I refer hon. Members to my entry in the Register of Member’s Financial Interests. It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Joan Walley), for whom I have the greatest respect. She will be a loss to the House when she stands down. I listened to her remarks with great interest, and I will comment on a number of them in due course.
I hope that the House will forgive me if I start by quoting from the water White Paper, about which I feel a sense of propriety. If I say so myself, it was a very good document. It is a rare occurrence in Parliament for such a document to be well received not only by those on both sides of the House but by green non-governmental organisations, by the water industry and by people throughout the sector who are involved in this important subject.
The White Paper asks:
“How do we protect the environment and take less water from our rivers, while meeting the demands of a growing population? How do we encourage innovation and dynamism in the water sector while ensuring it remains a low-risk choice for investors? How do we incentivise less wasteful use of water while keeping water affordable for everyone?”
That encompasses, in a short paragraph, what we are seeking to achieve, not only in tonight’s discussion of the Bill, but across the much wider platform of restoring
sustainability in this sector. This is about the balance between the environment and the demands of a growing population; the need for innovation and a new type of investment, which the hon. Lady was right to talk about, without spooking the investor, whose money we need; and stopping waste yet keeping water affordable. The water White Paper was a call to action and a vision for the management of this sector and its theme will, I hope, run and not only through this Bill. As hon. Members on both sides of the House understand, the Bill is just a work in progress in respect of delivering that ambition; it delivers an element, and I particularly wish to discuss the importance of abstraction.
Let me make an obvious point: water comes from nature. It is vital that we understand that we are talking about not just an environmental factor, but a key economic matter. The hon. Lady talked about the Natural Capital Committee. When we discuss natural capital, we need to understand its importance for the economy. We need to consider how we manage water resources in parts of the country with a level of rainfall lower than that in some sub-Saharan African countries. When we talk about development and the needs of the economy in the years ahead, we must address that through the prism of natural capital. I am grateful to people such as Dieter Helm, who guided me in this relatively new—for me and for many other hon. Members—approach to economic thinking. I am proud that this Government have hard-wired natural capital into their economic thinking.
It is a shaming statistic for this country that only 27% of our rivers and lakes are fully functioning ecosystems. I am pleased that we have set about addressing that, through a catchment management approach and targeting our resources in as a meaningful a way as possible. We are talking about not only an environmental imperative, but an economic one. We have to comply with the water framework directive. If by 2027 we have not got our house in order and our act together, we will get a slapped wrist and a stonking great fine from the European Union. If we are talking about improving the quality of our environment just so that we comply with a European directive, what a pathetic ambition that would be. We should want to restore the quality of our natural environment because we want to restore the quality of our natural environment and feel proud about this country’s natural systems.
We have what some would call the “God-given” advantage of having 80% of the world’s chalk streams in this country, but in many cases they are failing ecological systems. We have to set about putting that right and making sure that we do not just suck water out of the top of aquifers, such as those of the River Kennet, to provide water for excellent and much-needed households in places such as Swindon; we must set about getting reforms that can address that problem. I really welcome the Bill’s means of ending the very bureaucratic system involved in closing down unsustainable abstractions and of getting this into the five-yearly price review. That is a major step forward, which came about through a proper process of pre-legislative scrutiny. I congratulate everyone, including the Select Committee, on the work that was done in trying to draw that to our attention. Let us make it clear that our ambitions for getting our act together require a new piece of legislation in a new Parliament. It would be a great help if the Minister could assure us in his wind-up that we have a continuing and dynamic ambition to legislate in the
next Parliament to make sure that the increase to about 30,000 abstraction licences in England will be properly managed in a fit-for-purpose system that recognises the demands of a growing population and the economic growth potential that that will bring.
On economic potential, let me relate to the House my last experience as a Minister, which was to take a trade mission of water companies and others in the environmental sector—the green growth sector—to Brazil. That BRIC country—the group made up of Brazil, Russia, India and China—is wrestling with the problems that make ours appear small fry. Sao Paulo, the largest conurbation in the southern hemisphere, is trying to address the demands for water and for dealing with waste, and it is desperate for new technologies. British companies from our supply chain sector have achieved great things in the delivery of the greenest Olympics ever and are ready to give work to British companies and to create British jobs in that green technology sector. So the water sector has a lot to give, not just in this country, but around the world. Understanding that economic driver is as important as the environmental and social dimension to our policies.