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Lord Rooker: My Lords, those in—I nearly said the ODPM—the new department will be looking to me to
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knock that one on the head straight away. What the noble Countess has asserted is simply untrue. The influx and increase of population in the south-east is nothing to do with internal movement in this country. That is a very minor part of it. The growth rates of the population are nothing to do with people coming from the north-east and Scotland. One reason people from the north-east and Scotland cannot come to the south-east is that they cannot afford the housing. There is a lack of labour mobility because we are an unequal country. There are different factors causing the growth in the south-east population, but it is certainly not internal movement.
Lord Methuen: My Lords, is the Minister aware of a 1930s scheme called the Grand Contour Canal, which I think was at the 600-foot contour? It was devised to take water all around England, providing both water distribution and navigation—or recreation, in this day and age. It would have covered the entire country to bring water from areas which had it to those that had not.
Lord Rooker: My Lords, I am not aware of that proposal at the 600-foot level. I do not know offhand where we are—I imagine we are below 600 feet here. Canals are fine. They are there as a resource, and may be necessary for transport and moving water. I do not know, but I will make it my business to find out about that plan.
Lord Monson: My Lords, it may help the Minister to know that it was the 210-foot contour line.
Lord Campbell-Savours: My Lords, is the department doing any work on the economics of desalination? On the national grid, it is not a question of trucking water from one end of the country to the other; it is the task of building and constructing ducts—piping—from the north of the country to the south.
Lord Rooker: My Lords, there is some work on desalination. A pilot desalination plant—I am not sure whether it is under construction yet—is proposed at Newhaven. One is proposed in London, but I understand that, using his powers, the Mayor opposed it. An inquiry is about to start on that.
Baroness O'Cathain: My Lords, everybody has ideas for fixing the problem. They are all fixable, but how much will that cost? To return to the issue of metering, is it not in the Government's interest to point out that everybody can have a meter if they want to and that the water companies supply them for free? There should be an obligation on all of us to try to save water, and the one way of doing so is to find out how much one is using.
Secondly, there is a huge amount of ignorance in the other place, if I may say so, where a question was recently asked about why on earth the water companies dig up the sides of the street rather than putting the mains down the centre of the road. They
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really do not understand. People complain whenever they see leaks and the water companies get an enormous amount of flak about it. They try to do the work at night but are not allowed to because of the noise of drilling. They try to do the work during the day and get the Evening Standard and everyone else coming down on them like a tonne of bricks.
We have to expect there to be a leakage problem. A lot of our pipes are Victorian. Some of the pipes that were replaced in the 1960s were made of stuff which has now disintegrated. It is to be hoped they now have the answer to that, but it is a national problem, particularly down in the south-east. We have to get it right instead of point-scoring on desalination plants, where somebody says, "You can't do that because of the energy costs of desalination". Metering is really the answer. The Government should take the line—I hope the Minister agrees with me—of saying to people, "You can have meters, so have them".
Lord Rooker: My Lords, I will try to bottle that question because the noble Baroness is a one-Baroness publicity machine for advising people what to do. She has told everybody that the meters are free. There is enormous ignorance about what happens when you are digging up the roads, and people must make the connection between the work to be done and what comes out of the tap. She also, of course, praised the Victorians, because if it had not been for them we would have been in the soup a lot sooner.
Lord Christopher: My Lords, what instructions are being issued if there are to be standpipes? I declare the same interest as has been declared across the Chamber. I live in the south-east and I understand that the water company has told the population that the holes that are being dug are nothing to do with standpipes. I do not believe that: they are too small. What instruction is going to be issued to get water from standpipes to people who physically are quite unable to get it for themselves?
Secondly, will the second part of the question asked by the noble Baroness, Lady Byford, about the number of reservoirs that have been closed be answered when the Minister writes to her? Thirdly, when the propaganda from the noble Baroness, Lady O'Cathain, has worked, will there be some guarantees that, because the water companies will lose income, they will not be allowed unreasonably to increase the price of water, which I understand has happened on the Isle of Wight?
Lord Rooker: My Lords, I do not know what instructions have yet been given for standpipes. Currently, no companies have approached Defra to discuss the need for standpipes under the emergency drought order. Obviously, it is not a question of simply doing it without any discussion. It would not be the first time this has happened. My noble asked about getting water from the standpipe to vulnerable people. That must be dealt with as a priority, as indeed I am sure it was the last time standpipes were used.
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My noble friend's final question, regarding what the companies do after the effect of the drought to ensure that the burden is not put back on the customer and that they pay their fair share, is very valid. I shall make sure it is answered, along with the other questions. Although I cannot answer the question about reservoirs in a letter to noble Lords—I will write to the noble Baroness—I will make sure it is answered in the form of a Statement or something that we can put in the Library, because obviously this is a matter of general interest.
Lord Dixon-Smith: My Lords, I have two interests to declare: first, I am a farmer and landowner with a licence to abstract water who has had a reservoir constructed on his own land. Secondly, I live in one of the drier areas of the country where we enjoy the benefits of inter-river basin transfer, so that, although Essex may have less rainfall than Kent, it is not as badly off in terms of water supply.
I was a little disturbed at what the Minister said early in his remarks about reservoirs. He implied, if I understood him correctly, that they remove water from availability for use. The fact is that a reservoir is specifically designed and always used to take water in times of surplus and to store it so that it can be used in times of shortage. If it is not built for that purpose, it is not built for any useful purpose at all. I think that we should be clear about that.
My question is this, however. I acknowledge all the success that there has been over the last few years in replacing the water infrastructure, although much of it is still extremely old. However, is the Minister satisfied that, despite that success, sufficient allowance has been made over the last one or two decades—certainly since privatisation, during which time we have really seen the huge expansion in funding for this work—to provide adequate resources to deal with the particular problems that we face and the monotonous regularity with which droughts occur?
Lord Rooker: My Lords, the noble Lord spoilt his question with his last comment. This is not a question of monotonous regularity. The fact is that there have been several droughts, but they are not that regular. One must look at the benefits and the cost. As I have said, shortages are not unusual, which is why we cannot allege that they are the result of climate change. But, let's face it, our record in this country on infrastructure replacement has not been brilliant in the last few decades. That applies to water, transport and rail. To that extent, the noble Lord hit the nail on the head—we have got to do more and we have got to do better. There is no question about it—not enough has been done, or quite clearly we would not be in the position that we are in now.
The point that I was making on reservoirs—it is not an unimportant point—is that five have been identified in plans and there are plans for three to be expanded. The note that I have says that they are not necessarily the only solution, although they can be part of a solution. They may not always be welcomed by
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local populations. Reservoirs are still taking water from the environment and may not mitigate environmental problems. So they are not a solution. They are part of a solution, but building more of them cannot be the be-all and end-all.
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