HL Deb 09 December 1971 vol 326 cc972-84

7.6 p.m.

VISCOUNT ST. DAVIDS rose to ask Her Majesty's Government:

What advantage is to be gained from breaking up the British Waterways Board and handing its unified system to seven different water-supply authorities?

The noble Viscount said: My Lords, I am asking this Question to-night because I believe this to be a classic case of something which is basically a good idea, and undoubtedly the right thing to do, being spoilt by over-haste and lack of consultation. Why this should be so I cannot conceive, because there is no lack of advisers in this matter. The lack of consultation seems to have spread to the point where on the list of speakers I seem to have been marked down as having to answer myself. No doubt, provided that I asked a sensible question, I should get a sensible answer from myself. And I think that I might even get a more satisfactory answer than I shall get from noble Lords opposite. But I will see what we get.

In order to explain what I think has been done wrong here, I must first explain what I think has been done right. The question in hand is the reorganisation of water and sewerage services throughout the country. It is undoubtedly right that the British Waterways Board should be involved in this, because if you are dealing with all the water services in the country, from source to tap, and indeed back through the sewage works recovery, from tap to source and tap again, you must include the British Waterways Board. I have many times explained to your Lordships that the greatest service done to the country, and the activity that produces most of the revenue of the British Waterways Board, is the sale of water. This is the most paying part of the Board's enterprise. To leave the Board out of the reorganisation of the water services of this country would be quite impossible; to put it in is undoubtedly right. What is wrong is to do this in the way in which it is being done. The Board is not being put in in one unit but is being broken up into what amounts to seven different pieces.

If noble Lords opposite had taken the advice which was undoubtedly available to them, they would have discovered that, to begin with, this decision is entirely contrary to the facts of geography. A regional waterway such as it is proposed to set up must inevitably be based on a catchment area. In other words, its boundaries are logically and geographically along the top of a watershed. The British Waterways Board is in exactly the opposite geographical state. The canal system was set up in order to link the rivers. Therefore the canals, not only historically but by geographical fact, start in one river, go up the hill, over the top of a watershed and down into a river in the other valley. So the natural form of a canal is a reservoir near the top of a high summit, feeding water into the canal at a high level on top of a hill, down both sides of a hill to the river on each side. The logical unit of a canal is just that: the reservoir and the area of canal which that reservoir feeds, terminating in the river, or whatever it is the canal ends up in.

It therefore follows that if you are going to start dividing up the canals of this country between regional water authorities, in many cases you are going to cut the canal on its summit level—where, incidentally, it is usually in tunnel. I do not know who is to pay for the cost of the tunnel. Some unfortunate authority is going to get a tunnel from which it will get no financial benefit. Apart from that, every time a canal is so cut, one authority gets half the canal with a reservoir, and another authority gets half the canal without a reservoir. What is more, canals are supplied with repair depots, which have dredgers, lock-gate-making equipment and all the equipment that is needed to keep a canal in good order. If a canal is cut in half—and that is what is to be done in many cases—one authority will get the repair depot. I do not know what the other authority does. Operating the system, too, will be made extraordinarily difficult and far more expensive than it has been hitherto.

Moreover, a great many absurdities arise. So far in this country, because the canals have been unified, it has been possible to take out a licence which allows the boat to travel all over the country, just as a car licence enables a driver to go where he may please. But under this new system, it appears, we shall have to take out seven licences for a boat in order to go where we wish in the country.

It may be even worse than that. According to a Government announcement, navigation is to be paid for by tolls. I think this must be a mistake; I do not think that even this Government could have fallen into this error. Tolls have been abolished in this country as being a hopelessly inefficient method of collecting money. If the noble Lord, Lord Nugent of Guildford, were here he would tell your Lordships that the Thames abolished tolls a long time ago. Having toll offices, with men handing out tickets and taking money for every boat, is a wholly inefficient method of collecting revenue; in fact, their employment eats up the larger part of the revenue. I am sure this is not what is intended. But I am equally sure that if we are to have seven licences instead of one licence, it will be the most hopelessly inefficient method of collecting the money, and certainly far less efficient than what is done now. There are disadvantages involved in obtaining a licence. It means that you have to write to an office, and in due course, the Post Office permitting, your licence comes back to you. But think what one would have to do if one had to have seven licences. This is unbelievably bad organisation.

There are many other questions, with which I do not intend to burden your Lordships this evening, but I would point out that the river authorities are, to some extent, navigation authorities, and it is true to say that the regional water authorities will be taking over a number of navigations. They will be taking over the Thames, the Nene and a number of others. Perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Sandford, when he replies, will be able to tell us whether it will be possible to combine these licences and make one licence for the whole country, including all the rivers. That would be a definite argument in favour of this proposal. I should not even object if he said that the River Severn, where the navigation authority is the British Waterways Board but the river authority is a separate authority, and one or two other similar waterways, are to be taken over by these new regional water authorities.

The idea that it is cheaper to run the cross-country inland navigations in this country in seven different parts instead of in one piece is absurd. I am sure that this has not been properly thought out. I should not have been inflicting this speech on your Lordships at this late hour if the position had not been that this matter has to be dealt with before early spring, because legislation is soon to be brought in. This also applies to a number of Questions (I apologise for them in advance) which I have on the Paper for next Tuesday and Wednesday. Nevertheless, there are a large number of questions arising on this subject which have not so far been properly dealt with.

There is one further point I should like to bring out this evening. As a sort of drive to accept this proposal, it has been mooted to those of us who are interested in this matter that under the new arrangements much larger sums will be made available for navigation and amenity than are now available. That is something which normally I should be prepared to cheer loudly. But then I discovered that two other things are also true. The first is that navigation and the other separate purposes of these regional water boards are all to be taken into separate account, and each account is to be treated on its merits, so that presumably if a larger sum had been given for navigation and other amenities at some point, the navigation and other amenity users, including presumably fishermen, will have to find the money. What is more, we find a further nasty little paragraph which says that at some point, if the money is not found, the regional water authorities will have the power to wind up the navigation. In other words, having been given a larger sum of money, we are expected to hand it back; and if we fail to do so our waterways will be abolished. This is not nearly good enough, and on those terms it would be much better if we did not have the gift.

I am not going to put the entire range of the points I wanted to talk about to your Lordships; it would take too long and the patience of your Lordships would be far too sorely tried. I wish merely to point out that things could be done differently. There is no reason why the British Waterways Board should not be inserted into the new system in one piece. The British Waterways Board is unique in the sense that, whereas other water-ways and streams are each a matter for one particular catchment area, the British Waterways Board works, inevitably by their mere geographical fact, join the catchment areas together. Therefore it would be logical in this particular case to insert the British Waterways Board into the new set-up in one piece. It is the only organisation for which this would have to be done, because logically it is the only organisation which needs to be entered into the scheme in one piece. If this were to happen I feel sure there could be no complaint at all about what was being done. Indeed, if the other navigations and the British Waterways Board could be combined into common licensing and certain other common administrative arrangements, a great improvement would be made. If only the Government had thought of this in the first place, I feel sure 1 should not have needed to weary your Lordships to-night by asking the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.

7.22 p.m.

THE EARL OF ONSLOW

My Lords, before I support the noble Viscount, Lord St. Davids, I must declare an interest in this matter because I am President of the Surrey and Hampshire Canals Society. The British Waterways Board have been good keepers of our canals and other waterways; so much so that last year the revenue from selling water increased, as has that from property rents, by considerably more than the increase in the gross national product of the rest of the country.

The canals and waterways provide an irreplaceable amenity value; so much so that last year 1¾ million people actually took holidays on the canals. I do not know how many of your Lordships have been on the canals: I have, once or twice. I have even fallen into them several times, but that seems merely to add to the pleasure of it. It is so important to maintain this amenity value that I felt obliged to get up and support the noble Viscount, Lord St. Davids. Not only have 1¾ million people gone on the waterways—and I include here the Norfolk Broads—but 15 million tons of freight was carried on the waterways. The British Waterways Board have reached agreement with approximately 25 local authorities for restoration schemes for the canals, which provide not only employment but also a form of remedial training for prisoners, and training for youth camps, Army cadets and such people, all of whom can go and enjoy it and gain valuable experience from this digging of holes in the ground and the removal of big stones from the bottoms of canals. However, most of these res toration schemes have been frowned upon by the Treasury on the grounds of expense.

I should have thought that it would be difficult for several different regional water authorities to have the same sort of pull with the local authorities. If the British Waterways Board was going to be handed over to the National Trust or some similar body, I do not think the same concern would he felt among the waterways community, because the National Trust have a long record of looking after waterways. They keep quite large sections of the Wey, and they are good and careful conservators of that waterway. But it is suggested that the British Waterways Board should be handed over to seven untried water authorities. Even if the Government will not agree to a total reprieve for British Waterways, albeit in its reconstituted form, perhaps they will allow the British Waterways Board five years to go on as it is while the seven regional water authorities get into practice, learn their job and thoroughly settle down. After all, the British Waterways Board are experienced enough for them to be able to continue very efficiently, but the regional water authorities still have to find their feet. I hope that the Government will bear this point in mind when they consider the matter in greater detail.

7.27 p.m.

THE EARL OF LAUDERDALE

My Lords, like others here I welcome the unification of water conservation, distribution and usage, along with the unification of control of pollution, sewerage and sewage. This, as we know, is in line with the Wilson Committee on the Future Management of Water in England and Wales. But that, I believe, is an insufficient base for decisions on some 2,000 miles of inland water transport which has a 12 million tons volume of goods carried per year and which has not shrunk so greatly as is commonly supposed, in that it was only 16 million in 1924. The Wilson Committee was not charged with consideration of the transport aspect, and this explains why it devoted only six paragraphs out of more than 300 to the subject. Nor do the Government appear to have given that much attention. Paragraphs 31 and 32 of the circular do not show the Government as looking with interest, imagination and vision to the future of inland water transport. Indeed, we read that … except for a few short lengths, the network of rivers and canals administered by the British Waterways Board no longer fulfils a major transport function". Then it went on: Canals to-day are mainly of local and regional significance. I should like to ask whether the British Waterways Board was consulted before these decisions were taken; was the Inland Waterways Association consulted before these decisions were taken; and was the Inland Waterways Amenity Advisory Council consulted before the circular was published?

I am interested in this question from the point of view of natural resources. We should not throw away natural assets just because their use has of late been declining. Mineral exploration declined in Britain during the heyday of the Colonial Empire, amid worldwide falls in base metal prices. Yet to-day in different circumstances the Government are offering strong fiscal incentives for mineral exploration.

This is a matter of vision or blindness. The trend towards still bigger ocean-going ships in the deep-sea trades, to which so many were blind five and even two years ago, is now common talk. Then, why not recognise the big ships' counterpart—the increasing demand for smaller ships to cover the transhipment of raw materials likely to be landed, and already to a degree being landed, at the great deep water sites on our West, North and East coasts for movement to inland destinations? Europe is busy studying how to move these materials. Much capital is being invested in the French and German waterway systems. There are the improvements of the Rhine-Main-Danube Canal. There is also much investment in inland waterways in Poland, Hungary, Yugoslavia and Roumania. The Danube countries have even gone so far as to devise and put to use dual purpose barges that can ply both the inland waterways and the open sea.

For Britain, the development of waterborne transport for inland and open sea use is just as critical as it is for Europe. We should not be thinking simply of water transport in these islands as something that is internal and of no interest to our external trade. Just now, when there are significant developments in transport technology in this very matter, is hardly the time to write off our transport waterways as too old, too small, and too poor to deserve thought of further development. All this time a Danish company, in alliance with a well-known British firm—Sutclitfe's of Grimsby—have devised and are now building a BACAT ship. "Barge Abroad Catamaran" is the way that that name is devised. It is designed to be able to ferry as many as 18 barges of 140 tons each—that is more than 2,500 tons in all—across the North Sea at a single time. The current thinking is to pioneer a route from the Humber—that means from Leeds and Nottingham—to Antwerp and, maybe, Scandinavia. This is a new development in ship design which is of great importance to our inland waterways and matches other developments such as the LASH ship, which is to be described as in the same family but on a larger scale.

This is the circumstance that calls for preserving the navigational canals and watching, studying, imagining an altogether new future for them. The day could well come when we want more, not fewer, transport canals to handle the processed, semi-processed and non-processed raw material which will come in bulk to these islands in the coming years.

I quote Mr. J. F. Pownell, a noted student of canals, who, in a book in 1942, pointed out that through the heart of England there runs a natural canal line produced by uniform erosion many ages ago offering long reaches of route on a single level without requiring the delay, cost and obstruction of locks. He wrote: The contour of 300 feet runs nearly continuously right through the country … and creates the remarkable possibility of having a canal … without any variation from one level …At 310 feet above sea level he continues— … it could serve London, Bristol, Southampton, Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds and Newcastle. The concept of Britain's deep water facilities attracting the mammoth ships of to-morrow and intercepting their Europe-bound trade is at last beginning to be grasped. So do not let us ignore one of the immediate implications; namely, that easeful water-borne transport from the heart of Britain into the heart of Europe is complementary and would be a rewarding opportunity for private and public enterprise alike, or in partnership, provided we enter upon it.

That means having a special care for inland water transport. It means having national as well as regional care. It means being ready to treat these waterways as the major assets that they still can be. It may mean getting the Waterways Board as we now know it, or have recently known it, or in the shape we can still recognise, somehow into the new set-up in one piece. However it is done, we need to secure a national care for these matters instead of relegating these waterways to a kind of museum of industrial archaeology, fit to be no more than the plaything of men at leisure. I plead for a new look at this transport aspect with a view, maybe, to a tremendous development to-morrow that we must not prejudice. The great James Brindley likened uncontrolled, under-used water to a furious giant. He said: But if you lay the giant flat upon his back he loses all his force and becomes completely passive whatever his size may be".

LORD NUNBURNHOLME

My Lords, I do not want to keep you, but I want to mention one subject. It is essential to give all the support we can to keeping the Inland Waterways Board in one piece. We do not want to see it sold off simply because one part is not making any money whereas another is. Nobody has mentioned the good that the waterways do to the farming community in this country. We are getting more and more land pipe-drained throughout the country, and we are increasing our food production year by year. The waterways are a means of getting rid of water off the farms. That point has not been mentioned by any speaker in the House this evening, and I commend it to the Government.

7.38 p.m.

LORD SANDFORD

My Lords, I cannot think what the noble Viscount, Lord St. Davids, had in mind when he challenged us with having dealt with this matter with undue haste. The Central Advisory Water Committee have been sitting and considering the future organisation of water services in this country for l8 months. We have been giving it the most serious, detailed and profound consideration since they reported in April, 1971. If there has been any criticism as to timing so far, it has almost all been that we were taking too long about it. Even now we are only just embarking on consultations, and it is premature to accuse us of a failure to consult. The document we are discussing is a consultation document. It was published a week ago; already the Chairman of the British Waterways Board has been to see us twice. We are embarking on consultations; there is no question of a failure to consult. The object of publishing the paper is in order to get consultations going.

Perhaps I may remind the House of the phrase in the Statement (which we did not have in this House) relating to the British Waterways Board. My right honourable friend the Secretary of State for the Environment, presenting the Statement in another place, said: As suggested in the Committee's report, the responsibilities of the British Waterways Board for canals and certain rivers will be transferred to the regional water authorities. I am convinced that, in conjunction with the local authorities, they can build upon the valuable work the board has done, in particular by adapting the present canal system to one more directly designed for amenity and recreation."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Commons, 2/12/71; col. 678.] Those were his words, my Lords.

The country's canals were built in the 18th and early 19th century for the carriage of freight. Nowadays, except for a few short lengths, the 2,000 miles network of canals and river navigations now administered by the British Waterways Board is no longer of significance for transport: only a few fragments out of the 340 miles of the commercial waterways are useful for transport purposes. I must correct the noble Lord who said that in 1970 the British Waterways Board network carried 15 million tons. It carried 6½ million tons. Sadly but surely, first rail and then road competition has left our inland waterways with less than one-half of 1 per cent. of the total inland movement of freight in this country. That is a fact we have to face, much as we may regret it.

However, this is by no means the end of the canals. Far from it. They and their associated reservoirs, as the noble Viscount, Lord St. Davids, said, are becoming increasingly important. In two ways, their new roles are quite different from their original roles. First, they have become, as my noble friend Lord Onslow has reminded the House, an important part of the water supply industry. The British Waterways Board's water sales (their customers include statutory water undertakers, local authorities and a wide range of industries) are now at a level of 450 million gallons a day. And as the noble Lord, Lord Nunburnholme, reminded us, the canals are also inextricably involved in land drainage and the disposal of effluents. And, as a further and increasingly important benefit, the canals are to-day of growing value for recreation and amenity—for such pleasures as fishing, canoeing, cruising, and simply for walking along the towpath. These last matters are ones which the Government wish, and indeed intend, very much to encourage.

Thus, while of limited significance for transport, the inland waterways' role now is in water conservation and supply, land drainage and sewerage, and, last but not least, in providing recreation and amenity. All these are matters of local concern, and it is no longer appropriate that the canals should continue to be administered as a nationalised transport industry. It is much more sensible that the system as a whole should be related rather to the system of water conservation, river management, water supply and water-borne recreation. Nevertheless, I am glad to be able to say to my noble friend Lord Lauderdale that Her Majesty's Government have started consultations with the major operators of freight services about the future maintenance and development of the commercial waterways, in so far as they still provide a useful transport service.

It is the intention of the Government in discussions on Circular 92/71, published a week ago, on the reorganisation of water and sewage services, to adhere to the principle that the water system in England should be controlled by nine regional water authorities. The Government intend that within this organisation a viable commercial canal system should continue to be operated for transportation and that the quality of canals for amenity should be improved. In the discussions, which are only just beginning, on the circular with interested bodies, including the British Waterways Board, the Government are anxious to devise the best management structure and other administrative machinery in order to achieve these objectives, and in those discussions of course the matter of boundaries, licensing, and the timing of the changeover can all be taken into account. On the outcome of these discussions the eventual legislation will be based. My Lords, the amenity and recreational aspects of the canals are now among their most important aspects, and, as my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for the Environment has said, so far from these being threatened or diminished we are convinced that these aspects will be substantially improved as a result of the implementation of these proposals. If we did not think that we would not have been putting them forward.

THE EARL OF LAUDERDALE

My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down may I ask him whether he would be so kind as to come back to his figures on freight? Is it not the case that The National Association of Inland Waterway Carriers published quite recently the following statement: The tonnages of Coal, Petroleum products and general merchandise carried on British Waterways owned navigations in 1969 by the independent Carriers and British Waterways are as indicated below: Independent Carriers: 6,133.000 tons; British Waterways: 6,701,000 tons", making a total of 12 million-odd tons? Perhaps the noble Lord would be so kind as to check those figures, because I have shot them at him at rather short notice. One appreciates his kindness, interest and courtesy in all these matters.

LORD SANDFORD

My Lords, I do not in the least mind being shot at by the noble Earl, but 1 think he will find that the figures I was giving were referring to the system managed by the British Waterways Board, and 6½ million tons are right for that. I think he may have been quoting other figures covering all the inland waterways which go wider.