ANGLIAN WATER AUTHORITY (AGRICULTURE QUESTIONNAIRE) (Hansard, 7 February 1978)

§ Mr. John Farr (Harborough)

I wish to raise the question of Anglian Water Authority, and in particular a census form that has been sent out by the authority to a large number of agriculturalists in its area. Let me explain first that the authority is the largest of the 10 regional water authorities in Engliand and Wales. It stretches down the eastern side of the country.

The questionnaire has caused a good deal of concern within parts of the area concerned. It is a document, which I have here, consisting of 12 foolscap sheets upon which are some 235 boxes within which the unhappy recipient is urged to put his replies. It is beyond the imagination or ordinary mortals to think how more than 200 meaningful questions could be asked of anyone about the conduct of one regional water authority. Many of the questions are simply farcical.

1418 On page 2 one is asked to put down the present acreage for each of 17 different land use purposes, and to answer, in respect of those 17, the land uses of five years ago, and then, in respect of the same 17, an estimate of the uses in five years' time. This last question must surely be an utterly barren exercise since consumer demand is constantly changing. There can be sudden and complete changes in production plans, and at a few months' notice national requirements can vary.

Even within the EEC a profitable crop this month can be unprofitable next month, and that can certainly happen over a year or two. No agricultural economist dares hazard a guess of such a nature. The uncertainty of the agricultural cycle renders profitable commodities unprofitable within a short time, and that invalidates the answers to a good many of the questions in the documents.

On page 4 one is asked to peer into the future as well as to unearth the records of the past. One is asked how many acres of 10 different crops were irrigated five years ago, how many are now irrigated, and how many will be irrigated in five years. I should have thought that the vagaries of our annual rainfall would make these questions non-runners from the start. But even without that there is again the fact that, within a year or two, national agricultural policies within the Community can make a nonsense of all the predictions today or of the situation in five years.

The sort of factors which make a nonsense of the forecasts asked for on pages 2 and 4 are connected with, for instance, the future of the Milk Marketing Board or the Potato Marketing Board, and the impact in Britain of the Community's sheepmeat regime when it is introduced.

After asking a number of questions relating to one's upbringing and one's view of the friendly local regional water authority—which does not stand in very high regard in my part of the country—the document comes to an end. But a number of questions should be asked in this connection.

The first is whether it was worth sending out the document in the first place, especially as, not surprisingly, there have been so many absentions in response. I 1419 have here a rather pitiful second letter from the authority to one of its agriculturists. It reads: A few weeks ago I sent you a questionnaire on the subject of irrigation and land use on your farm. For some reason there have been fewer replies than expected from farmers in your area and it would be very helpful if you could reply as soon as you can. The response was not surprising to those unconnected with the authority.

It would be interesting to know the cost to the authority of the whole exercise. It may be thought to be going to rather unusual lengths to raise this matter in the House, but it is precisely this type of repetitive, non-productive paper work that is blunting the efficiency of farmers and horticulturists, just as industry—small business in particular—is having its competitiveness blunted by an inundation of form-filling requirements from governmental and quasi-governmental bodies.

Today, those in agriculture already have to compile PAYE and national insurance computations on a weekly basis; they have to make VAT returns on a three-monthly basis or less; they have to compile Ministry of Agriculture returns on a six-monthly basis or less. Now that the pattern has been set, one wonders whether other regional water authorities will follow suit. Indeed, will such bodies as the Agriculture, Horticulture and Forestry Industry Training Board or the area electricity boards send out similar questionnaires?

There is a good deal of waste of public money in the printing, circulation and manning costs of this 12-page document. There is also a miscalculation. Why should it not have been done through the National Water Council including two or three extra questions on the half-yearly Ministry of Agriculture returns if the regional water authorities wished to get an indication of water demand? Thereby they could get their information in a meaningful way on a general basis. The right way would have been to ask the NWC to have included perhaps two or three questions on the half-yearly returns, which farmers would have replied to willingly rather than endeavouring to compile answers to 200 or so questions in this document.

This is an additional burdensome worry on an industry which, despite the 1420 form-filling already required of it, has an incomparable productivity record—the best in the nation—and which, in contrast to the stagnant level of output in the rest of our national production, still continues to improve is efficiency

In addition, I feel that sooner or later—preferably sooner—this House must make the regional water authorities more accountable directly to Parliament and to national Government and local government. There is a good deal of concern, not only about the Anglian Water Authority but about the other nine water authorities in England and Wales, that they are too remote and they are not accountable properly for the money that they spend and for the schemes that they think up. If they had been more accountable, it is extremely unlikely that this particular form would have seen the light of day.

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

Before I deal with some of the specific issues relating to the questionnaire raised by the hon. Member for Harborough (Mr. Farr), I should like to make a few general observations about the importance of irrigation and water supply to agriculture.

Without water there can be no agriculture. This may be a statement of the obvious, but it is necessary to say it mainly because, in the United Kingdom at least, we tend to take water for granted. It is not until we have a severe shortage, such as occurred during the drought of 1976, that most people realise just how important rainfall is to agriculture—and, indeed, to anyone trying to grow a crop on whatever soil. An increasing number of farmers have however, realised the value of irrigation either as a permanent tool in their equipment or as an insurance against lack of rainfall at the time when their crops need it.

The expansion of irrigation by spraying methods in the British Isles, particularly in the drier East of England, is one of the developments in agriculture since the Second World War which has helped to contribute to the increased productivity of the industry. By 1976 about 6,000 agricultural holdings were equipped for irrigation. The area of crops irrigated was over 87,000 hectares, and the crops 1421 benefiting were mainly vegetables, fruit, potatoes, sugar beet and grass. But there is potential for much greater expansion in this respect. In the right circumstances, and correctly applied, irrigation can be of considerable benefit in further increasing productivity.

The Government offer grants for the provision, replacement or improvement of facilities for the supply of water under both the farm capital grant scheme and the farm and horticultural development scheme. The importance which my Department places on the provision of these facilities was emphasised during the drought of 1976, wen we took special powers to increase the rate of grant under both schemes. Although those special powers have now expired, grants are still available under both schemes, and the Agricultural Development and Advisory Service is ready to advise any farmer who wants to take advantage of these grants.

The need for more attention to be paid to irrigation was pointed out by the Agriculture Economic Development Committee in its study published last year "Agriculture into the 1980's". The committee pointed out that inadequate water supplies from either natural rainfall or irrigation impose limitations on output, even in an average year. The EDC considered that, in the preparation of a national strategy for water, account should be taken of the long-term requirements of an expanding agricultural industry. The EDC welcomed the recent increase in incentives for constructing farm reservoirs and urged that the industry should increase its investment on irrigation. The committee also suggested ways in which Government could increase their help and that advisory bodies should conduct more development work on irrigation. We are considering how best to respond to the recommendations of the EDC, but I mention this report to show that informed agricultural opinion is very much in favour of more attention being given to irrigation.

I turn now to the role of the water authorities. The Water Act 1973 places a duty on water authorities to supply water within their areas. In order to do this, water authorities must identify the requirements for water within their areas and at the same time must be able to 1422 control the total supply of water available to them. For this reason, the Water Resources Act 1963 requires that in general a licence must be obtained before any water can be abstracted from any source. In this way the authorities can ensure that the use of water by large abstractors does not adversely affect supplies to other users.

As part of their statutory duty, water authorities are required by Section 24 of the Water Act 1973 to prepare estimates of future demand for the use of water in their areas and to prepare a plan as to action to be taken for the purpose of securing more efficient management of water in their area.

Agricultural irrigation is a particularly important factor in the calculations of the Anglian Water Authority. About half of the total irrigation in England and Wales takes place in this region, and about 5 per cent. of total water use goes in irrigation. When account is taken of the fact that much of the demand is seasonal, it is clear that irrigation can represent considerable demand on total resources at certain times. Furthermore, the 1976 drought led to a significant increase in applications from farmers for licences to abstract water. It was against this background that the authority decided that it should undertake a survey to find out how much water agriculture was likely to need over the next few years.

The authority's reasons for undertaking the survey are recorded in the January edition of Water, the journal of the National Water Council, and I think it might be helpful if I quote from part of the article: The experience following the 1976 drought possibly indicates that the farmer has been swayed more towards irrigation because the number of abstraction licence applications rose from an annual average of 50 to about 700. And the following factors may help to sway him further: improved equipment such as rain guns has reduced the labour requirements; a growth in more scientific farm management has enabled the intricacies of irrigation to be handled better; Government encouragement as set out in the 1975 White Paper 'Food from our Own Resources'; an increase in food prices making investment more attractive; the availability of water has increased. There are, however, no firm forecasts for irrigation demand, current forecasts being little better than rationalised guesswork. This creates a dilemma for the Anglian Water Authority because, on the one hand, it does not want to plan the development of expensive 1423 schemes to meet irrigation demands when these might never materialise. On the other hand, it wants to help the spray irrigator if possible. Discussions with interested organisations have shown that no one has a clear idea of future irrigation trends though all agree that in the farmers' and national interest irrigation should greatly increase. Whatever the theory, however, the decision makers are the individual farmers and therefore the Anglian Water Authority, in conjunction with the National Farmers' Union, is carrying out a survey of 3,500 farmers to discover their attitudes and irrigation expectations. As the hon. Gentleman acknowledged, The survey is in the form of a self-completion questionnaire which was developed after 'in-depth' interviews with farmers by a team of market researchers to obtain an understanding of the thought processes involved in deciding to irrigate land. It covers details of the farmer; his farm including soil types; the type and acreage of crops he does and will grow; whether or not he uses or expects to use irrigation; if he does, why he does and how much water he uses on each crop; if he does not, why not; and finally a list of questions to discover the farmer's attitude to irrigation, irrigation costs and even to the Anglian Water Authority. So there, basically, are the reasons why the Anglian Water Authority undertook the survey. The NFU was closely involved in the preparation of the survey. NFU county journals carried articles explaining why the questionnaire was important to agriculture in the area. A total of 3,500 questionnaires were despatched—this represents about one farmer in every five in the area—and about 2,200 were returned. The survey was not, of course, compulsory, and a return rate of over 60 per cent. represents a pretty fair response. It can, I think, be regarded as a measure of the importance placed on the subject by farmers in the area.

Although the Anglian Water Authority still awaits the detailed analysis of the survey, it is confident that the results will give it a valuable picture of demands likely to be made upon it in respect of irrigation over the next few years. The cost to the authority of the survey has been less than £10,000. It feels that the knowledge gained by it is well worth that 1424 modest investment. For my part, and for the reasons which I have already outlined, I welcome the positive approach of the Anglian Water Authority in trying to identify the water requirements of agriculture within its area.

I do not propose to defend every detail of the questionnaire, but it seems to me—and I have studied it only in response to the hon. Gentleman's decision to raise this matter on the Adjournment—a reasonable attempt to seek pertinent information in this context.

The hon. Gentleman suggested that the form would contribute to blunting the efficiency of agriculture and horticulture. He may be in danger of making a mountain out of a molehill. I agree that the water authorities are not responsible to Parliament, but it was his party, when in office, that set up these autonomous bodies. The Government cannot be expected to take responsibility for every detail of the way in which they conduct their affairs.

I say only that I think that the decision to carry out the survey was right. That view is clearly shared by the NFU, which collaborated with the authority in the exercise. Furthermore, the completion of the form was voluntary, and farmers were not required to state their indentity on the form.

I hope that with these words I have put the balance right. I believe that the hon. Gentleman has been a little hasty with some of his remarks. I think that the authority was right to want to try to evaluate the likely demands to be made on it in the years ahead. No one is saying that the results are 100 per cent. accurate, but the authority believes—time will tell whether it is right—that they give a fair indication and represent a valuable increase in the information available to it for planning.