I had a premonition that I might get such an intervention from my hon. Friend, the Chair of the Select Committee. I know she is pleased that we are, as a Government, making progress towards implementing this process in April 2014. She would like it to be sooner, but we have to make sure that we get it right. The views of the Select Committee have been very useful in making sure that we get it brought in adequately.
We heard a couple of very specific questions on market reforms. My hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay asked about small charities that operate from residential properties. The reform would affect non-domestic properties, so if a charity is operating from a property that is primarily residential, it will not have access to it, but it will be open to it if it is operating from other premises.
On abstraction reform, I entirely agree with Members’ comments about the need to tackle abstraction, which is damaging our rivers. We are tackling this in two ways. First, we are taking action using the tools already available to address over-abstraction. The Environment Agency has reviewed thousands of abstraction licences and has changed about 80 of them, returning 75 billion litres of water per year to the environment in England. That is equivalent to the annual average water use of a city larger than Birmingham. There is clearly a lot more to do in the individual catchments that have been mentioned, and we have to take account of the stress that is put on them.
The Bill will also help by removing water companies’ right to compensation to ensure that the funding of these schemes moves into Ofwat’s price review process, which is a far better way of tackling over-abstraction. In the longer term, we need a reformed regime fit to face the future challenges, and we will publish a consultation on possible options in December. [Interruption.] These reforms will affect a range of businesses, so we need to get them right.