HC Deb 10 March 1976 vol 907 cc587-96

10.30 a.m.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Mr. Gavin Strang)

I beg to move, That the Chairman do now report to the House that the Committee recommend that the Land Drainage (Amendment) Bill [Lords] ought to be read a Second time. In introducing this amendment Bill, I should perhaps begin by explaining briefly what land drainage is about since the words do not really do justice to the importance of the subject. Land drainage is concerned, first, with the protection of both agricultural land and urban property from flooding, including inundation by the sea and, secondly, with the improvement of agricultural land by the prevention of waterlogging and the control of the water table.

The work carried out by drainage authorities covers a very wide range of activities. The largest project in hand at present is the construction of the Thames Barrier, which will protect London from North Sea tidal surges. With its associated downstream defences, the current estimated cost of this scheme is over £300 million. At the other end of the scale are the numerous small projects involving the widening and deepening of minor rural watercourses at a cost of a few thousand pounds. In other words, land drainage affects us all in both town and country since it is concerned with the control of our rivers and watercourses and with the maintenance of our defences against the sea.

Like the Thames Barrier, or the sea defences along the East Coast which were put to the test early in January, some of the work carried out by drainage authorities is designed as a protection against the occasional flood or high tide, but in other areas, such as the Fens, the pumps must be kept going regularly to take the water away from rich agricultural land which would otherwise be inundated. Land drainage is therefore vital to the life of the community and statutory powers have been given to drainage bodies to carry out drainage works by a series of enactments over the past five centuries. So, although this Bill is a modest one, it is concerned with a very important subject.

Hon. Members will have noted that the Explanatory and Financial Memorandum attached to the Bill begins with the words This Bill paves the way for a land drainage consolidation. It amends a number of Acts concerned with land drainage. The amendments clarify various matters and remove various anomalies and impediments to consolidation This sums up the reason for introducing the Bill. Its sole purpose is to prepare the way for the long overdue consolidation of the Land Drainage Acts which will be achieved by the consolidation Bill which has recently been introduced in another place. It is therefore very much a lawyer's Bill. It makes no significant changes in the present legislation. For this reason, I shall not detain the House at this stage with a detailed explanation of its contents but will confine my remarks to a brief outline of its main provisions.

The first point I should make clear is that this Bill is concerned only with legislation affecting England and Wales. Land drainage in Scotland is dealt with by separate legislation which is not affected by the amendments contained in the Bill.

Clause 1 is concerned only with definitions. Clauses 2 and 3 both relate to the meaning of "annual value" and "rateable value" for the purposes of various provisions of the Land Drainage Acts 1930 and 1961. The problem here is that under the 1930 Act the annual value of property was related to the Schedule A assessment, but the 1961 Act changed this to the rateable value in relation to urban property, whilst leaving agricultural land and buildings on the old annual value basis. Because rateable values were so much higher than Schedule A values, the Act provided a formula by which the rateable values should be adjusted in order to maintain party between agricultural and urban property Unfortunately, the Act confined this adjustment to the provisions concerned with the levying of drainage rates and did not extend it to cover other matters in which the annual value of lard plays an important part—such as the voting rights of ratepayers, eligibility to stand for election to a drainage board or the qualifications needed to appeal against a drainage board's decision. The purpose of these clauses is to correct that omission.

Clauses 4 and 5 are concerned with the rights of entry of internal drainage boards and local authorities in carrying out their land drainage functions. Legislation about rights of entry often —quite rightly—gives rise to discussion in the House, but in this case the Bill is concerned only to bring together and harmonise existing powers of internal drainage boards and to make them applicable to the land drainage functions of local authorities.

Clause 6 removes doubts about the meaning of "agricultural buildings" for the purpose of drainage rates or drainage charges by declaring in effect that the term has the same meaning as for general rating purposes.

Clause 7 is, in a sense, rather more than a paving amendment. What it does is to provide for the payment of compensation to employees of drainage authorities who lose their jobs or suffer a reduction in pay because of certain types of scheme or agreements under the Land Drainage Acts. For example, there is a provision in the 1930 Act which allows the Minister to approve a scheme for the amalgamation of internal drainage districts. If such a scheme is made it could mean that a clerk who was previously employed in one of the districts would be made redundant. Under this clause the drainage authority will be given powers to pay him compensation. However, this is not a new provision. It replaces a similar provision in the 1930 Act, which no longer has any effect because it covers only employees who were in office before the 1930 Act took effect. But the clause goes somewhat further than the original provision in that it also covers redundancies arising as a result of agreements entered into between internal drainage boards and district councils under Section 25 of the 1961 Act.

Clause 8 and Schedule 1 deal with fines for certain offences under the Land Drainage Acts. These provisions remove inconsistencies between the provisions of the Acts and increase the maximum fines to levels currently applying for similar offences under other legislation.

Clause 9 and Schedule 2 make a large number of minor amendments to land drainage enactments, many of them purely legal in character, intended to remove anomalies and inconsistencies and technical impediments to consolidation.

I hope that this brief summary of the main provisions of the Bill will have demonstrated that it contains nothing controversial or new. Many of the amendments would not in themselves justify new legislation; they are put forward solely as a prerequisite to the consolidation of the Land Drainage Acts.

Mr. Anthony Steen

The Parliamentary Secretary has said that there is nothing new in the Bill, but the opening phrase This Bill paves the way for a land drainage consolidation has ominous overtones. Will any financial implications follow when the Bill becomes law? Although the Bill itself will not involve greater expenditure, is it envisaged that there will follow new legislation which will increase the cost to the ratepayer and increase the cost of land drainage?

Mr. Strang

The answer to that is "No", subject to a minor qualification.

The only additional Exchequer expenditure that could conceivably arise would be the payment of insignificant sums to local authorities in rate support grant as an indirect result of the payment of compensation under Clause 7; slight increases in grant aid to water authorities in respect of the minor extension of their obligation to pay compensation for injury caused by drainage works under paragraph 15(a) of Schedule 2; and minimal increases in grant aid in respect of private drainage schemes as a result of paragraph 52 of Schedule 2.

At the maximum, these payments are unlikely to exceed a few hundred pounds each year. So the answer to the hon. Gentleman's question is that any effect on expenditure will be trivial.

Finally, perhaps, it would not be out of place for me to remind the Committee that in its Report on the Preparation of Legislation, which was published in May 1975, a Committee under the chairmanship of the right hon. and learned Member for Huntingdonshire (Sir D. Renton) recommended that the pace of consolidation of our legislation should be stepped up. This recommendation was welcomed by both sides of the House when the Report was debated on 3rd November 1975. I venture to hope, therefore, that this step we are taking towards the consolidation of the Land Drainage Acts will be generally supported.

10.38 a.m.

Mr. Colin Shepherd

The Parliamentary Secretary has correctly said that land drainage is an important matter. As one who has had a longstanding interest in the question of drains—not a vested interest—I always applaud the attention that our forebears gave to drainage in general. With respect to the urban areas, the importance of sewerage and sewers was recognised early in this country, and our Victorian forebears gave us a comprehensive infrastructure of sewerage which is the finest I have come across in the world.

In land drainage, importance is attached to the infrastructure concerning protection against floods, encroachment of the sea, the unseen machinery of land husbandry, land drainage, the removal of waterlogged areas and the control of the water table. The fine work done over a period of years is invaluable to the structure of our agriculture and, indeed, to the structure of our urban surroundings.

The philosophy of infrastructure creation, which is a fine way of putting what has happened automatically because of the right thought processes over many centuries, has resulted in a fine method for constantly imroving land drainage outside the conurbations and, indeed, for protection of the conurbations.

But land drainage can be effective only if co-operative action is taken. The organisation set up over the years has recognised this, and we have this fine co-operative network of regional land drainage committees. It is only this co-operative approach to such matters that has created the sophisticated network of dikes and ditches in East Anglia. In my part of the country, the constant improvements carried out have, in my memory, completely altered the flood characteristics of the rivers Wye and Lugg, to the benefit of agriculture and the villages in the surrounding areas.

Although I have no doubt that cooperative action was carried out in the past five centuries, I find that the first formal legislation seems to have been made in 1921, with the Lancashire County Council Drainage Act, followed, in true keeping-up-with-the-Joneses style, by Yorkshire in 1923. The steady stream of legislation following the significant Land Drainage Act 1930 has shown the importance that has continued to be placed on the concept of land drainage. The introduction at this time of this Bill to pave the way for a land drainage consolidation Bill is to be welcomed. It has been welcomed by all involved with the land.

Turning briefly to the content of the Bill, my first query, concerning Clause 7, was raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Mr. Steen) and was adequately answered by the Parliamentary Secretary.

A matter has been brought to my attention concerning possible confusion between the regional land drainage committees and the water authorities. Section 19 of the Water Act 1973 requires water authorities to arrange for the discharge of all their land drainage functions, with minor exceptions, to be carried out by their regional land drainage committee. Schedule 8 of that Act lists four particular aspects of land drainage whereby schemes may be submitted to the Minister by a water authority if they have been prepared by the regional land drainage committee and without modification by the authority.

Those aspects are, first, schemes for reorganisation of internal drainage board boundaries; second, schemes for the reorganisation of drainage areas created by awards under local Acts; third, schemes for the transfer of functions of land drainage boards to water authorities; and, fourth, schemes for the carrying out of drainage works in the interests of agriculture.

Those four specific requirements are to be repealed by the Bill, and I should welcome an assurance from the Minister that Section 19 of the Water Act 1973 means that these matters will still have to be dealt with by the regional land drainage committees, and that water authorities will not be able to draw up their own schemes. These would appear to be fundamental matters that should be dealt with by regional land drainage committees.

As for Schedule 1 and the increase of penalties involved, I wonder on what basis the penalties have been upgraded, because there seems to be an inconsistency if it is a straight upgrading in terms of the purchasing power, or fining power, of the pound. Paragraph 1 of Schedule 1 raises the penalty for impeding a person authorised by a water authority to inspect and take copies of documents of an internal drainage board", from £5 to £200, whereas in paragraph 3 the fine of £5 is elevated to £40. In paragraph 4 £50 is raised to £400, and in paragraph 6 the £5 penalty is raised to £200.

Has there been an increase in cases of impediment to the land drainage boards and water authorities in respect of land inspection? I cannot imagine anyone who has the slightest appreciation of the importance of land drainage having any wish to keep the relevant authorities and authorised people off the land. I should be grateful if I might be apprised of the reason for those differences in fines.

Although I accept that the Bill is administrative and non-contentious, it is involved with the matter of land improvement. If the consolidated land drainage Bill is to have any relevance, it will have to operate in a confident atmosphere of farm improvement. Can the Minister give us any clues on the thoughts of his right hon. Friend or his Department in respect of the announcement made concerning the increase in farm capital grants, the nature of the schemes under consideration, and the timing factor? An answer would go a long way towards creating a confident approach to the question of land drainage.

The Bill, as the Parliamentary Secretary stated, is not contentious, and we give it our support.

Mr. Strang

I am sure that all members of the Committee will echo the comments of the hon. Member for Hereford (Mr. Shepherd) about the importance of land drainage, and will welcome the work that has been done over many years. The hon. Gentleman raised a few specific questions to which I shall endeavour to reply.

In respect of the financial matters, I think that the hon. Gentleman acknowledged that my reply to his hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Mr. Steen) covered that question. I can assure him that the repeal of the provisions to which he referred will not weaken the powers of the regional land drainage committees. The amendments are purely technical. The hon. Gentleman need have no fears on that score.

All the increases in penalties have been agreed with the Home Office. I could write to the hon. Member giving him details of the precedents, but I am sure that he understands that basically this Bill is a preliminary to consolidation. It is a matter of making sure that the penalties bear a reasonably defensible relationship to each other. But I shall be happy to write to the hon. Gentleman on any detailed points.

The hon. Member referred to the announcement by my right hon. Friend

THE FOLLOWING MEMBERS ATTENDED THE COMMITTEE:

Blenkinsop, Mr. Arthur (Chairman)

Anderson, Mr.

Benyon, Mr.

Buck, Mr.

Coleman, Mr.

Grant, Mr. George

Janner, Mr.

Marshall, Dr. Edmund

Shepherd, Mr.

Snape, Mr.

Steen, Mr.

Strang, Mr.

Watt, Mr.

the Minister in the House on Monday that the Government intend to increase farm capital grants. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will not be surprised to hear that I cannot anticipate the nature of the increases, save to say that they will be significant and will help to achieve the increase in home food production which I am certain all hon. Members recognise is in our national interest.

I am happy that the hon. Member for Hereford has seen fit to support the Bill. I am sure that the Committee will recommend it to the House.

Question put and agreed to.

Ordered, That the Chairman do now report to the House that the Committee recommend that the Land Drainage (Amendment) Bill [Lords] ought to be read a Second time.

Committee rose at twelve minutes to Eleven o'clock.