Clause 2.—(SHORT TITLE AND CITATION.) (Hansard, 29 June 1951)

§ Mr. Perkins
I beg to move, in page 1, line 13, at the end, to add: (2) This Act shall continue in force until the thirty-first day of December, nineteen hundred and fifty-eight, and shall then expire. 1846 The object of this Amendment is to compel the Government and future Governments to get on with the job and spend this money within the next seven years. I hope the right hon. Gentleman will believe me when I say that I am doing my best to help the Government. I am sure they will welcome this Amendment, particularly in view of the assurance that was given by the Parliamentary Secretary that the Government mean to complete the scheme within the next seven years. He has given us the assurance, and all I am trying to do is to put those pious hopes into legislative action. I am doing what I can to help the Government along. As I feel confident that the Government will accept this Amendment, I do not wish to bully the Minister. I do not want him to think that I am going to divide the House on it.

§ Sir Herbert Williams (Croydon, East)
I support this Amendment. What has been done under the 1944 Act is really deplorably bad. I well remember the great efforts of my friend Mr. Thomas Levy, who was Member for Elland, and who devoted the whole of his Parliamentary career to urging upon Parliament the necessity for doing something about water supplies in rural areas. It is recognised that if it had not been for his propagandist efforts, a Bill would never have been introduced. That Measure has now been law for nearly seven years, and the average expenditure upon it has been nearly £1,500 a day. That is a deplorable record—one-quarter of what has been spent upon the racket across the river, if I may so describe it. It is a dreadful record of non-achievement.
I took an interest in these matters when I was a boy. We did not have a water supply; we had a pump or a well. My father was a schoolmaster. If a schoolboy did something wrong he did not have to write lines but he had to take turns at the pump, which was a good idea because it kept him in good condition. I remember that when pipes were first laid near my home in Cheshire, everyone was delighted with the water supply.
This is an important Amendment because it is an attempt to insist upon urgency. I am not too much impressed by the re-armament programme argu- 1847 ment. We all know that iron ore is in short supply. But after all, we are concerned with cast iron, not steel. Guns are not made out of cast iron any more, although I think there was a time when they were. Re-armament must not be the excuse for every administrative failure. With those few kindly words I support very strongly this Amendment, and I am very glad that my hon. Friend thought of it.

§ Mr. Dalton
I am afraid I cannot accept this Amendment because it would import uncertainty into these schemes. The electors might make an error. Suppose they made an error and suppose we had a really incompetent Government. It would be very unfair on the Labour local authorities if they were shackled and were unable to get assurances that grants would be forthcoming. I am sure this argument will appeal to the hon. Members who have moved and supported this Amendment.
What we want to do is to get on as fast as we can, and I undertake that we shall do so. But as I explained on Second Reading, a lot of these schemes are planned some way ahead, and the practice is not to pay the grant, if a relatively small scheme, until the scheme has been completed or, if a larger scheme in different sections, until each stage is completed. We pay not in advance but after the completion of the scheme.
The Amendment would do no immediate harm, because local authorities know that an active administration is in office, but if the situation were to worsen later, as this period comes to an end, it would have very unfortunate results for local authorities who might not know whether a grant was obtainable or not. They would not know whether there was a chance of getting rid of the Government and replacing it with a better one before 1958. The Amendment might import uncertainty and depression of mind into local government circles, and I hope it will not be pressed.

§ Sir H. Williams
That could all be dealt with in The Expiring Laws Continuance Bill which is passed each year. If we laid down a date it would stimulate people.

§ Mr. Dalton
I beg to move, "That the Bill be now read the Third time."
After the very full discussions we have had and the many explanations which have been given, with helpful intentions, of the various points raised by hon. Members, I do not propose to take up more time of the House at this stage.

§ Mr. Geoffrey Hutchinson (Ilford, North)
I am sure nobody on either side blames the right hon. Gentleman for endeavouring to safeguard himself with regard to the speed at which this programme of new work will be carried out. None of us can foresee what is coming. But the difficulty in which the right hon. Gentleman has placed the House is this. The Explanatory Memorandum states that under present conditions it is expected that this work will be completed in seven years.
The right hon. Gentleman this afternoon and the Parliamentary Secretary the other evening left the House in a state of complete confusion as to how it was ever estimated that the work would be completed within seven years. I invite the Parliamentary Secretary, if he is to reply to the debate, to deal with the subject in the language of the Explanatory Memorandum—"At the present rate of progress"—and to disregard for this purpose the possibility that the re-armament programme may interfere with the progress which the scheme would normally make. I invite him to explain to the House how it came about that this statement was inserted into the Memorandum. On the information which has been given to the House, it is impossible to see how it could have been made.
First of all, the right hon. Gentleman has a considerable back-log of work already authorised. Work to the value of £24 million has been authorised. Some of it has been started and some, I understand, has not been started. In addition, a further £11 million worth of work is in the final stages of planning and, I assume, has not been included in the capital investment programme for this year or for past years; and there is a total of £6½ million for new work in rural areas for which no grant is made but which, of course, 1849 is included in the capital investment programme.
It is uncertain from the right hon. Gentleman's statement how much of the £6½ million has been started—and, I assume, already included in the capital investment programme for this year or for some past year—and how much has still to be authorised for inclusion in the capital investment programme in the future. The same applies to the £8 million of new works which is being assisted by the Ministry of Agriculture. It is not possible to say how much of that work is included in the capital investment programme for the present year or past years.
But for the purpose of the point I desire to put, I will assume that the whole of the £24 million, the £6½ million and the £8 million has already been included in the capital investment programme of some past year, and therefore will not be included in the capital investment programme in future years. Of course, that is quite clearly not the case, but I give the right hon. Gentleman the benefit of the doubt. It is quite clear that the £11 million has got to be included in the capital investment programme of the next seven years.
The right hon. Gentleman told the House the other night that one-third of the £25 million allocated for water and sewerage in the capital investment programme is available for rural water supplies. Therefore, at the end of the first three years of the new programme, something like £24 million of new capital works in rural areas will have been completed. That leaves out £11 million which at present is in the stage of "active planning" and has not been included in any capital investment programme, so that about £13 million of the new programme will have been completed at the end of the first three years, and £77 million of the new programme will remain to be completed. That means that the rate of allocation for rural supplies alone in the last four years of the programme will have to be at the rate of about £19 million a year. I do not know whether I have made it plain to the right hon. Gentleman how I get at that figure. Is he really telling the House that during the last four years of this programme the share of the capital investment pro- 1850 gramme available for rural supplies alone is likely to amount to £19 million?

§ Mr. Dalton
I have spoken of the three years stabilisation under the capital investment programme, and the three years in respect of which stabilisation is taking place are last year, this year and next year. Therefore, the averaging process which the hon. and learned Gentleman is now going through covers the remainder of the seven-year period after next year. The upward movement which he is pointing out will take place will not need to be nearly as steep as he suggests, because it is in effect six years out of the seven years, during which we hope that the re-armament programme, having passed its peak, will permit us to spend more on this. I thought I had made all that plain before, but if I did not I hope that I have made it plain now.

§ Mr. Hutchinson
Part of the new programme will be authorised this year?

§ Mr. Dalton
Yes, this year.

§ Mr. Hutchinson
Part of the new £90 million will be authorised this year?

§ Mr. Dalton
Certainly.

§ Mr. Hutchinson
So one cannot exclude this year; some part of this year will have to come in. It is very difficult to estimate these things and I agree that on the calculation I was putting I may have overstated a little, but I think that it will be somewhere in the region of between £15 million and £19 million a year on the right hon. Gentleman's own calculations. Is he really saying that in the last five or six years of this programme the share of the capital investment programme which will be available for rural supplies only will be as great as that?
Of course, the whole of that calculation is based upon the assumption that no part of the works which are at present authorised—some of which have started and some not—has not already been included in the capital investment programme of some past year. It is impossible to get accurate figures unless one knows the break-up of those figures, but I would say to the right hon. Gentleman that, despite his explanation, I think my figure is going to work out at something very near the truth.
I have one or two other matters that I want to put to the right hon. Gentleman 1851 quite briefly. He told the House the other night that the share of the capital investment programme available for water supplies both urban and rural and for sewerage schemes was £25 million in the last calendar year. Is that an increase in the share of capital investment programme which it was contemplated would be allocated to these services when the Economic Survey for 1950 was published, because the figure in the Economic Survey was £19.5 million for England and Wales? Does that mean that the share of the capital investment programme allotted to water and sewerage has been increased?

§ Mr. Dalton
Yes.

§ Mr. Hutchinson
Has it been increased at the expense of one of the other services? If it has—if electricity has lost £5 million and water has gained £5 million—the right hon. Gentleman has been doing exactly what I said to him the other night he ought to do. I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will tell me whether he and I are in agreement about the appropriate shares that ought to be allocated.

§ Mr. Hutchinson
I am glad to know that the Government have revised their estimate for electricity in favour of rural water, and I am glad to think that I anticipated their decision on this matter.
The right hon. Gentleman said that hon. Members must not expect to receive the quantity of pipes that they would like to receive. Of course, we all know that a great re-armament programme is going on and one cannot make pipes and guns at the same time. Will he endeavour to use his influence with the right hon. Gentleman the Minister of Supply to prevent any further export of these cast iron pipes which are so badly needed for water supplies in this country?
In 1946 we were exporting about one-fifth of the total production of cast iron pipes and fittings in this country. Since 1946 the figure has risen steadily, until in 1949, which is the last year for which figures are available, it reached 25 per cent.—one-quarter of our total production. If, in fact, the pressure on the production of these pipes is going to be such that owing to the re-armament programme the overall production is likely to 1852 be reduced, can the right hon. Gentleman give the House some assurance that he will prevent any further export of these pipes and fittings until the needs of this country have been met?

§ Mr. Nugent
There are two comments I should like to make on the Third Reading of the Bill. I feel that it should not leave the House without some comment on the source of supply. We have been discussing the extension of service to give a piped water supply, which is very desirable, but we must to some extent be concerned with the capacity of our resources in ensuring that there is an adequate flow of water coming down these pipes when they are put in.
It is true that in this country we have a plentiful supply of water coming down. As my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton (Mr. Amory) has already said, it seems to be coming down on our heads pretty regularly. Indeed, our total consumption is not high in relation to the amount that falls. At the most, in the summer it rises to something like 2,000 million gallons a day, which is equivalent only to the normal winter flow of the Thames at Teddington. This gives some idea that the total consumption is not very great; but it varies considerably at different times of the year, and whereas the flow of the Thames at Teddington may be 2,000 million gallons a day during the winter, in the summer it will fall, perhaps, to something like 150,000 millions; and then, of course, recourse must be had to storage.
At the same time as we are extending the piped supply, there is a growing demand per head. The Minister will know that in the departmental survey that was made in his Department in 1949, when a very full survey was made over nearly half the water undertakings of the country, it was discovered that there had been an increase in consumption of something like 20 per cent. The average daily consumption, including industry, is now between 40 and 45 gallons per head.
The point I want to make, and on which I hope the right hon. Gentleman will comment, is that his Departmental committee reported that they had found a serious element of waste, of something of the order of between three and ten gallons per head per day, or about 10 per cent. of the total consumption. That is 1853 a substantial amount of water, and I calculate that, taken over the whole country, it amounts to something like one-third of the total consumption of London.
In a dry period—we saw the effects of the drought in 1949—when demand is pressing hard on the sources of supply, which at such a time must be mainly stored water, the effect of waste of that magnitude becomes serious. There is no doubt whatever that in 1949 in many parts of the country the demand had overshot the sources of supply available in a dry period. The particular elements in waste are of course known to the right hon. Gentleman. The main item is probably leaking mains, but there are also faulty fittings and bad habits on the part of consumers.
What is the right hon. Gentleman doing about this? Is there some provision in the capital investment programme to begin to overtake the arrears of the replacement of some of these rather ancient main water pipes? It is a big job, I know, but it has to be tackled sometime, and I should like to know whether in the capital expenditure programme the right hon. Gentleman has any power to set aside for beginning to replace the ancient mains that have been in use for a long time and are now leaking.
Is the Minister making any conditions with new water undertakings, or with those undertakings which are being extended, to require them to have a proper organisation to deal with waste? He will know that a water undertaking like Cambridge, for instance, which has a first-class organisation for dealing with waste, has a strikingly lower consumption per head than many other undertakings, which it might be invidious to name, and that there is no doubt that much can be done by individual companies in dealing with waste.

§ Mr. Hutchinson
I can tell my hon. Friend of one undertaking in his own constituency where the consumption per head is actually reducing.

§ Mr. Nugent
I am delighted to hear it. Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman has already been active there.
My other comment is to ask the Minister why he has not set up any of the regional advisory committees that he was recommended to set up in the White Paper of 1944. He has proceeded to 1854 set up the Central Advisory Committee, and useful work it has done; we should all be glad to pay tribute to what it has achieved. He also carried out a survey of the country through his own Departmental experts, but I believe that these regional water committees could give valuable service in relating the central Department to local opinion. There is a rumour that it is because of political considerations that these committees have not been set up. I find that difficult to believe, and 1 hope the right hon. Gentleman will be able to give a satisfactory answer to that.
I should like to join in the general good wishes for this Bill. It is a useful Measure, which will extend the Tory legislation which went before in 1934 and 1944. The right hon. Gentleman and his Parliamentary Secretary both overreached themselves on Second Reading in their strictures on the administrations of the past, but the work that has been carried out by the Department during the past six years has been carried out under an Act put on the Statute Book substantially by a Tory Government, and the Government's contribution has only been to extend the legislation that was there before. The Parliamentary Secretary did say: Let no one gainsay the fact that, while it is true that from the Flood up to 1939 the Tories had provided for a quarter of the rural parishes of this country, …" etc.—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 25th June. 1951; Vol. 126, c. 1128.] I find that the figures for 1939 are, in fact, that out of 11,000 parishes in this country nearly 8,000 have piped supplies of water—something like two-thirds to three-quarters—so that his figures were quite wrong.
If we on this side are to be responsible for everything that has happened from the Flood up to now, we can also take credit for a great deal. When the party opposite have as good a record, they will then be in a position to criticise us. I recollect in connection with the Flood that it is recorded that Noah's habits suggested that there was a high standard of living then. It is said that when Noah sat down to his lunch he used to say to his wife, I don't care where the water goes if it doesn't get into the wine. He did not have to have recourse to water only when he sat down to meals, but had wine. Wine is a luxury today.
1855 We are delighted that this valuable work is going on in the rural areas. It is badly needed on many farms still, and I give my good wishes to this Bill. I hope the Minister will reply to the two points that I have made.

§ Mr. Dalton
By leave of the House I will briefly reply to the hon. Member for Guildford (Mr. Nugent). I have already several times intervened and I do not want to overtax the patience of the House. We have not set up a regional organisation. The regional inspectors of my present Ministry have made surveys which have been pretty thorough and up to date. It has seemed to me unnecessary to multiply that aspect of the organisation. We have the Central Advisory Committee—

§ Mr. Nugent
What about waste?

§ Mr. Dalton
That is a rather wide subject with which to deal on Third Reading, but I am anxious to check waste as much as I can. I have already said that as soon as this Bill is through I intend to have a full survey made into all these aspects of the matter, and I will include in that the point which the hon. Member has raised.