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In the background notes to the amendment, the Minister indicated how and on what evidence the decision to require a body to report would be taken. The evidence is in three chunks. One is the overall risk assessment across the nation, which I believe would be very broad brush and would not identify individual organisations that are not doing the right thing by adapting to climate change. The second is a little staggering because it is evidence for events, which is like saying, “Let’s see which bodies screw up”, and then requiring the ones that screw up to report—I apologise for the unparliamentary language. It does not seem satisfactory that we wait for evidence of failure. The third is existing performance frameworks. I shall give just two examples. One example is the criteria by which local authorities report. The local authority performance indicators are very selective; local authorities can choose the ones on which they will report, although they will have to provide information on the full range. Another example is the utilities, such as electricity companies. Unless they are specifically required by the energy regulator to provide information that would allow a judgment to made about whether they are doing a decent job by climate-change-proofing their systems, I am not sure how that judgment would be made. Under the government amendment, the Minister would be floundering to get the right sort of evidence to be able to tell which of the many, many bodies he would want to require a report from because he believed that they were not doing a good job of adapting to climate change.
You could say that the Government are taking a light-touch, proportionate, risk-based approach by simply laying down the guidance, encouraging these bodies to do the right thing, getting broad information about whether they are doing so, asking them to report only if they feel that they are not doing enough, and then gradually tightening the ratchet on the bodies that are not doing enough. That is a bit slow. We are already seeing the impact of the sort of weather that climate change will bring, and if we wait for that rather leisurely process, we might well find ourselves in three, four, five, six or 10 years still waiting for some of the big investment programmes that some of these important providers of public
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I ask the Minister whether there is a happy marriage between the amendments, because the very detailed requirements laid out for guidance on how risk assessments might be done and the process of reporting are extremely valuable. If the Minister is to have a sporting chance of getting action in time, he will need these bodies to have a duty now. If that could be built into his amendment, I would be very pleased.
Lord Crickhowell: I, too, added my name to Amendment No. 183A. Right at the end of her remarks, the noble Baroness, Lady Young, spoke of her fear of the leisurely process, which is exactly the point I was making in an earlier debate on the need for prompt action if we identify that something is wrong. The process takes quite a long time to unfold as you go through planning and all the rest of it; I cited the example of the Maidenhead flood defence scheme.
Perhaps it is not surprising, as we have shared the same responsibility—the noble Baroness at the present time and I a few years ago as chairman of the National Rivers Authority—that we have come to identical conclusions. There was nothing that she said with which I did not agree wholeheartedly. It was very interesting; as, point by point, she ticked off certain matters, I observed that those were exactly the points that I had written in response to the Government’s speech. For example, she referred to the relationship with local authorities, which is particularly critical for the Environment Agency. For all its good work, it can find flow systems blocked by local authorities that take the wrong decisions on planning, or obstacles which the Environment Agency feels should be removed. The noble Baroness referred to electrical services. Certainly it was my experience that when one had floods, one was also often acutely nervous about the possibility of the total loss of power as electrical facilities were inadequately protected or inadequately raised above the flood. She spoke about rail services. Like many others, I was diverted by way of Bath on the way from Cardiff and Newport on Monday. As soon as you have a bit of rain, the main rail line from South Wales to Paddington floods. It is a regular event now and really some action has to be taken to see that that kind of thing does not happen. The noble Baroness made the point absolutely rightly that it is not enough just to have guidance; we need clearly stated requirements. I think that the word “duty” is absolutely correct.
Having said that, it would be entirely wrong if I did not warmly welcome the amendments that the Minister has put down. They take us a great step forward and contain a great deal that is thoroughly worth while. I particularly welcomed what he said about hoping to have joint decision-making with the Welsh Assembly. It just happens that the main river systems of Wales flow into England. If you get it wrong in managing the upper reaches, you cause very
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I hope the Government will listen very carefully to the Environment Agency and to my experience which exactly parallels that of the noble Baroness. We have both had to deal with these problems. Our experience is identical and we have reached exactly the same conclusions. The views of the Environment Agency should bear great weight. There could not be an organisation with greater authority to speak on this topic. I welcome the Government’s amendments but I hope they will find, as the noble Baroness said, some way of incorporating, at least for the critical service providers, the duty that is so important.
Lord Campbell-Savours: My view on this amendment is quite simple. Good law will have to be based on the experience of those who have had to deal with these issues as the noble Lord, Lord Crickhowell, had to deal with the problem in Maidenhead, which I know very well indeed. The decision to create the Jubilee River was momentous and it saved the whole town of Maidenhead. It has had huge implications for housing development and industrial development in the whole of the Thames basin in that area.
I want to use another example, and in many ways this will be the test of whether this amendment really works. I live in Keswick in the Lake District. Keswick is at the head of the Derwent Valley, situated under Skiddaw and about three miles downstream from Thirlmere, which is the main water supply for Manchester. In 2005 there was a major flood which, in the view of most people in West Cumberland, arose because of climate change. The powers of the Environment Agency were tested. The noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, who is in the Chamber, is the chief executive of the Environment Agency. She saw all my correspondence and knows of the many meetings that I have had with it. During my dealings with the Environment Agency, I found that there was a dispute over what powers it had to instruct the water company—United Utilities, which owned and extracted water from Thirlmere—to control the amount of water that it holds there. The higher the water level, the greater the likelihood of flooding in Keswick at times of the year when there is heavy rainfall.
There was heavy rainfall in 2005 and the town was flooded. I understand that the owners of many properties further down from where I live made insurance claims, and that many people in the town were moved. I understand that there was extensive flooding in Carlisle as well. I was worried about the limited powers of the Environment Agency. In fact, we found ourselves arguing with its lawyers about what powers it had. I thought that it had the powers and I was quoting from sections of legislation. We took someone on who was willing to work for us for free in order to examine the law to establish where the powers lay. We were convinced that the Environment
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The test of this provision in the Bill is simple. It is whether United Utilities could be instructed, in conditions of flooding arising out of the management of its reservoirs, to take action on water levels. It would have the effect of reducing the likelihood of flooding downstream, not just in Keswick but also in other communities in the United Kingdom where a water company might have a reservoir that could overflow and cause that level of flooding.
I met with United Utilities on Monday to talk about the dangers in the current flooding. Of course, people in Keswick are very worried about flooding right now due to the weather. United Utilities appears to be moving and is being reasonable. But the fact is that it is a private company and water is its asset. Therefore, there is a conflict. The shareholders and the company will want to retain their assets. But the people will say, “Our communities are endangered” because of what they believe to be the effects of climate change.
I really would like to know that we have reserve powers to intervene and say, “I am sorry, the shareholders are important, but in these circumstances, arising out of these changes in climate, we have the power to tell them to do it and to give them an instruction”. For me, that will be the test of how well the Bill works in this area.
Lord Roberts of Llandudno: I should like the Minister to clarify one or two points. When he mentions Welsh Ministers, does he mean the office of the Secretary of State at Westminster or the Ministers of the Assembly Government in Cardiff? The Minister will remember—as will the noble Lord, Lord Crickhowell, who is a former Secretary of State for Wales and former chairman of the National Rivers Authority—our discussion on the then Government of Wales Bill. We talked about the possibility that the Welsh Assembly would before long have authority over water in Wales, just as the Scottish Parliament now has that authority.
I am told that a referendum is likely to take place in the next three years, which means that there will be more devolved authority in Wales. How does the Minister see the future? Does he see another Bill to this effect? If water in Wales, as well as in Scotland, is a devolved matter, we will surely need to look at it in a different way. We do not have this legislative competence in Wales. However, I assure the Committee that, even though we do not have it now, we may one day quite soon be exercising that authority.
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Lord Clark of Windermere: I rise briefly to wholeheartedly support the Minister’s stance. He has listened to the Bill’s critics, who said that it was short on adaptation. The series of amendments which he has brought before us today has plugged the gap and enormously strengthened the Bill. More importantly,
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Not for the first time, I find myself in disagreement with my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours. It is interesting that he sees Amendment No. 183A as a panacea. He actually said that he thought that the original Act gave protection to the people who had been his constituents in Keswick and who suffered from flooding but that they had no real recourse against the statutory undertaking on United Utilities. I suspect that the amendment will provide him with no extra cover at all. I would argue that if the Bill is to be effective in that respect there will have to be one person at the head directing and focusing it, and that that person is the Secretary of State. I fully support the Minister’s statement in that respect.
Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer: I rise to support the amendment in the name of my noble friends and the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone. If public bodies do not have a duty in this area they will be disabled in taking the sort of action they need to take. I know from my years of experience in local government that local government also should have such a duty. I have not previously advocated laying too many local duties on local government, as I would rather that it was given powers and choice. Here, however, we are talking about short-term action that needs to happen quickly. If the Bill does not place this duty on all public bodies then we will be saying that they have first to address their other duties. They will be assessed on those other duties, because that is how the assessment schemes work; they will be assessed as excellent or failing on the basis of whether they are performing those duties. By resisting such a duty in the Bill, the Government are saying that this is not such a priority.
I mention local authorities because that is what I know, but I am sure that the point applies also to other public bodies. In light of how local authorities plan and how they will address adaptation, the absence of such a duty will undermine their ability to pick up this important issue and focus on it so that they can change how they work and plan over the next five years. I mean “planning” in its widest sense because that is what adaptation means. I do not think the Minister would suggest a more relaxed timeframe of 10, 15 or 20 years. The work needs to start now. Public bodies need to be given this duty to enable them to reprioritise some of their thinking and to re-address the issues of how they work. It will be power to their elbow.
Lord Puttnam: I, too, support the amendment tabled by my noble friend Lady Young. Towards the end of the second day in Committee I rather grumpily complained about what I felt was a lack of urgency. I was talking not about the pace at which the
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I am prepared to be convinced by the Minister’s amendments, if I could be absolutely certain that the Treasury understood the financial implications of what the amendments set out. We constantly have to listen to the fact that Defra is an underfunded department, or agency, which is actually taking on board cuts, not having its capacity increased to deal with many of the issues touched on here. It has a very small outward-looking communications department and a very small adaptation department. Yet implicitly what the Minister is saying is that Defra has the strength, capacity and confidence of the Government to take on this enormous task. Could he reassure me from the Dispatch Box that the Treasury is seized of this and that Defra will be turned into an agency that has the resources, capacity and staff to deal with what we generally in this Chamber believe will be an enormous series of problems and will not continue to be sparingly funded and constantly somehow one of the Cinderella departments of government?
Lord Taylor of Holbeach: This may be a suitable moment for the Opposition to contribute on these amendments. We are pleased to see the Government's eagerness to try to rectify what was previously a serious deficit in the Bill. Public authorities need to be encouraged to the maximum extent possible to take measures to adapt to climate change seriously. We welcome the duty on public authorities to develop programmes for adaptation and prepare reports. I looked in the amendments for the words “from time to time”, but they do not appear. How often will they prepare reports? From the text of the amendments, it appears that they will do so on demand. It occurs to me that one might compare and contrast—in the classic sense—the responsibilities on the Secretary of State under Clauses 48 and 49 with those being placed on public authorities. However, the authorities will be outlining their progress towards meeting the objectives that they have outlined, which is certainly welcome.
While we welcome the Government trying to correct their omission, I wonder whether they have gone far enough. Although the amendments place a duty on reporting authorities to publish statements of proposals and assessments of their progress, there is not an actual duty to comply with their proposed measures. As it stands, it would be enough for a public authority to develop a plan and not do anything at all, as long as it published a report saying so. It seems that this provision could be tightened. Does the Minister agree that it is important for there to be an assurance that public authorities will implement their adaptation proposals? Incidentally, are there really 25,000 public authorities in the United Kingdom? I am astounded at the figure. At any rate,
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I turn to Amendment No. 183A, which carries the wide support of many Members of the Committee and in whose support many noble Lords have spoken eloquently. We certainly support the spirit of this amendment. Action to adapt to climate change is not going to happen unless there is a concerted effort from everyone involved. Our slight scepticism stems from the fact that it is unclear whether this duty is necessary in this part of the Bill. It is also unclear how far this amendment might be applied. The section has no explicit reference to any persons or bodies, so while I assume it targets government policy and agencies, it is unclear how far that targeting could be extended. It seems too prescriptive—and, at the same time, unclear and nebulous.
Baroness Young of Old Scone:For the benefit of the noble Lord, may I direct him to subsection (3) of the amendment, which lists the persons or bodies to which it will apply. Primarily, that is local authorities, government bodies and other statutory undertakers known as category 1 and category 2 responders in the Civil Contingencies Act 2004. Apart from the let-out in subsection (3)(b), where a Minister of the Crown can specify others, it really is quite tightly focused—rather more so than the extent of the bodies referred to in the new government clauses, which are actually wider. This is quite a tight little amendment.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach: I thank the noble Baroness for pointing that out. I did not have reference to the other Act of Parliament that was involved; I have at least had a tutorial in it now, and I can safely withdraw those previous caveats on the amendment in that area.
The Committee agrees that it is important to have some mechanism to ensure compliance to the programmes for adaptation. We are not sure that this proposal is the best way of achieving what is certainly a laudable goal, but we believe that the debate has brought out an important element of what we should seek to do.
Lord Rooker: This has been a useful debate. I cannot really say that I will be taking away and thinking about these proposals that I have brought to the Committee. There is a disadvantage when the Government come forward with a tranche of amendments in Committee. While we have indeed done this with some spare space, it is not like having such provisions in the Bill so that amendments can be put down in more detailed fashion. I am not saying these amendments are the last word; I could not, after bringing them into the Bill at a stage where they have not been subject to the degree of scrutiny that we wish for the rest. We do, at least, still have time on our hands.
I will try to do justice to the questions but I may not have the full detail on some, so I will deal with them in reverse order. The noble Lord, Lord Taylor,
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The noble Lord also asked about the list of authorities. I, too, was a bit surprised by that 25,000. I will be getting further information on that. I can give examples shortly of some other authorities as opposed to those covered by the Civil Contingencies Act. I was asked, for example, about the water authorities acting in their role as public bodies although they are private companies, but I need more information on those 25,000. I am not saying, “List them”, but I may need categorisation or sub-categorisation as that is such a large figure to get our heads around.
The noble Baroness, Lady Miller, and other Members of the Committee raised local government as an issue. I understand that the Local Government Association’s own commission on climate change has recommended that local authorities should be given the flexibility to act and demonstrate what they can do before consideration of a duty. We are seeking to work in co-operation with local government, which made this request. I know that climate change is catching up on us but, in the scale of things, working in partnership and co-operation with local government is very important. Going back to the figure of 25,000, at one point I thought that perhaps all the schools are mentioned, but England has 24,000 schools, so it cannot be schools. There must be another match of figures. We will work with local government, which has requested a chance to do it its way.
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