HC Deb 19 July 1972 vol 841 cc869-78

2.50 a.m.

Mr. David Clark (Colne Valley)

I wish to raise tonight what may appear to be a local problem but it is one which I feel has much more significance at national level. It concerns the abstraction of water under the terms of the Huddersfield Corporation Act, 1965.

I pay tribute to the local newspapers for the way they have tried to highlight the problem. They have approached the matter in a crusading attitude. They were right to do so because local people and myself are in no way opposed to the abstraction of water. We recognise that there is a need for water and we appreciate that some of the water which is taken from the Colne Valley by the Huddersfield Corporation Waterworks comes back to the valley.

In considering the matter it is necessary to look back to 1965 to the Act which went through Parliament virtually unopposed. That raises certain difficulties which I shall deal with later. My attention was drawn to the problem when earlier this year I received notification from my constituents that certain rivers in the constituency were running dry. I visited the scene and saw for myself that streams in certain very attractive areas which had been traditional picnic places for the whole of the Colne Valley and for Huddersfield had dried up completely. Like most of the local people I was horrified. I began to make inquiries and I was even more surprised to find that under the 1965 Act Huddersfield Corporation had the power and the authority to take virtually any water it wanted out of the streams in the Colne Valley as long as it maintained a certain compensatory flow downstream at Marsden.

That means that the industrial part of the valley is supplied with water but that the more attractive recreational and amenity areas are devoid of it. On further investigation I discovered certain difficulties, not only in the specific sense but in the general sense also. The extremely complicated art of the abstraction of water involves the expenditure of millions of £s and is necessarily technical.

When the scheme was discussed it involved the building of a dam and the M62 motorway in the Scammonden Valley. It was a glamorous project and all attention was focused upon it. The more technical aspects were not aired at the time. The then clerk of the council, Mr. J. W. Lomas, was reported to have said: When the Bill was published no indication was given by the Corporation or its officials that these cloughs would become virtually dry as a result of the abstraction of water from moorland streams. This point of view is supported by various other people who were on the council at the time.

Is the Minister satisfied that in technical Measures of this nature enough attention is given to the far-reaching effects on the amenities of the area in question? Is enough attention given to trying to explain them to the general public? Is the Minister satisfied that both in the present case and similar cases enough general publicity is given? For example, in connection with the Huddersfield Corporation Act there was never any public meeting within the Colne Valley to explain to the local residents what the effect of the Measure would be Hence the surprise in 1972 at the fact that the streams were running dry.

The tragedy is that we have only just seen the beginning of the effects, because many of the other cloughs are not yet affected. Could something be done to try to persuade authorities like Huddersfield Corporation to hold meetings of those affected. The Corporation held a meeting for its own ratepayers, although afterwards as a matter of courtesy the chairman of the water board met the Colne Valley residents. The publicity obviously was somewhat limited.

Is the Minister assured that the spring water supply in the area is not affected and will not be affected? I think that about 22 of the cloughs in the vicinity will be affected, but not all are affected now. Several of my constituents have written to me saying that since the corporation started its operations their spring water supplies have dried up. It is an outlying area where it is not practical at present to provide a piped mains supply in every case. The problem is causing a great deal of concern not only to those who claim that they are affected now but to all those who feel that they could be affected.

Section 41 of the Act specifically says that the Corporation shall have regard—(a) to the preservation for the public of the natural beauty of the area in which those works are situate and the enjoyment of the area by the public". That section might have been expected to protect the environment and amenities of the area, but, unfortunately, it is without teeth. I understand that there is no one who can force the corporation to pay regard to the natural beauty. Perhaps I am wrong. Perhaps the local planning authority, which may well be the Colne Valley Council, could do so.

Is the Minister satisfied about the methods used to make available the plans of the scheme? The plans were submitted in 1964 and were laid in this House, but there have been certain changes since then. I understand that some of those changes have been made by variations and licences issued by the river authority. There has been considerable difficulty because I feel that the plans available in the House are not the plans which the Huddersfield Corporation is now working to. The plans available at the local council offices are not the 1964 plans but other plans which I believe were deposited in 1969.

One last technical point. Is the Minister sure that the Huddersfield Corporation has got the necessary works order—I believe that is the technical jargon—to construct the latest works which were embodied in the new scheme and for which it obtained licences in June, 1970? Will he also comment on whether he feels that the environment has been looked after in the way it should have been? There is a good deal of local concern. I had a meeting with representatives of the Colne Valley Council, with the Huddersfield Corporation Waterworks chairman and the engineer. They were most helpful and I believe that we have an agreement about Eastergate. We were given an assurance, and they said that it would be put in writing, that they would regulate the flow at Eastergate except at times of dire emergency. If this agreement is kept—it can only be a gentleman's agreement—it would solve the problem at Eastergate.

There are much more serious problems at the Drop Clough complex, which is a traditional open air space for picnickers. There are two or three footpaths in the area. When I went there last Sunday afternoon there were a number of people there enjoying themselves. The difficulty is that Huddersfield Corporation has erected some rather high fences in the area and padlocked the gate, with the result that if the local people go picnicking by the river they have to climb over the fence, which I would not have thought was paying sufficient regard to the amenity and enjoyment of the area by the public, as the corporation is charged to do. Could the Minister bring pressure to bear on the corporation to consider the purchase of some of this land and turning it into a country park? This might be a way of trying to give something back to the community in exchange for the water that has been taken from the area.

There are two warnings given about the quality of water in the annual report of the Yorkshire River Authority, at page 37. The first is about effluent and the other is about the need to keep water higher upstream. It says: Those responsible for developing upland sources for public water supplies, must accept that the convenient availability of water in the upper reaches of river systems is not the only or the most important criterion, but that in the future full regard must be had not only to conventional calculations based on arbitrary though now almost sacrosanct factions of the safe yield of gathering grounds but also to the nature and volume of the effluents, however good their quality, which are discharged to the system lower down. It seems that the scheme adopted in the Huddersfield Corporation Act, 1965, directly contradicts that because it is taking too much water from the head of the valley and there is the danger that the body of the stream will not be sufficient to cater for industrial effluent further down. I welcome the Minister's comments on these points.

3.5 a.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Eldon Griffiths)

The hon. Member for Colne Valley (Mr. David Clark), not for the first time, has been diligent in the interests of his constituents in raising this important matter. He comes from a part of Yorkshire that I know and regard as singularly attractive, and where these lovely upland streams lose their water it is understandable that people who go into the moors for picnics and to enjoy themselves should be concerned. It is all part of the increasing sensitivity of the public to environmental matters—a sensitivity that I welcome, for it assists my Department in the work that it is seeking to do.

The hon. Member has quite rightly said that the abstraction of water from the upper reaches of river systems is a matter of growing concern. We must stop taking our water supplies for granted. On the one hand, demand is rising very rapidly; on the other hand, supply is not increasing. Therefore, we shall have to husband our water resources with the greatest care, re-use water and look after it.

Water is becoming a rather precious raw material. It is too expensive to collect, transport and distribute any longer to be wantonly wasted or flushed away at the rate of two gallons every time a schoolgirl goes to the bathroom. On those general points the hon. Member and I are at one.

The heart of what the hon. Member said tonight revolves around the 1964–65 Private Act sponsored and promoted by the Huddersfield Corporation as a statutory water undertaker. The Huddersfield Corporation, in that capacity, is responsible for maintaining adequate supplies of water to a number of local authority districts, including the Colne Valley urban district, as well as its own area. It was in this connection that it promoted the Private Bill to develop a new source of supply. Its proposals involved constructing a dam in the Scammonden Valley to form a reservoir and a tunnel to divert water into the reservoir from streams in the Colne Valley catchment. I am sure that I carry the hon. Member with me in saying that the Scammonden Valley dam is a triumph of British engineering of which we can be proud, for it was designed to carry a section of the M62 motorway, and certain provision was made in the Bill for matters such as the apportionment of costs between the then Ministry of Transport and the corporation.

The hon. Member made a point about public meetings. I agree that very often the public are not as diligent as they might be in looking at statutory notices in the newspapers. On occasions such matters may not be vigorously promoted. I regret it if it should have been the case that some of the hon. Member's constituents were unaware what the Bill's consequences might be. Nevertheless, the hon. Member would probably accept that the public have a responsibility to be vigilant in their own interest in these matters. As far as I am able to discover, the Huddersfield Corporation followed the proper procedures and advertised the objections in the proper manner.

Mr. David Clark

I take the point that the Minister is making. I do not quibble at the fact that legal requirements were strictly adhered to, but I quoted the clerk of the Colne Valley authority, who denies it. The chairman of the council says: It was never mentioned that these beauty spots would be spoilt. Local newspapers had no coverage at all of this, and it was not a matter which was discussed anywhere at any time in the area.

Mr. Griffiths

I must say from experience that people are very inclined, reaching back into the past, to say "We did not know about it at the time and we were not able to foresee the consequences." I must remind the public that in these matters they must be vigilant in their own interests, and particularly must local authorities be. I am sure the local authorities had this drawn to their attention at the time by the clerk, and they ought, in my view, to have had regard to these matters, which could affect their own constituents.

The Bill, at the time, was unopposed. It became the Huddersfield Corporation Act. Since then the dam has been built to divert water into the reservoir from streams in the Colne Valley catchment, and, as I understand it, is now in use.

The majority of the intakes for the abstraction of water from streams in the Colne Valley have also been completed. As the hon. Member will know, a substantial proportion of the yield from the new Scammonden reservoir is attributable to the diversion of water from the Colne Valley catchment.

The 1965 Act imposes requirements as to the discharge of compensation water in the Colne Valley, as the hon. Member said. I would remind him that failure by the corporation to supply compensation requirements is made an offence under the Act and is subject to penalties of fine on conviction. This being so, one must assume that the possible effect on the flows from the upper streams of granting these rights sought by the corporation to abstract water could not in any sense have been disregarded or overlooked by Parliament at the time, nor, indeed, by the promoters of the Bill, for the very simple reason that in the Bill they defined the offence and provided for penalties in the event these things happened. So the possibility of these effects was contemplated and was covered by the definition of the offence and provision for penalties.

Against that background I am afraid that I do not believe—and the hon. Gentlemen did not press this—that there are grounds to justify a review of the rights to take water which were granted to the corporation by the Act. I do not think we would be justified in reaching back into the past in that fashion.

The hon. Member is rightly concerned about the effects of abstraction on streams in his constituency. I understand that he has been advised by the corporation that it is its wish to do all it can, bearing in mind its water supply responsibilities, to minimise the effect on flows in streams. I welcome that undertaking by the corporation. I am also advised that it is drawing up a new set of operational rules relating to its abstractions, and I am glad to hear that. I would tonight want to encourage the corporation, in exercising its rights to abstract water, to take all possible steps to counter the effects on the streams.

The hon. Gentleman has questioned whether there are sufficient safeguards attached to the grant of rights to statutory water undertakers to abstract water. On the whole I think there are. The system of licensing control over abstractions, which was introduced by the Water Resources Act, 1963, is now fully operative, and the Act specifically requires the character of inland water and its surroundings and any natural beauty they may possess to be taken fully into account in granting licences for abstractions. This is now in effect across the country, and it is important for preserving amenities for the enjoyment of the public. Certain requirements were imposed in Section 41 of the Huddersfield Corporation Act, 1965, as the hon. Member rightly said.

The hon. Member raised the question of what remedy is available to anyone who feels that the corporation has not paid sufficient regard to these requirements. He said there were not enough teeth. I have examined the Act, and there does not appear to be any provision in it for any such question to be referred to the Secretary of State or to the local planning authority. But I imagine that, as no express remedy is provided to meet that contingency, Parliament in its wisdom thought it sufficient to impose the requirements for the corporation to comply with them. One's experience of local authorities and statutory undertakers suggests that when Parliament lays an obligation upon them it is a very rare and foolish statutory undertaking which does not comply with it.

I have no reason to think that Huddersfield Corporation has failed in its obligations. I am advised that a great deal has already been done by the corporation to met these requirements. A thriving sailing club now enjoys the use of Scammonden reservoir. A car park has been provided, and picnicking is allowed round the reservoirs. The provision of facilities for the public forms part of a continuing programme. Some £10,000 was spent last year, and £15,000 has been allocated for the current year. This will include expenditure on providing footpaths round the reservoir and picnic areas.

These are ways in which the corporation is complying with both the Water Resources Act and the specific Section 41 requirements of the 1965 Act. It fits in with the general policy of my Department, for we require all water authorities to make their water space available to the public for amenity, recreation and conservation. I hope that no public water undertaking or local authority is under any misapprehension about where the Government stand on the question of using our water resources in, for example, reservoirs for amenity and for recreation. We want to see all such water space made accessible to the public for fishing, sailing, canoeing and any other sport or pastime so long as public safety and needs of water supply are safeguarded. In some areas there has been a good response to the proposed use of reservoirs for sport and sailing. It is not for me to tell any river authorities or local authorities how to handle its own affairs, but I can assure the hon. Gentleman that they are acting in the spirit of the Government's policy in keeping with the wishes of Parliament when they open up reservoirs and all other water resources for conservation, recreation and amenity.

Mr. David Clark

But does the hon. Gentleman realise that Scammonden is another valley, and that, while the Huddersfield Corporation may give access there, it is taking away from the public in the Colne Valley access to waterways and streams there?

Mr. Griffiths

I understand the geographical situation between Scammonden and the Colne Valley. I am giving an illustration of the corporation's response to the statutory obligation upon it.

The hon. Gentleman referred to Eastergate. I do not have time to deal with that specific point now, but I shall look into it and write to the hon. Gentleman about it. He also mentioned the restriction of public access to land at Drop Clough. I am advised that, although a gate has been provided across a short stretch of a new roadway giving access to a meter house, public access is not affected. As I understand it, legally the situation remains the same.

The hon. Gentleman is also concerned about the supply of water to a number of houses which rely on a spring source. Supplies from the source are said to have been reduced as a result of the corporation's abstractions of water. The corporation denies this. Its engineer is satisfied that the springs are unaffected, though the building of a good number of houses has had the effect of increasing the demand on the spring supplies. I am glad to tell the hon. Gentleman that the corporation is about to lay a main to serve the houses in question. I have no doubt that he knows of the proposal.

I have seen a number of other points that the hon. Gentleman has made in correspondence. It is true that the corporation obtained a licence from the river authority in 1970 to abstract water from a stream not named in the Act. However, it is understood that at the same time the river authority revoked licences relating to three points of abstraction which were authorised by the Act. According to the river authority, the net result is that no greater quanity of water will be taken than the quantity authorised to be taken under the Act. This may account—

The Question having been proposed after Ten o'clock on Wednesday evening and the debate having continued for half an hour, Mr. Deputy Speaker adjourned the House without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.

Adjourned at twenty minutes past Three o'clock a.m.