday on this. If you go to Dorset to walk along the banks of the River Lym, you will see notices saying to keep out, as there is E. coli in the river. That is unacceptable in this day and age but sewage is not the only problem. It will be quite easy, now that the cost-benefit analysis has changed, to put in tertiary sewage works at Evershot and at Toller Porcorum on the upper reaches of the River Frome. That is not a problem.
More of a problem is going to be the septic tanks. A lot of villages, as well as individual cottages, houses and farms, are still within the catchment area of chalk streams and all with septic tanks. Those tanks cause a huge amount of problems, particularly in dry weather. The summer months, when the water flow is low and sewage tanks which are not up to standard are disgorging into the drains or waterways, are the real problem. It is an underestimated problem but it will be a huge one for the Government to have to tackle.
Besides that, the Government will have to tackle us humans in a different way. They have to be prepared to say to us humans: “You cannot fill your swimming pools, you cannot water your gardens or do the abstraction that you did”, as this is only going to be compounded because of climate change. In parts of France—we have not even got to the really hot part of the summer—locals are being told that they cannot do things with water that they have always taken for granted. This is going to be a hugely difficult message to get across, but we need to change our habits for the benefit of the environment. I hope that my noble friend will continue to push on this, but he needs to get the message across that everything being done, which will be costly, is for the environment and we have to adapt to it.
My noble friend will have to take on farmers too. There cannot be, within the catchment areas, fallow fields for much longer. There cannot be maize or salad crops grown, unless there is an immediate crop coming along, because if there is a fallow field you will get run-off and sediment. Noble Lords may have seen the news recently from parts of Italy, where there has just been six months’ rain in one and a half days. The run-off from that has been horrendous. If run-off gets into water—into chalk streams—that causes huge problems. It causes sediment on the base of the stream, which makes it much more difficult for the trout to spawn. If the trout have spawned and you get sediment, you are going to suffocate the eggs. The farmers are another challenge that the Government have to take on.
Another challenge is the highways department, as an awful lot of sediment comes off highways. I see that one particular recommendation from the chalk stream restoration group is about highways, but it alarms me that it has a nasty red cross beside it, where it says there is no action at all yet. Can my noble friend tell me what action he is taking to berate the Department for Transport and local authorities, so that they make arrangements such that the sediment which comes off the roads does not go unfiltered into our precious chalk streams?
There might have to be arguments with those who support beavers. I am a supporter of beavers in the right place, but in most cases beavers and chalk streams do not go together. What the beavers will do will slow down the water, increasing the sediment. It comes back to the problems that sediment causes, which I have just been describing.
Then of course there is water abstraction in its widest sense; I have talked about that a little. The NRA was tackling that hard, and I pay tribute to more individuals: people such as Richard Slocock, who stopped the River Piddle in Dorset being a dried-up bit of river. He worked with the NRA and the Piddle has now become one of our classic chalk streams again. Sir John Betjeman, when he was at Marlborough, was filled with glory by the sight of trout in the River Kennet. When I was at Marlborough, the trout did not have quite the same effect on me. But very close to where Sir John Betjeman was filled with glory, my noble friend Lord Benyon on the Front Bench—Richard Benyon, as he then was as Minister for Agriculture—stood on completely dry land in the middle of that river and later remarked in the House of Commons that the Kennet
“was as dry as the carpet”—[
In 2019, 60% of the chalk streams in the Chilterns area dried up in the drought. We are going to have to rely increasingly on aquifers to support our chalk streams so that they provide the flow of water. We all need to change. It is not a difficult remedy; it is very easy. Three particular things matter when it comes to healthy chalk streams: water quantity, water quality and good physical habitat. You cannot have that physical habitat without water and for that you need the aquifers.
It surprises me that the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, did not put her name to this amendment. I question whether Labour is quite as supportive of this as I hoped it might be.