§ 2.49 p.m.
§ Order of the Day for the House to be again in Committee read.
§ Moved, That the House do now resolve itself into Committee.—(Lord St. Oswald.)
§ On Question, Motion agreed to.
§ House in Committee accordingly.
§ [The LORD MERTHYR in the Chair.]
§ Schedule 1 [River Authorities]:
§ LORD BURDEN moved to leave out the reference to the proposed new Mersey and Weaver River Authority and to insert instead:
| "Mersey River Authority | The Mersey River Board Area |
| Cheshire River Authority | The Cheshire River Board Area" |
§ The noble Lord said: I beg to move the Amendment standing in my name on the Marshalled List. Before I come to it, however, I should like to say a sentence or two in respect to some remarks which I made when this Bill was last in Committee. I had endeavoured to argue that in my judgment the river boards which were being amalgamated had not been treated fairly; that they would be put on the defensive. I went on to say that Amendment after Amendment would be "shot down", and when a noble Lord's Amendment had been defeated or withdrawn he would cease to have any compelling interest in any further Amendment. That was all that I implied in my speech, neither more nor less. I am aware that every Amendment must be considered and determined on its merits.
§ As I have previously indicated, the river boards which are being amalgamated feel that they are being 1243 eliminated, perhaps somewhat ruthlessly eliminated, and have been denied the advantages of a public inquiry, at which all the facts for and against amalgamation could be brought out. This is the final opportunity which they have of having their case made public. Therefore, I offer no apology in this instance in dealing with the position of the Cheshire River Board, which, under the new set-up, is to disappear. The objections to the provisions of the Bill which propose the amalgamation of the area of the Cheshire Rover Board with that of the Mersey River Board, to form a new body, to be called the Mersey and Weaver River Authority, are on two grounds. First, there is no real affinity of interests between the two areas and that the local Cheshire agricultural interests would be subordinated to the other interests of the new authority. Secondly, the existing Cheshire River Board area is sufficiently large and has the necessary financial resources to justify its forming the area of a separate river authority.
§ At the present time, the Cheshire River Board has a total area of 469,760 acres and the mileage of the main river is 290. The Mersey River Board has a total area of 661,607 acres and the mileage of main river is 379. The area of the Cheshire River Board is predominantly agricultural, with large land drainage interests, whereas the area of the Mersey River Board, whilst agricultural to some extent, has within it twelve large industrial county boroughs; and obviously the industrial interests predominate. The Cheshire River Board submit that there is no real affinity of interests between the two areas and believe that, having regard to the provisions of Clauses 6 and 7 of the Bill, the Cheshire interests would have only a small representation on the new authority and that there is a very real danger that the agricultural interests of Cheshire, which in the nation's interest should be protected, would be subordinated to the other interests of the authority.
§ It appears likely that an authority of the size proposed would have at least 31 members, of whom, under Clause 7 (2) of the Bill, 16 would be appointed by the county councils and county boroughs within the area, having regard to the appropriate penny rate product for the 1244 area of each council. It seems likely that, if only 16 are to be appointed, three would be appointed from the present Cheshire River Board area—namely, representatives of Cheshire County Council and the county boroughs of Birkenhead and Wallasey—and the other 13 would be appointed from the present Mersey River Board area—namely, representatives of the Lancashire and Derbyshire County Councils and of the county boroughs of Bolton, Bootle, Bury, Liverpool, Manchester, Oldham, Rochdale, St. Helen's, Salford, Stockport and Warrington. The Cheshire River Board believe that this very limited representation would be most unsatisfactory so far as the very wide interests of the inhabitants of the present area of the Board are concerned.
§ The next point is the viability of the Cheshire River Board as a separate river authority. As I have already indicated, it is believed that the present area of the Board is sufficiently large to remain as the area of a separate river authority. Quite apart from existing problems in the Cheshire River Board area in relation to land drainage and pollution, great possibilities exist for the exploitation of underground water in the bunter sandstone and of water in the Rivers Weaver and Dane for water conservation purposes. There is ample scope for research in the development of the hydro-logical potentialities of the area. The investigation of these problems may well involve considerable expansion of the Board's existing technical staff. The Cheshire River Board are quite satisfied that they have the necessary financial resources to carry out this work as a separate authority, and draw attention to the fact that under the proposals of the Bill there will be ten new river authorities with the same area as the existing river boards and with rateable values lower than that of the Cheshire River Board area, which is £9,298,976. I will not enumerate the names of those boards, but they vary from £9,100,630 to £1,769,770, and £2,833,246. I think I have said enough to show your Lord-ships that an area like Cheshire, with its mainly agricultural interests and with only two county boroughs within its area, has a quite reasonable and logical case for your Lordships to consider amending the Schedule in their 1245 favour and allowing the present arrangement to stand—namely, a separate area for the Cheshire River Board. I beg to move.
§
Amendment moved—
Page 102, leave out lines 4 to 6 and insert the said new words.—(Lord Burden.)
§ THE EARL OF ALBEMARLEI rise to oppose the noble Lord, Lord Burden. I sit with the noble Lord on the Central Association of River Boards, and I dislike finding myself in opposition to him. I have an Amendment down later on, but for the immediate purpose of the waters that flow into the Mersey, involving two river board areas, I have to state that I wish to see the amalgamation of those two areas, and believe that it should be done, particularly having regard to what is enunciated in the White Paper about the desirability of having wider views, planning views going beyond those which we had as members of river boards. Believing that, and having read the subject up, I believe not only that you must amalgamate these two river board areas, but that you must go further. While still, as committees, administrating the matters of the plains, you must be able to send your delegates to the central rendezvous where hill projects and upland waters to be conserved will be discussed by the representatives sent up from these erstwhile river boards. I am now speaking against what the noble Lord, Lord Burden, said, but it seems to me that later on I shall have to move a proper Amendment, such as is down. The prospect raised by the noble Lord, Lord Burden, of three councillors being held down by thirteen councillors is very frightening; but, of course, it need not happen, although it was his business, supporting Cheshire, to say so.
I want to give your Lordships a little background as to why I am on my feet at all. My mother's home was just South of Manchester. I have hunted in Cheshire; I have stayed in Cheshire, and I fought a political contest for Altrincham. in Cheshire. And my right honourable friend Mr. Enroll wrote to me the other day and said: "I am glad to hear that you stood for Altrincham four years before I was born". So I think I may say that I can talk for Cheshire. As your Lordships know, there is a great range of hills, the Pennines, 1246 running down to Derby and Stoke-on-Trent. Water engineers, professors and such-like, have pointed out that those lands have not been fully developed. Professor S. Gregory said in 1958 that the area has been only 80 per cent. explored. Therefore, such areas in the Derbyshire hills will have to be investigated. At present they throw waters North, South, East and West, contributing to the waters that eventually go into the Dee and the Mersey; and they do that because of the network of canals which have intake points in some of the Derbyshire hills and were made gathering grounds for the inauguration of the great canal system by the man who was the cousin of my ancestor the Duke of Bridgwater. He had those ideas of using water to take loads of coal. These Derbyshire hills, with their intakes, send the waters down in their canals to add to the waters in the rivers. Some of these canals are not viable to-day, because they are too narrow.
I spoke the other day about the diarchy which needs to be resolved by co-operation, and that is the diarchy arising from the fact that another department of State, the Transport Ministry's British Waterways, are in possession of water in our river authority's territory. We shall need help in seeking out new uses for canals at present not used, or not used to their limits, so that the waters in them are not wasted. In the dry year of 1934–35 there was in storage in those canals 800 million gallons of water; and because in that year the canals were under their own administration that water could not be used to help relieve the shortage of water in the countryside. That will show your Lordships how necessary it is to get co-operation in respect of all gathering grounds and all water in order to relieve the necessities of our country.
I thank your Lordships for allowing me to say that much. I shall have to refer to this matter again later. Before I sit down there is something that I forgot to mention and should like to add. Just before I came here, I had a letter from the Mersey River Board who wished me to say, on. their behalf, that they did not see anything but advantageous results for the general public from an amalgamation of their Board and the Cheshire Board. They feel quite sure that, since the bank on one side of 1247 the Mersey is run now by the Cheshire River Board and that on the other side by the Mersey River Board, it would be far better if the whole estuary were run by an amalgamated authority.
§ 3.10 p.m.
LORD ST. OSWALDI am most grateful to my noble friend Lord Albemarle for intervening so helpfully to the case that I have to make myself. I should like to say in opening to the noble Lord, Lord Burden, that his initial references to some remarks he made on Wednesday were certainly not misunderstood on the Bench behind me and, indeed, we took notice of what he said and respected his point of view. We could not, of course, agree that river boards were not treated fairly in that they were denied the advantage of a public inquiry. They had the advantage of being invited to come to London, which some of them took and others did not, to speak to the Ministry and, of course, they had the advantage, as in this case, of having their particular issue debated in this House in Committee and, if necessary, at a later stage in another place. There is, of course, very decidedly no apology required from the noble Lord for raising this particular individual river board matter here to-day.
The effect of the noble Lord's Amendment, as he has made very plain, would be to continue the present areas of the Mersey river board and the Cheshire river board as the areas of separate river authorities. Opposition to the amalgamation comes only from the Cheshire River Board. The Mersey Board, while they did not, I understand, actively seek the amalgamation, are prepared to accept it and, as we have heard from my noble friend Lord Albemarle, they do in fact actively approve it and promise their full assistance in smoothing the transition to the new arrangements. We expect to obtain two particular advantages from the amalgamation of the Cheshire River Board area with another. First, those living in the area will obtain a unit of more appropriate size for water conservation purposes. It has of course been said again and again that a size which is convenient and efficient for river board purposes frequently will not necessarily, in our view, be suitable for the wider functions of the river 1248 authorities. In this case they will obtain, in our view, a unit of more appropriate size.
The area of the Cheshire board is only 730 square miles, or thereabouts—I think that was among the statistics given by the noble Lord, Lord Burden—and is perhaps only half the size which, other things being equal, would be acceptable as a minimum area for water conservation purposes. It is clear—that is to say, in our view it is clear—that for the future on the water conservation side it would not justify a water conservation organisation of its own. An association with the Mersey river board area would provide a unit sufficiently large from the conservation point of view. Further, the amalgamation with the Mersey area will bring all the tributaries of the Mersey within the area of a single river authority. It is true that for many years past—since the catchment boards were set up under the Land Drainage Act, 1930—the waters draining from the South to the tidal Mersey, and those draining to the non-tidal Mersey, have been separately and efficiently administered. None the less, to bring these streams into a single area and under unified management will afford positive advantages in relation to prevention of pollution and to general management of the rivers for water conservation purposes which the Bill will require of the new authority. At the same time, we are satisfied that there need be no detriment to the services of land drainage and fisheries administration in such an amalgamation.
Thirdly, this amalgamation will have the effect of putting together two areas in which the aspect presented by water conservation problems is similar. The noble Lord, Lord Burden, disagrees, and I respect his disagreement. The noble Earl, Lord Albemarle, I thought most learnedly agreed—learned to a technical pitch to which I cannot follow him myself. Neither of these areas can be characterised as a water-producing area on a large scale. The principal internal task to be attempted by the new river authority will be that of enabling more use to be made of local resources by combating pollution, and by schemes of artificial recharge to boost the quantities of water now available—that is to say, to pump water down a borehole into the porous rock below. 1249 This rock is the bunter sandstone mentioned by the noble Lord, which has some reserves of water. These are being depleted, and they can be recharged from the Dee. They will offer a natural form of water conservation without any very complicated or expensive works.
Neither part of this area would, in fact, be the scene of spectacular works of impounding or regulating the rivers. It would be a matter of less publicly evident importance, but of quite considerable scope and benefit for all that. One might describe it rather as a series of operations of purifying and conserving. The area has its conservation problems and its conservation opportunities. There are substantial and increasing industrial demands for water, a field for useful experimentation and development in the artificial recharge of the water-bearing bunter sandstone, all of which can best be dealt with, we are convinced, under an authority of greater size and strength than would be sustained by the Cheshire River Board area alone.
The noble Lord, Lord Burden, spoke with great sincerity and understanding on the agricultural points and, of course, the agricultural argument is one with which, in any case, both as an individual and in my office I am bound to sympathise. But our problem is to consider carefully and to weigh up the arguments on either side, to reach the answer, and to secure that it should be the right answer. True enough, amalgamation of the Cheshire and Mersey areas associates a predominantly agricultural area with one in which the agricultural interest is noticeably proportionately less. But there is no evidence, and certainly no complaint, that under the present dispensation farming interests in the Mersey board area have received less than their requirements in land drainage services. While there are these large cities and boroughs which the noble Lord enumerated, there are also in the present Mersey area large important areas of agricultural land, including the Cheshire Plain. Consequently, the experience of land drainage and agricultural problems will not come as something new to the more populated area now involved in this amalgamation. And we are satisfied that the constitutional arrangements for the river authorities will mean the securing of a proper voice for the various 1250 interests affected by the activities and functions of an authority administering such an amalgamated area.
The noble Lord did not suggest (but it has, I believe, been suggested by others) that an alternative amalgamation with the Dee and Clwyd area might have been preferable; but there is, in fact, no desire in the Dee and the Clwyd area for an amalgamation. We had, of course, to turn our eyes in that direction among others, and we had to pay attention to Welsh feeding. Even if Welsh feeling were not opposed to this, amalgamation with the Mersey area would not secure the unifying management of the Mersey tributaries, to which my noble friend Lord Albemarle has referred, under the water conservation authority best suited to tackling the work required in the Mersey basin. Nor would it give the satisfactory pattern of water conservation units in Northern England which we believe is achieved by our proposals. It would not fit in to that carefully thought out pattern. I have done my best to persuade the noble Lord that we have considered all the factors which he has considered, and I hope that I may have persuaded him to withdraw his Amendment.
§ LORD BURDENI agree that the doubts I expressed as to the future of the Cheshire area are speculative, and the views which the Minister has expressed as to the benefits of the amalgamation are also speculative. No one knows what the future will hold. I do not know what to say to the noble Earl, Lord Albemarle. He, like me, has the honour of being one of the vice-presidents, and an active vice-president, of the River Boards' Association. Quite wisely, the River Boards' Association has kept outside the controversy in regard to the areas of the amalgamation, and so on. I can only hope that when the Cheshire River Boards' Association representatives attend the last meeting of the River Boards' Association the noble Earl will be able to find appropriate words to say goodbye to them, after his intervention this afternoon. I prefer, in all the circumstances, that this Amendment should be negatived on the lines of previous Amendments rather than withdrawn, for, after all, neither the Government nor I can really foresee what the future holds for us.
§ On Question, Amendment negatived.
§ VISCOUNT HAILSHAMI do not know whether enough water has now flowed under the bridge to enable us to resume, but, if so, I would beg to move that the House do now resume.
§ Moved, That the House do now resume.—(Viscount Hailsham.)
§ On Question, Motion agreed to, and House resumed accordingly.