My Lords, the three amendments in this group deal with a specific area of the Bill, as we have heard: that surrounding the internal drainage boards. IDBs are very local partnerships, including landowners, farmers and local councillors, which work with the Environment Agency and Natural England to draw up plans to keep ditches and rhynes clear so that water can flow freely, thus minimising the impact of flooding. IDBs are well respected by local residents and these residents should be consulted on any impending changes to their local internal drainage board.
Farmers and landowners themselves are supposed to keep their ditches and streams clear for drainage, but this is not always done well. Those with river frontage have the responsibilities of the riparian owner inasmuch as they are responsible for the banks and clear flow of the river on their side for the length that they own. In some cases, this duty is not exercised and is sometimes ignored. A much stronger regime of these duties must be enforced by the IDBs and councils. The IDBs are responsible for the rhynes. There is a clear need for IDBs to be able to access money to keep all these channels open.
While I understand the need to keep council tax down to a reasonable level, if I were to ask the residents of the Somerset Levels whether they would rather have paid a little more council tax which went directly to the IDBs, or whether they wanted to take the risk of being underwater for six weeks, I am not sure what that answer would have been. However, I do not think that it would have been not to have paid more council tax.
IDBs need to have the power to act and to act quickly for the benefit of those in their communities. I am fully sympathetic to speeding up the process for publication of requirements under the Land Drainage Act 1991. However, any proposals for amalgamation or reorganisation of IDBs must be consulted on with those most affected. I agree that taking nine to 12 months for such consultation is neither efficient nor wise and I support reducing that time. I also understand that provincial newspapers have limited circulation. However, it is often the case that the local newspaper might be the only newspaper that some households read. They read it because the articles and news have relevance for them personally. These people will not be reading the London Gazette, however strange your Lordships may find this.
Everything we see on our television screens, read in our newspapers and hear on the radio indicates that these people who have been flooded feel disempowered and disillusioned. It would unwise to do anything in the Bill that might increase that feeling. It is essential that local people are able to have a say in what happens to their IDBs and, to do that, they need to be able to access the consultation when it takes place. Reducing the time during which an advertisement may be placed is reasonable, so long as it is advertised in locally accessible media, and placed in libraries, schools or other public meeting places as well as the local provincial newspapers. There is a financial cost to this, of course, but that is small compared to the value of local people feeling that they are being consulted. I beg to move.