WELLAND AND NENE (EMPINGHAM RESERVOIR) AND MID-NORTHAMPTONSHIRE WATER BILL (By Order). (Hansard, 19 June 1969)

§ Mr. Speaker
The hon. Member for Rutland and Stamford (Mr. Kenneth Lewis) will not be surprised that I have not selected his Amendment. May I try to help him? The Bill has received a Second Reading and it has been through to Committee. There are no Amendments at Consideration stage. If the hon. Member speaks, he will have to persuade Mr. Speaker why we should not consider the Bill.

§ Mr. Kenneth Lewis (Rutland and Stamford)
It is not difficult for me to persuade Mr. Speaker why we should not consider the Bill.

§ Mr. Speaker
Order. It will be very difficult.

§ Mr. Lewis
From my point of view it is not difficult, but I quite understand Mr. Speaker's point of view.
I have no intention of debating this Consideration stage at any length whatever. I assume that there will be a Third Reading of the Bill. Therefore, it is my intention to keep any arguments for discussion on Third Reading, of which I hope I shall be given due notice. Notice that the Bill was to be considered was very short indeed and if I had wanted to persuade you, Mr. Speaker, it would have been very difficult in the time available.
824 Hon. Members have received a memorandum from the promoters of the Bill, and it contains two matters which are worthy of comment. On the second page of the memorandum the promoters of the Bill say that during the course of—

§ Mr. Speaker
Order. The hon. Member would help me by telling me what memorandum he is considering. May I help him by saying that there are no Amendments at Consideration stage before the House. What the hon. Member has addressed himself to is the question whether we should consider the Bill at this moment, when there are no Amendments at Consideration stage.

§ Mr. Lewis
I took some advice before this stage was reached. Unless the Clerks have given different advice from the Ruling which you have just given, Mr. Speaker, I cannot believe that I am able to say absolutely nothing. I was informed by the Clerks that I was in order in making a considerable speech, if I had wished to do so. I said that I wished to comment only briefly. That was the information I received from the Clerks.

§ Mr. Speaker
The hon. Gentleman should take his own advice rather than that of anybody else. The question at the moment is that the Bill be now considered. At Consideration stage there may be Amendments, but, in fact, there is none on the Order Paper. The hon. Member has to exercise his Parliamentary ingenuity to argue why we should not at this stage consider a Bill when, at Consideration stage, there is nothing for us to consider.

§ Mr. Lewis
I can only say, Mr. Speaker, that I wish that at Consideration stage of the Bill there was nothing to consider. But at least there is the Bill to consider. It would please me immensely if the Bill was not available to be considered and we did not need to have it at all.
We should not really consider the Bill, because on page 2 of the memorandum, which you, Mr. Speaker, obviously have not got, but which was sent by the promoters of the Bill—

§ Mr. Speaker
Order. There may be all kinds of documents sent by the promoters of the Bill to the hon. Gentleman, to his hon. Friends and to his opponents. We are on a very narrow debate, namely, the Question, That the Bill be now considered. When we consider a Bill it is to enable Amendments to be made at Consideration stage. I have no notice of any Amendments to be taken at Consideration stage.

§ Mr. Graham Page (Crosby)
rose—

§ Mr. Speaker
Order. Does the hon. Gentleman wish to help?

§ Mr. Page
On a point of order. I understand that hon. Members have received a statement from the promoters of the Bill which is said to be a statement for the Consideration of the Bill. In that it is reported that the Committee did report in its special report on the Bill—and I presume that this special report comes before the House on this occasion in considering the Bill: Your Committee have sat for nine days and have heard evidence adduced by the promoters of the Bill and by the petitioners against the Bill. Your Committee have passed the Bill with Amendments, but consider it their duty to bring to the attention of the House their view that there is an urgent necessity to study alternative supplies of water. They therefore strongly recommend that a feasibility study of the Wash Barrage be undertaken immediately. I ask your guidance, Mr. Speaker, whether, when a Committee makes that report to the House, it would be proper to consider it on Consideration of the Bill.

§ Mr. Speaker
Order. I am deeply indebted to my hon. and learned Friend, if I may call him so. But any remarks in the document to which he refers should be embodied in something which we should consider at Consideration stage. We are deciding at the moment whether we should consider the Bill. At Consideration stage we consider any Amendments which have been made since the Bill left Committee. There are no Amendments on the Order Paper. The hon. Member for Rutland and Stamford (Mr. Kenneth Lewis) must address himself to the question why we should not consider the Bill, for which there are no Amendments at Consideration stage. I think that we ought to close this debate soon.

§ Mr. Kenneth Lewis
I find myself in a most extraordinary situation, because you, Mr. Speaker, usually spend your time in this House, quite properly, attempting to persuade Members of Parliament to make speeches that are rather less in length than they might otherwise be. In fact, because of your intervention, you are prolonging the speech that I am trying to make.

§ Mr. Speaker
Order. Might I warn the hon. Gentleman that nothing Mr. Speaker ever says in the Chair is an encouragement to an hon. Member to speak longer than he intended.

§ Mr. Lewis
I am trying to persuade the House that there should not be consideration of this Bill, despite there being no Amendments to it. Perhaps I may explain. If there was an Amendment to the Bill accepting that the new reservoir proposed to be laid down in Rutland was to be cut in half, I should not need to oppose or make a speech. I should be so delighted that it would be quite unnecessary. But there is no Amendment laid to suggest that this sizable reservoir on 4,000 acres should be cut down to 2,000 acres. Because there is no such Amendment I am speaking on the Bill to try to prove to you, Mr. Speaker, and to the House, that it is necessary that we should not have the Bill at Consideration Stage.

§ Mr. Speaker
Order. The hon. Gentleman will have his opportunity on Third Reading. For the moment he is arguing, because there are no Amendments at Consideration stage, that there ought to be, and, because there are not, he is opposed to consideration. The hon. Gentleman must vote against the Question, That the Bill be now considered.

§ Mr. Lewis
I have no control over Amendments that might have been put down to the Bill. In the first place, I was not on the Committee. However, I understand that various Amendments were accepted in Committee, and that these were helpful to the promoters of the Bill. I understand that the promoters of the Bill have been helpful also to the Rutland County Council. This council is not nearly as powerful as the G.L.C., which we discussed a little earlier, and it is fighting a lone and costly battle. The battle so far has cost the council about £12,000—

§ Mr. Speaker
Order. The hon. Member must not think that I am unsympathetic to all the points that he is raising. He raised some of them on Second Reading. His last opportunity will be on Third Reading. His opportunity to raise those matters is not on the Question whether the Bill be now considered, when there is nothing to consider.

§ Mr. Lewis
Again, Mr. Speaker, it depends on one's point of view whether there is nothing to be considered.

§ Mr. Speaker
Order. I have no point of view. I am simply preserving the Orders of the House.

§ Mr. Lewis
Mr. Speaker, this is an extraordinary debate between you in a sedentary position and me on my feet. I am in the difficulty that I could not put down an Amendment. Had I done so, I should have wanted to know, for example, whether the council would be helped to meet this cost of about £12,000. It can get only £3,500 on a 1d. rate, and I should want to know whether the Minister would be prepared to help it financially. I should like him to say whether he would be prepared to make a contribution—

§ Mr. Speaker
Order. There may be other opportunities for asking questions like that. I am passionately interested in Rutland, and in every small local authority in the country, but I am equally passionately interested in the Orders of the House. We are discussing whether the Bill should be now considered, when there is nothing to consider at Consideration stage. The hon. Member must try to prove that we ought to consider the Bill when there is nothing to consider.

§ Mr. Lewis
I understand that an extraordinary procedure was adopted in this case, something which has seldom, if ever, been done before. The Committee included a resolution saying that it was passing the Bill reluctantly on condition that the Government went ahead with the Wash Barrage. The Committee also sent two letters, one to the Prime Minister, and the other to the Ministry of Housing and Local Government. It is true that those documents did not constitute amendments to the Bill, but they were sent by the Committee, and I think they are worthy of discussion in so far as the Committee agreed—

§ Mr. Speaker
Order. They may be worthy of discussion. May I help the hon. Member? His remedy is to vote against the Bill being now considered.

§ Mr. Lewis
I cannot yet bring myself to vote on this matter. I shall do so in due course, even if I vote entirely on my own.

§ Mr. Speaker
Order. I must warn the hon. Member that the Chair is very patient. We are debating almost in mow at the moment the Question whether the Bill be now considered.

§ Mr. Graham Page
rose—

§ Mr. Speaker
I shall deal with the hon. Member for Crosby (Mr. Graham Page) in due course.
The Question before the House at the moment is whether the Bill be now considered. At the moment we have nothing to consider. There are no Amendments for Consideration stage. This is a most ingenious exercise but it must stop in a moment.

§ Mr. Lewis
Mr. Speaker, if you are patient with me for a little longer I shall have said almost everything that I have to say. I realise your difficulty, and I sympathise greatly—

§ Mr. Speaker
Order. The difficulty is not mine, but the hon. Member's.

§ Mr. Lewis
I understand that my difficulty is almost as great as yours, Mr. Speaker. I hope that on Third Reading we shall have a full debate on the report which was sent by this Committee, on the proposals for reservoirs, not only in the context of Rutland, but all reservoirs, and on the Wash Barrage.
Despite the fact that no Amendments are laid at this stage of the Bill, it must not be accepted that I agree with it, because I do not. The Rutland County Council has reluctantly withdrawn its opposition, because it felt that the cost of continuing the fight, for a small county, would be too great. Since it has to co-operate in due course with the promoters, it feels that the discussions must proceed while we are deciding what to do with the Bill.
The Empingham Reservoir is a massive reservoir, to be laid down in a small county, at a massive cost. It is the first of eight or nine and it must have the 829 serious consideration of the House. The House must decide whether we can go on digging large holes in the ground, even in small counties—other counties will be involved in due course—to provide water, or whether we ought not to try to get some other means of providing the services which are required for our urban population.

§ Mr. Graham Page
If you will bear with me, Mr. Speaker, for a moment, on a point which I raised as a point of order just now, we are dealing with the Bill on Report from Committee. I have acquired from the Vote Office two documents, both headed: Report from the Committee on the Welland and Nene (Empingham Reservoir) and Mid-Northamptonshire Water Bill. One is a special report from the Committee, which I read out previously. The other is what we usually see on Report of a Bill from a Committee a statement of the objections or reports which have been made to the Committee from the Ministry.
If there is no Amendment to the Bill I am not sure at what stage we can debate those reports if not on Report. I would have thought that the Report stage was the right time to debate these reports, even though the Committee did not amend the Bill. This is particularly so when the Committee made a special report in which it wished to bring to the attention of the House its view that there was an urgent necessity to study alternative supplies of water.
If such a Committee goes to the trouble of making a special report, having it printed, and placing it in the Vote Office, I would have hoped that the House could at some time debate it.

§ Mr. Speaker
Order. I am with the hon. Gentleman on the philosophical basis, but this is not the stage to do that. We have nothing before the House except whether the Report stage should be taken, whether Amendments should be considered. There are no Amendments; there is nothing before the House except whether the Bill be considered.

§ Mr. Page
I shall have achieved my purpose if I have your ruling that these reports can be debated on Third Reading. As they are headed "Reports" I thought that the logical thing was that they would be dealt with 830 on the Report stage. My hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Stamford (Mr. Kenneth Lewis) said that he wanted to raise a debate on Third Reading. If we can return to the reports I am sure that the House will be happy.

§ Mr. Speaker
Order. I will not promise what I will do in the Chair on Third Reading. I am concerned only with the present question.