Street Works (Amendment) (Northern Ireland) Order 2007

Yes, but. Perhaps in saying that I agree with it in principle, I should say that I have some admiration for the road service. Over the years, I have seen the efficiency of the service increase, and I pay tribute to people such as Malcolm McKibben and Jeff Alistair, as well as my own local engineer, Pat Doherty. They have done very well. With the major road works on the west side of Belfast, which affect me every time I come into the city, minimising the disruption is something that we appreciate. Perhaps this is the place to recognise that. The order has 28 articles and two schedules and, as other noble Lords have intimated, it is far too complex for an Order in Council. It should be dealt with as primary legislation by a Northern Ireland Assembly. I wish that when a Minister came with a piece of legislation of any sort he had to carry with him all the paper that would form the paper trail attached to it. With this one, he would need more than the four aids that he has sitting behind him to bring in the amount of paper that is going to be used. This provision will entail a huge increase in the number of bureaucrats—the people who will oversee the multitude of papers that will arise from the legislation. The Minister will probably guess the question that arises from this, but the provision will also require a huge budget. I am not an expert but, from what I can glean, it may be £30 million. I want to deal with that point. We all want to see traffic moving easily and less disruption on our roads, but here we are using a sledgehammer—or should I say a jackhammer—to crack a nut. The only costs that I can see here are those that will arise if people infringe the legislation; that is, the penalties. I do not see anything that indicates what the provision will cost. The public utilities—the people who provide gas and water—will have huge bills. It is reckoned that, of the £30 million, the Water Service will probably have £15 million extra to pay. That is the advice I have had. Has that been budgeted for by the Water Service? What is going to happen in that regard? How will it retrieve its expenditure? Will that cost be added on to the already, for some of us, alarming cost for water? People whom I have talked to within the public utilities have indicated that they had not been made aware of some of the issues or that they had not been consulted to the extent that they would have liked. Have provisions been made within the budget of the Water Service for these costs? Will the water consumer now pay for street works as well as water usage? Did consultation on water charging include this issue of additional costs arising from street works? Has the General Consumer Council offered a view on water customers paying extra charges to cover street works? Of course, I could repeat those same questions for the provision of gas or communication services of whatever sort. It is important that the Minister gives us considerably more information. Ideally, I should love him to say at the end of this debate that he will take the legislation back and that we will deal with it in the Assembly as a proper piece of legislation. But I know that he is not going to do that. Before I leave that point, I draw the Minister’s attention to an Irish news story today, which indicates that the increased costs could add £80 on to household bills as a result of the legislation. There are other aspects of the order that I cannot understand. We know that we can cut a nice clean track in the road by sawing it—we do not dig it up any more—and that it is easily replaced. It is important that repairs are done efficiently, but why would we impose on the utilities the need to resurface the entire road? How would that be decided? I can see that it could happen but at who’s whim? I do not think that there is anything in the legislation to indicate how it would be done. If you dig a track in the road, put in a sewer, fill it in and top it off, it does not matter that you have repaired the entire width of the road. The important place that needs to be inspected and reinspected will be where the track was, because with the settling of ground and so on it may need to be resurfaced on more than one occasion. So what is the sense in saying that the whole road must be resurfaced? If I had any reassurance that there was a fixed lifespan for every major or A-class road between normal resurfacing, where one could see where damage had been done, then, depending on the length of time until the next major resurfacing, a charge might be suitable. But would it not be nonsense to ask the utility companies to resurface a road now if the road was to be completely resurfaced by the road service in spring or early summer of this year? Nothing in the order appears to indicate partnership. It seems that the public utility companies, including the water service and gas suppliers, are being penalised. What about the private developers—the people who really disrupt traffic? Where are they catered for here? How are they to pay part of the charges? I may be wrong, and the Minister may be able to reassure me, but I see absolutely nothing in terms of provision for private developers. Why are they not asked to bear some responsibility? Perhaps it is because this legislation has been put together in such a complex way that it would be virtually impossible to police every private development. That may be the answer but it is not good enough and it gives me concern. Without wishing to offend the Minister, although I have done that already, there are things in the legislation to which I would refer as nonsense. The idea that someone with a bowler hat and rolled umbrella can come along and tell the engineer, ““Take your apparatus from that road. It is a main street. Put it down that side street””, is—