Consumers, Estate Agents and Redress Bill [HL]

moved Amendment No. 101: 101: Clause 30, page 17, line 31, at end insert— ““( ) Such consultations, as set out in subsection (3), shall not take place before 2011.”” The noble Baroness said: The amendments would remove from the Bill the reserve power to bring the Consumer Council for Water under the National Consumer Council. Their purpose is to probe the Government on why the Consumer Council for Water is to be included in this body. Amendment No. 101 is more than a probing amendment. I will lay out arguments as to why we feel it is insufficient to put a date into the Bill by order. At the very least the Bill should contain the earliest date—a ““not before date””—by which this should happen. The other amendments are consequential on the removal of the Consumer Council for Water from the provisions of the Bill. Some four years ago, when the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, was the Minister, we sat in this very Room and debated the setting-up of the Consumer Council for Water. The noble Lord made a very good case as to why we should set up the body and the Government subsequently did so at a cost of about £1 million—and very good value it has been to date. There are three mechanisms driving the world of water. One mechanism is the pricing round overseen by the regulator, Ofwat, and another is the water framework directive which aims to bring all water up to a qualitative standard by 2015 in the first round. The directive also addresses some of the issues of quantity and use of water. It is, of course, a European directive but it was initiated in the UK and subsequently taken through Europe. The third mechanism is the issue of climate change, which has put more pressure on the difficult balance between the consumer’s need for water, which has increased over recent decades, water-hungry appliances and the now much more appreciated need for enough water to sustain the natural environment so that biodiversity is not affected in our wetlands and to sustain an adequate river flow. The complexities surrounding water are many. A very distinct timeline has been drawn out and there is an interaction between the water framework directive and the pricing rounds. I asked the Consumer Council for Water to draw up a timeline showing what it would be doing at each stage. Its reply runs to five pages and so I shall not read it out in extreme detail. It shows how essential is the involvement of the Consumer Council for Water in both the pricing round and in the water framework directive’s implementation. I remind the Minister—I am sure he knows—that the water framework directive contains a provision which requires public involvement. It cannot simply be left to the Environment Agency to involve panels of the usual suspects. It needs a strong consumer voice running all the way through the implementation of the water framework directive. I draw the Minister’s attention to an important date. Draft river basin management plans will be published for public consultation in December 2008. That process will run for a year until 2009, when the final plans are published and will have a formal response. The importance of that directive, and of getting both it and the consumers’ input into it right, means that the CCW should not be messed around with before that date. In parallel with that is the pricing round. In January 2010 companies will, for example, be deciding whether they will appeal to the Competition Commission on the price limits put on them in 2009. That pricing round will almost be finished, but not quite, and until 2009 the CCW’s input into that round will be critical. We have only to look back over the past year to see consumers being asked to use much less water, hosepipe bans, leakage rates being highlighted and so on. It is a very important balance. The regulator, Philip Fletcher, has furnished us with a copy of his letter to the Minister asking that the CCW be free to concentrate on fulfilling its remit over the next few years. The Government still have to make the case for incorporating the CCW into the NCC at all, but if they do so, if the Minister looks at the time line, there is a moment of calm, after one pricing round, when the water framework directive is being implemented but does not have any of those important crunch points. That would be at the end of 2011, which is why I have chosen that year for my amendment. I suggest that any order that the Government are thinking of making to incorporate the CCW should not be made before that date. I would be interested to hear the comments of other Members of the Committee who have a great deal of expertise on the issue of the CCW and the water regime. I beg to move.