WATER STORAGE, GREATER LONDON (Hansard, 8 June 1956)

§ Mr. Skeffington

I was mentioning that I had overlooked the fact that the Test Match was about to start this week and that that event can always be relied upon to product conditions of tropical rainfall. At whatever time this debate might come before the House, however, it will be generally agreed that the problem of water storage in the Home Counties and the Greater London area is important and that any failure would be followed by the very gravest consequences.

The high density of population in the area of the Metropolitan Water Board and in the Home Counties produces very intricate problems of water engineering. About one-fifth of the population of England and Wales live in this area and their ever increasing water needs have to be met. I want to say something about one of the proposals of the Metropolitan Water Board, as far as I understand it, but I should like it to be very clearly understood that, in general, I have the highest admiration for the Board and for the work it has done so well for so many years.

1588 As a Socialist, I think it is an example of a public corporation democratically controlled which has provided a firstclass service to the people of London and surrounding districts without the impetus of the profit motive. That work has been all the more noteworthy when one considers the rapid development of the outer areas of the Board and the difficulties with which the Board had to contend during and following two world wars. I hope that nothing I say will be taken as general criticism of the work of the Metropolitan Water Board.

In the area of the Metropolitan Water Board there are about 6½ million people whose water needs have to be met. That population has been growing, but I think it is probably true that it will not expand much more, because while the outer areas have been filling up with new dwellings, the areas within the County of London by deliberate policy, have been losing population. One can look forward, therefore, to a population which, roughly, will be between 6½ million and 7 million. The daily average consumption of water within the area of the Board has now reached what seem to me astronomical figures. Demand is now running at about 335 million gallons a day; and that figure, of course, is a little higher in summer and a little lower in winter. Although it is true that the population is not likely to increase very much in the area of the Board, it is quite clear that daily demands for water will increase. They will increase as a consequence of better sanitation and better amenities. For example, in 1949 an estimate was made of the houses within the Board's area, and it showed that about half of them had no bathrooms.

This rather surprising fact is borne out by figures which I have got for houses in other urban parts of the country. They reveal a similar proportion. Many of the houses were excellent houses when they were built but as they become converted and modern conveniences are added to them, and as slums are pulled down and new houses built, the demand for water within the Board's area is bound to increase. From each of some of the old houses three families will go out, and each family will go into a new house, where they will have much more adequate and proper sanitary facilities. So, within 1589 the next ten years, at a conservative estimate, the Board itself will probably have to face a demand for at least 400 million gallons of water per day.

It is against that background that the Board's position has to be studied. It is a fact that even in difficult periods of prolonged drought the Board has managed to meet minimum needs either by extra extraction from the River Thames which may be dangerous or by restrictions on water use, or by a combination of both. It has just managed to meat the very difficult circumstances of the drier periods we had before the war or have had since, but the Board has only just managed, and unless the storage capacity is fairly rapidly extended in the future the position will not, I think, be without some danger.

That is the situation within the Board's area. Outside that area the conditions are worse. Even the Kent County Council, whose majority can hardly be thought to be in favour of the political principle of collectivism, has had to come to this House for powers to amalgamate a number of small water concerns which are too small to deal with present demands and future developments in that county. I am glad that that step has been taken, though my own view is that what has happened in Kent will not be adequate for the future and that not only will a rather poor service be maintained, but that in any prolonged period of drought Kent will suffer severely from water shortage.

In Essex, and in the north of Essex in particular, there is always difficulty if there is any prolonged period of dryness. Other parts of the Home Counties—I shall not take time to enumerate them—all experience water difficulties when there is a lengthy period of fine weather.

Some months ago, to meet the situation in the London area, the Metropolitan Water Board was pressing for permission to develop water storage at Walton-on-Thames. It seemed to me then as it seems to me now that to attempt to solve the problem for the London and the Home Counties piecemeal like this was unwise for a number of reasons. On 19th October, 1954, I asked the Minister of Housing and Local Government whether the working party considering the future of water supplies for the Metropolitan Water 1590 Board was to include a survey of water needs for the London basin as a whole, and the Minister in a Written Answer, replied: This inquiry was instituted to consider the particular problems of the Metropolitan Water Board. However, the water needs of the London basin as a whole arc, of course, being borne in mind."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 19th October, 1954; Vol. 531, c. 1531] I am not quite certain what that answer meant. One of the reasons for this debate is that I hope to be told how tar the needs of London and the areas around have been considered and whether or not there is any suggestion that there may be some joint action to try to solve the problem not only of the Metropolitan Water Board, but of areas outside its own area.

The present position of the Metropolitan Water Board in the matter of storage is that it has a capacity in the Thames and Lea valleys of about 25,000 million gallons. All the experts that I have consulted tell me that that is a totally inadequate reserve and that to meet safety requirements at least another 50,000 million gallons storage would be required. The Walton project would provide only 6,000 million gallons, which is certainly a very small part of the essential safety storage capacity required even for the area of the Metropolitan Water Board alone.

The House will gather the need for these requirements when I say that in the dry years of 1934 and 1944 the Metropolitan Water Board alone needed an additional 45,000 million gallons. If we have a combination of a dry summer followed by a dry winter and another dry summer, which we have not had for some years, the water supply position of London is likely to become very difficult indeed.

It is only fair to say that the Board has suffered from one difficulty which was created by this House nearly 50 years ago. The Board asked the House for powers to develop a whole series of reservoirs in the Thames Valley and elsewhere. The Chairman of the Select Committee of the House which considered the proposal at that time persuaded the Committee not to give these comprehensive powers. He suggested that the Board should come to the House and ask for powers from time to time as it required them. The result of that policy has been 1591 that the Board has never been able to plan sufficiently far ahead. Its storage capacities have never kept pace with the increasing demand and many of the sites which it had in mind in 1904 have now been urbanised and are not available.

The Walton project is the result of this piecemeal policy, forced upon the Board by historical circumstances, of living from hand to mouth. Further consideration ought to be given before a start on the Walton project is allowed. I gather that tenders are going out, but that no work has been carried out. We should see whether or not better alternatives are available and bear in mind the needs not only of the Metropolitan Water Board, but of the Greater London area.

I have two special reasons for urging this course upon the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Housing and Local Government. First, I believe that there is a very much better project than the Walton project. Secondly, I view with alarm the fact that if we proceed with the Walton project and with the reservoirs which are to follow it at Datchet and Wraysbury, it will mean that another four square miles of territory in the area of the Home Counties and in big centres of population will be sterilised for communal use, which is something I deplore. The county in which my constituency is situated has suffered considerably in this respect. It is scored over with airfields, gravel pits and reservoirs. If there are alternatives, the land in these dense conurbations would be preserved as open spaces or for use for some other communal activity.

What are the alternatives? The Metropolitan Water Board now gets two-thirds of its supply from the Thames. Half of the other third comes from the River Lea and the other half from wells which are situated in Kent, South Hertfordshire and Surrey. At the end of the war various projects were explored, the possibility of bringing water from the Severn, the Bedford Ouse, the Cam, and even of extracting water from the sea. For one reason or another all these projects were turned down. Then an investigation was made, though rather hurriedly, and it was never fully completed I understand, into the possibilities of creating a new reservoir in the Enborne valley near 1592 Newbury, on the Hampshire-Berkshire borders.

It is this project which, I think, ought to be considered seriously, not only because it would release land urgently needed in the inner Home Counties areas, but because it would give much more adequate storage than is proposed now by the Metropolitan Water Board, at Walton. The land in the Enborne Valley is classified as second-class or third-class agricultural land. I am told that there are no engineering difficulties in creating a reservoir there of really adequate capacity. At one time it was suggested that there might be chemical difficulties about the water, but I understand that this has been proved not to be the case.

It would be practicable in this valley to create a reservoir which would provide 55,000 million gallons additional water capacity, which is just about the minimum safety requirement, having regard to the increased daily use for the next ten years which will be required by the Board and which could, if linked with other areas, give an adequate reserve to them as well.

It has been suggested that this scheme would be unduly expensive. Those who have discussed the matter with me suggest that this is not the case. After all, the present Walton construction and the two other reservoirs will cost not less than £20 million when they are completed, and even when the three reservoirs are in use we shall get an additional storage of only about 17,000 million gallons against minimum requirements of at least 50,000 million gallons.

To sum up, I would advocate the following points in urging that there should be an inquiry. First, the needs of the Metropolitan Water Board and the Home Counties for water are increasing daily and will go on increasing daily. There are acute difficulties in some parts of the area, such as those I have referred to in North Essex. The additional storage of between at least 50,000 million and 60,000 million gallons could be provided in the Enborne Valley and if, by adopting this scheme, it was possible to save the four square miles which may be inundated in the inner Home Counties area, that would be a considerable gain to those living there.

I hope that there may be an inquiry into this project to link up future water 1593 supplies not only with the needs of the Metropolitan Water Board, but with the needs of the London basin as a whole. That seems to me to be the sensible way to proceed, and so I hope that this afternoon the Parliamentary Secretary will tell us his views about these proposals.

§ The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Housing and Local Government (Mr. J. Enoch Powell)

I would certainly not differ from the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (Mr. Skeffington) about the importance of the topic which he has put before the House this afternoon, and the survey of the problems with which he has presented us was extremely well balanced and, if I may say so, well-informed.

At the present time the water storage situation for the inner Home Counties and for the Metropolitan area can be regarded as not unsatisfactory. It is only in the very exceptional circumstances to which the hon. Gentleman referred, of a dry summer followed by a dry winter and then by another exceptionally dry summer, that it would be necessary for the Board to use the exceptional powers it possesses to increase its abstraction from the Thames to bring the flow over Teddington Weir below the statutory limit.

However, as the hon. Gentleman said, there are two factors which have to be dealt with in our plans for the future. First, we want even greater security than we have now. We want to be entirely free of the fear that even in the worst cases it may be necessary to go below the statutory flow over Teddington Weir.

Then—and this is even more important—we have to cope with the steadily increasing domestic and industrial consumption in the whole London area some of the reasons for which the hon. Member mentioned. When I say "the whole London area" I mean not only the area of supply of the Metropolitan Water Board itself but the adjacent areas which will in the future—to some extent they are at the present—be dependent, in emergency at any rate and perhaps more regularly, upon the resources of the Metropolitan Water Board.

There is much that the Board can do, and is doing, to exploit the existing reservoir capacity more fully. It is, for example, installing mechanism which 1594 enables the lower levels of water in the reservoirs, in case of need, to be pumped out and so increases the useful storage capacity. It is also found that it is possible, without risk, to increase the level in the existing reservoirs above that for which they were originally designed by their constructors. So there is a little elbow room of which advantage is being taken even in the present reservoirs.

There is in progress a very important scheme, estimated to cost £5½ million, for a tunnel which will connect the Thames with the Lee. The value of this is that at times when the flow in the Lee does not enable the Lee Valley reservoirs to be fully filled, the water from the Thames can be brought through so that the storage capacity in both valleys can be utilised to the full. That scheme is now in progress, and the tunnelling and other work is going on.

The hon. Member referred to the new reservoir at Walton, for which it is expected that the Board will let a contract in October this year. I will come presently to the hon. Member's wider question about other projected reservoirs higher up the Thames Valley.

The effect of the two major projects, the Thames-Lee tunnel and the Walton reservoir, taken together, is to add between 40 and 50 million gallons per day in the worst case, in drought circumstances, to the guaranteed supply of the Metropolitan Water Board.

I think it will be agreed that, when that is measured against the average daily consumption figure of about 340 million gallons, an increase of that order in the guaranteed minimum daily supply is not to be despised. I put it to the hon. Member that, for that reason alone, if it is possible, as it is at the present time, to go ahead with the Walton project, which represents 22 million gallons per day in the worst case, it would have been wrong to defer the opportunity of increasing the margin of safety and of reaching out to deal with something of the inevitable future growth in need. Both schemes ought to be fully in effect by 1960 or thereabouts.

That, of course, is only the immediate future. We should reckon on the Board requiring an additional 100 million gallons per day at least over the next quarter of a century if it is to meet 1595 securely, without anxiety and without threat to the lower reaches of the Thames, the probable domestic and industrial consumption in the London area. In making that estimate, I emphasise that the Board is also taking into account the probable demands which would be placed upon its bulk supplies or reserves by the adjacent areas, for example, the adjacent areas in Essex. To meet the needs of the Metropolitan area, we must think in terms of another 100 million gallons per day guaranteed supply over the next 20 years I put the period a little longer than did the hon. Member.

There are two ways in which the Board might seek to do this. It can continue with what is technically known as the Progressive Scheme—which the hon. Member will recognise as having no connection with past party politics in the London County Council, but which refers to the process of going on from one reservoir to another in the Thames Valley in the immediate Home Counties, a process to which he himself referred. It would be part of such a policy to implement the plans for the Wraysbury and Datchet Reservoirs for which the Board already has the necessary Parliamentary powers.

As the hon. Member pointed out, even those two projects together with all that about which I have been talking would not really meet the probable need which has to be met over the next 20 years or so. Therefore, the Board has rightly decided to look at the whole question of London's future supply in the next quarter of a century on the broadest basis, and to take into account all the possible alternatives, including the two which the 1596 hon. Member mentioned, and many others. The Board itself is at this moment working on the survey in co-operation with officials of my right hon. Friend's Department.

This is a matter over which the Board should take its time. I hope that I have shown that the work initiated or about to be initiated gives reasonable security over the next few years, until the next phase can begin in any case. It would, therefore, be very shortsighted not to enter thereafter upon a policy with which we can be sure of meeting the needs of the next quarter of a century. Therefore, I do not think that the Board would apologise, having got the immediate projects under way, for making the most careful investigation, taking all the factors into account, of the best means of meeting London's demand for an extra 100 million gallons per day.

Once again I will confirm that, in doing so, it is not looking narrowly at the boundaries of its own area of supply, but regards its resources and its storage as, in a sense, a pool which has a relevance to the water supply and the water needs of the Metropolitan area in a wider sense. The Board can therefore claim that, from a not unsatisfactory present position, it is working to meet the needs of the next five years with even greater security than we have at present and that it is planning, with a full estimation of future needs and due deliberation, to meet the requirements of the next quarter of a century.