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Lord St John of Bletso: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Byford, as well as the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, for introducing this increasingly important issue to the attention of your Lordships' House. It is appropriate that we should
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discuss water supplies today because so many reservoirs are standing at perilously low levels across the country. The subject has moved to the top of the public agenda and it will remain there, no doubt, through the summer months that lie ahead.
I would like to focus my remarks on two specific aspects: first, the extraordinary wastage of water through leakage, which has already been highlighted by the noble Baroness, Lady Byford, and, secondly, what measures are being taken to limit demand, both today and in areas of future development. There is no doubting the seriousness of the situation, not only in the United Kingdom, but around the world. The global statistics of water supply make stark reading. Even though two-thirds of the Earth's surface is made up of water—which can easily, but at high cost, be turned into drinking water with the help of desalination plants—only 1 per cent of the world's water is drinkable. It is no wonder that the United Nations Environment Programme ranks water shortage alongside global warming as the two great challenges facing the world during this millennium.
I found the article in the Sunday Times two weeks ago on waste management entitled When the Rivers Run Dry What Happens When Our Water Runs Out? particularly alarming. As we know, 70 per cent of the water supplies in south-east England come from underground sources. The levels of these sources are well below average after two consecutive winters of below average rainfall—the driest period since 1933. The problem is not just in the south-east of England. The spring that has been supplying my house in south Wales for centuries dried up at the end of last summer. While it is now flowing again, I have no doubt that the problem will recur. In Britain, our daily personal consumption—drinking, cooking, washing and flushing—is about 150 litres per person. However, I was alarmed to read how much water is consumed in the growth of our crops. Nobody can be complacent.
Against this background of diminishing supplies and the fact that three water companies have sought legal powers to ban non-essential use in south-east England, current levels of water leakage are alarming. In England and Wales alone, each and every day more than 3.5 billion litres of water are lost through various leaks in the system. It is not surprising that Ofwat has warned several water companies that they must take action to avoid future problems. The situation is bad, but it has been worse. In the year until March 2005, leakage stood at 3.6 billion litres a day. That has been marginally reduced by continuing investment in water resources and cuts in leakage from the mains.
Thames Water, the country's largest supplier, has had some success in addressing the problem of leakages. The company now employs more than 300 two-man teams working to find and fix leaks across the region, making more than 700,000 repairs every year. That maintenance system is coupled with an ambitious programme to replace London's Victorian water mains, half of which are more than 100 years old. Such measures have reduced leakage in the Thames region by approximately 30 million litres a day. Ofwat has
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rightly stressed the need for similar measures to be introduced by other water companies, notably Southern Water, Dwr Cymru and Severn Trent Water.
I am no expert on the subject, but I would be interested to learn what new technologies are being developed to manage and monitor water leakages more effectively. Certainly in the telecommunications industry, where I have more expertise, within minutes of a problem developing in a telephone network the authorities are able to isolate and identify it easily and swiftly. Perhaps the Minister would outline what measures are being taken to investigate whether similar technology can be used to manage the country's water supplies.
It has also become clear that new measures are required to control the demand for water in the United Kingdom, particularly in specific areas in the south-east such as Folkestone and Dover, which are threatened by drought. Officials in those areas have warned that extreme measures may have to be introduced. When the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, the chief executive of the Environment Agency, warns that our water supplies are at risk, we should recognise the seriousness of the situation.
What can be done to limit demand? The solution may lie in a successful campaign to change the habits of the nation. That may be easier said than done. However, it is estimated that if everyone in England and Wales simply turned off the tap while brushing their teeth in the morning, enough water could be saved to supply 600,000 homes. I dare say that the perennial finger-wagging and the idle threats will not make much difference, but a dynamic and creative campaign to educate the public on the seriousness of the situation, and the relative simplicity of at least part of the problem, could prove highly successful. Perhaps the Minister will confirm whether such public information programmes will be implemented.
The noble Baroness, Lady Young, also called for compulsory metering, based on the sound principle that people will start to take notice only when they feel the impact on their wallets. The introduction of meters to ensure that people pay for the water that they use—rather than rates—will surely assist the process of controlling the demand on water supplies. At present, only 28 per cent of homes have water meters, although I understand that the Government have a target to reach 75 per cent within 20 years.
Folkestone and Dover Water Services has already been successful in its application for "area of water scarcity" status, meaning it can accelerate switching its household customers to water meters. This programme is mainly voluntary, but the company may soon be able to charge all its customers according to how much water they use. The strategy will help match limited supplies to resources. This is surely the key to preserving adequate water supplies. Will the same status be granted to other water companies?
The Environment Agency should also be commended on its work with water companies in developing water resource management plans, which look ahead 25 years and include projections of current
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and future demands. These plans are regularly updated to account for factors such as projections of household numbers and occupancy rates and the implications of climate change. It is particularly significant and valuable that these water resource management plans have become statutory under the Water Act 2003.
The most severe challenges lie in the south-east. The high levels of housing growth—already mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Byford—envisaged in the region require careful planning to ensure that development does not proceed ahead of secure water supplies. New or enlarged reservoirs and pipeline transfers need to be developed, and it is important that the Environment Agency continues to work closely with the water companies and development agencies to ensure that sustainable solutions are achieved, both in the south-east and in other areas of the country where sustainable communities are planned.
It should be stressed that the present challenge of controlling our demand for water does not lie only with this country's households. The responsibility also rests with industry, which accounts for almost a third of usage. Envirowise, a government-funded programme that advises companies on improving their resource efficiency, suggests that UK industry uses no less than three times more water than is necessary each year. According to Martin Gibson, the programme director of Envirowise, a business that implements an effective conservation technique can cut its annual water consumption by 30 per cent and enjoy substantial cost savings.
Our water supplies will be protected and sustained by changing the habits of the public and of industry. The Government's challenge is to work with the various water companies and stakeholders to introduce regulations and campaigns that assist in this process.
A World War II veteran once told me that there were two uses for water: for washing; and for making your whiskey go a bit further when times were hard. Such an approach would stand us all in good stead today.
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Baroness Hanham: My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, who is now in his place, for securing the debate and my noble friend Lady Byford for introducing it so ably.
It is inevitable that to some extent we will all trudge across the same territory in today's debate, because clearly there are some subjects on which we all want to say much the same things. I would not have been tempted into this debate—I am not a great expert on water supply—if I had ever received any good answers about how the south-east in particular will manage the 250,000 extra homes to which both previous speakers referred.
When we have had discussions in this Chamber on sustainable development and sustainable communities, it has been absolutely clear that the one thing that matters to those communities is the infrastructure that
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will support them. One of the most important aspects of the infrastructure is the supply of water. The inevitable question is: what plans are there to provide water to those 250,000 houses a year, with the prospect of 2.5 million being built over 10 years in the south-east alone? As we have already heard from the noble Lord, Lord St John, the south-east is currently a challenged area as regards water.
When one asks where the water supply will come from, there is a dramatically enigmatic silence. The first time I asked that question of the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, there was a wave of the hand and a suggestion that, "That will all be taken care of". But we are not going to be able to wave our hands and say that it will all be taken care of. This House and the people in the south-east need reassurance that concrete proposals are in place for the extra water supply. There is not a good water supply at the moment, so how on earth will it be made available over the next five to 10 years to support the amount of new housing that is coming about?
There must be an answer to that question. Someone must be having discussions, and, if not, why not? If the Environment Agency is having discussions with the water companies, that is fine, but why the secrecy? Why do we not know what is going to happen? If there are proposals for new reservoirs—I do not know whether there are—that will affect yet more land in the south-east. If there are proposals for transporting water in some way to the south from the northern parts of the country where there is a good water supply, we do not know about them. If the water companies are to continue to extract from boreholes, for example, or are to create new boreholes for water, where are the plans for that and what discussions have taken place?
It is extremely disturbing that proposals for a £200 million desalination plant near Barking in east London have been stopped. Thames Water had said that the plant would play a key role in guaranteeing water supplies to customers during drought periods, but the extra tier of government that now covers London in the form of the Mayor concluded that the development was not in line with the sustainable management of water supply resources in London—if only there were some. The policy is to meet water supply needs in a sustainable manner through methods such as minimising the use of treated water and reducing leakage, but such an energy-intensive method of producing water as desalination was considered by the Mayor to be contrary to that objective.
We can plug leaks as much as we like—and it would be a great relief if the leaks were plugged—but, in reality, the amount of water flowing out through leaks, dreadful though that is, will not sustain 250,000 extra houses in this country each year for the next 10 years. I do not know whether the Minister is aware of the quite extraordinary decision by the Mayor not to allow the desalination plant. If he is, has he, or have his officials, had an opportunity to discuss that decision with the Mayor, who, it seems to me, is becoming exceedingly eccentric? Have those discussions taken place and, if they have, is there any rational reason for
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the proposal having been stopped? We are not going to be able to extract from the rivers unless there is a great deal more rain than there has been or unless there is melting snow or whatever to put water into the rivers. We cannot continue that extraction. As my noble friend Lady Byford said, it has other implications for nature and for the general quality of water in the country.
In the past two days, I have crossed territory with leaking water mains, and I am bound to say that I thought that I might as well stop and wash my car; there was quite enough water to do it. I might have caused a traffic jam, but I could easily have washed my car in the amount of water that was there. I would not have used—though I dare say that the water company would have lost—anything like the 564 litres of water that the very annoying advertisement on the radio—on Capital or Classic FM—keeps on reminding us of. It is about the man who delivers 564 litres of water to a household. The householder rightly says that he does not want it, and the man says, "You do, because that is what your hose has churned out for more than an hour". He goes on to say that a watering can takes only seven litres, although I do not know whether that is in an hour. The burden of the advertisement is irritating, but it shows that the water mains will be pushing out more than 564 litres an hour because of the pressure.
I shall touch on a couple of other things that take me away from housing in the south-east, although that is the main burden of my comments. I hope that the Minister will give us some information about what is planned and what discussions are taking place. Most of all we need reassurance that the infrastructure—particularly of water—is being considered. I am afraid that there is a general feeling that it is not.
Thames Water is about to lower the pressure of water to domestic properties. I have a trickle on my second floor at the moment, which is somewhat enhanced by a pump. If Thames Water reduces the pressure by anything more than a minimal amount, I will have no water on the first floor in my house. Such actions are guaranteed to drive householders to a fit of revolution. We must save water, but at the same time we must not allow water companies to do things that make life difficult. We can save water if we cannot get it out of the tap—that is plainly obvious—but certain actions will affect people in various areas disproportionately.
Compulsory water metering is also coming to some areas. It has not yet appeared in our area, but there are concerns that, once water metering is widespread, water will begin to come into the same category as gas and electricity. Charging is done on the basis of rateable value at the moment, but when the water companies have compulsory water metering, it will end up being done as it is in the other utilities and suddenly there will be a shortage, and the costs will go sky high.
The Minister might like to touch on the costing issue as well. All these elements—water, heating, gas and electricity—are now beginning to cost householders an enormous sum of money because of lack of supply,
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and will become a huge issue in the coming years. I know that the investment required in water is enormous. I do not know—perhaps I should—what compulsion there is on water authorities to ensure that they maintain their structures. The amount of water loss is enormous. I appreciate that the investment required is considerable, but if we are not to have an even greater disaster, some of the questions that I and previous speakers have asked need urgent answers.
12.15 pm
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