UK Parliament / Open data

Water Bill

Proceeding contribution from Lord Benyon (Conservative) in the House of Commons on Monday, 25 November 2013. It occurred during Debate on bills on Water Bill.

There is provision in the Bill to establish an inset regime and allow new entrants to design innovative infrastructure, which can link into the water system. Moreover, under the capital allowance system, farmers can invest in new reservoirs and have the right to give the surplus of that water to their water companies. In dire circumstances, the Environment Agency can purchase that water to keep rivers flowing. Real opportunity exists for people. I am not saying that that will resolve our water resilience issues; many farmers will need to build many reservoirs for that to happen. None the less, there is a genuine opportunity.

I have one plea. Yes, we can get involved in lengthy debates about whether we should have a primary or a secondary sustainability duty, or whether the robust new resilience duty—I urge hon. Members to read about that—will provide an added incentive; but if the rivers do not flow, our reservoirs are empty and our economy suffers, we should be absolutely determined to concentrate on the outcomes. I appeal to Members in this Chamber and in the other place not to get stuck on the tokenism of any duty, but to consider the outcome that it can deliver. I am relatively agnostic about whether Ofwat should have a primary or secondary duty to deliver sustainability. I am much more concerned about the outcomes, and I have yet to be convinced that just changing the wording will make a huge amount of difference. A really important gain in all this is the resilience duty on Ofwat.

Type
Proceeding contribution
Reference
571 c80 
Session
2013-14
Chamber / Committee
House of Commons chamber
Legislation
Water Bill 2013-14
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