My Lords, we now touch on the issue of the absence in the Bill of any abstraction reform proposals. Amendment 96 seeks to address the issue of the non-alignment of the proposals for upstream competition, which are within the Bill, and those for abstraction reform, which are not. Without the proposals for abstraction reform running in parallel with those that create a market for trading water, there is a significant risk to our scarce water resources. I will not repeat what I said at Second Reading, but suffice it to say that the House of Lords EU Sub-Committee on Agriculture, Fisheries, Environment and Energy and the Environment Agency both concur with the Government’s own view that at present,
“significant volumes of water are licensed but unused”.
If this water is used as the result, for example, of increased trading in a reformed system, that could cause environmental deterioration.
The upstream competition briefing paper which the Government have helpfully provided for us states that they are aiming to legislate for abstraction reform early in the next Parliament. My amendment would merely give statutory backing to that commitment by this Government and would tie future Governments to abide by it. Requiring the Minister to draft public legislation to reform water abstraction will give clarity to parliamentarians about the shape of the abstraction reform proposals prior to their scrutiny of the regulations that will govern the new market in upstream competition, which the Government say could come into force by 2019. I hope that the Minister will agree that this amendment is one way—I accept that it is only one way—of reflecting the Government’s stated commitment to delivering reform in a timely and coherent way. That can be secured only by aligning the proposals for upstream reform, which are in the Bill, with those for reform of the abstraction regime, which are not. I beg to move.
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