HL Deb 02 July 1973 vol 344 cc16-30

3.7 p.m.

TUE PARLIAMENTARY UNDERSECRETARY OF STATE, DEPARTMENT OF THE ENVIRONMENT (BARONESS YOUNG)

My Lords, I beg to move that this Report be now received.

Moved, That the Report be now received.—(Baroness Young.)

On Question, Motion agreed to.

Clause 1 [National policy for water]:

BARONESS WHITE moved Amendment No. 1: Page 2, line 25, after ("Authority") insert ("or which may affect their responsibilities").

The noble Baroness said: My Lords, I beg to move Amendment No. 1 standing in my name on the Marshalled List. This is a matter which I raised on the Question, Whether the Clause should stand part of the Bill, when we were in Committee. I received what seemed to me to be a rather perfunctory reply from the noble Lord, Lord Sandford, but as he had not had any notice that I proposed to raise the matter I make no complaint at all about that. However, it occurred to me that it would be more satisfactory if he were to make it quite clear in the Bill, by means (I would hope) of this Amendment, that the Welsh National Water Development Authority, which is particularly referred to in Clause 1(5), would not be precluded from looking at matters over which they might not have a specific executive responsibility but which might nevertheless affect the ways in which they discharge their responsibilities.

I do not think one need go into the argument at any great length. All of us who are working on this Bill are aware that there are certain responsibilities within a particular water authority area which may impinge on the work of other areas, and vice versa, and I only want to be assured that the Welsh National Water Development Authority would not be unduly circumscribed.

When we discussed this matter before, the Minister quoted in aid the earlier part of this clause, but it does not really seem to me to meet the point which I then made and I hope very much that he may be prepared to accept this Amendment to-day. I beg to move.

THE MINISTER OF STATE, DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND SOCIAL SECURITY (LORD ABERDARE)

My Lords, I think I can satisfy the noble Baroness in what she is asking. Clause 1(5) as it stands gives the Welsh Authority a duty to consider and advise the appropriate Minister on matters about that part of the national policy for water which it is responsible for carrying out. The effect of this Amendment is to give the Authority an additional duty to give advice on any other matter concerning the national policy for water which may affect its responsibilities. But to my mind she is going a little too far in laying this on the Authority as a duty. What she is really trying to achieve is that there shall be no unnecessary restriction on the activities of the Welsh National Water Development Authority. We feel that if we write in a duty of the sort which she has put forward in her Amendment it might have the very opposite effect to what she would wish, in placing an unnecessary burden on the Welsh Authority, since it would be in duty bound to comment on any issue which would not have direct or substantial relevance to its own duties. But when she said it would not be precluded I would agree with her entirely. It is not to say that the Welsh Authority will only wish to advise Ministers on that part of the water policy which it will carry out itself. I am sure there will be many instances when it will wish to comment on other matters. One example would be inter-river transfers, but certainly the Authority is not precluded from giving advice on such matters under the terms of the Bill. There is nothing in the Bill to prohibit them from doing that and we are confident that the new Authority will take this responsibility seriously and conscientiously and will not interpret this subsection in a restrictive way. We are convinced this is a matter best left to the judgment of the new Authority and they will feel free to make any recommendations they wish without the need to lay the duty on the producer.

BARONESS WHITE

My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Lord and in view of the now quite specific assurances received, I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause 3 [Members of water authorities]:

THE PARLIAMENTARY UNDERSECRETARY OF STATE, DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION AND SCIENCE (LORD SANDFORD) moved Amendment No. 2: Page 4, line 10, leave out ("three") and insert ("four").

The noble Lord said: My Lords, on behalf of my noble friend, Lady Young, I beg to move Amendment No. 2. This is the first of nine or ten Amendments which are being moved by the Government in fulfilment of undertakings which I gave at an earlier stage. This particular one fulfils an undertaking given by me to my noble friends Lord Kinnoull, Lord Henley, Lord De Ramsey and Lord Davidson in connection with the number of members who might be appointed to a regional water authority by the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food on the basis of their experience of land drainage, agriculture or fisheries. As your Lordships will see, the Amendment increases that figure from three to four.

The moving of this Amendment also gives me the opportunity of saying that agreement has now been reached on the actual number of members the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food will be appointing to each of the regional water authorities. These numbers will be specified in the Order which falls to be made, after the Royal Assent, under Clause 2(4). They are to the Anglian, Severn-Trent and Thames Water Authorities four members, to the North-West Yorkshire Authority three members, to the Northumbrian, Southern, South-West and Western, two members. I hope that the noble Lords concerned will agree that this Amendment meets the point they make. I beg to move.

LORD HENLEY

May I thank the noble Lord. This Amendment does meet the requests put forward by myself and various other noble Lords.

LORD MERRIVALE

My Lords, it is not my intention to speak against the Government Amendment, but I should like to make one or two comments and take this opportunity of seeking assurances from my noble friend. For it seems to me that an increase in the number of R.W.A. members appointed by the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food could result in one of two things, especially, as my noble friends have said, in regard to certain authorities where there would be four members. In the first place, it could result in an increase in the total membership of the authority; or, secondly, the result could be that there would be a decrease in the number of members appointed by the Secretary of State, and if the second alternative were to happen, the diminution in the numbers appointed by the Secretary of State could easily lead to a decrease in the number of industrial members appointed.

Already during the Committee stage I thought my noble friend Lord Sandford was not over-forthcoming when he said, in column 442 of Hansard of June 11 last: …I would confirm that … somebody representative of water-using industry is certainly to be considered in making up the composition of a regional water authority. I do not know how many people make up "somebody", but it seems rather limited. While no doubt it is appropriate that several members should be appointed by the Minister, as my noble friend Lord Sandford said, these should be persons knowledgeable in matters of agriculture, fisheries and land drainage. Would not my noble friend agree that a local authority representation will largely and effectively cover the public interest? That being so, I think there is a very strong case indeed for the majority—and I stress the word" majority"—of members appointed by the Secretary of State being suitable persons with an industrial background.

There are two reasons for this. One is that industry is the largest user of water, particularly in areas of industrial concentration; secondly it is within the category of largest user of water that one could certainly find top-echelon people with considerable experience—and these qualifications are important—in all aspects of management, organisation, planning, technical direction and financial control, not forgetting the importance of being accustomed to decision-taking processes.

In conclusion, may I ask my noble friend for an assurance first of all that there will be no—and I repeat, no—diminution as a result of the Government's Amendment in the number of persons appointed by the Secretary of State; that is to say, persons with an industrial background? Secondly, I ask for the assurance that the majority of the members appointed by the Secretary of State will be persons with considerable experience in management and knowledgeable in running large organisations, because I think my noble friend would agree that this should make a valid contribution to the viability of these new authorities.

VISCOUNT AMORY

My Lords, I should like to ask my noble friend a question which is rather comparable to that asked by my noble friend Lord Merrivale, but dealing with local authority members. I ask that this slight change will not upset the proportion of the regional authorities which it is intended should be composed of members specified by the local authorities.

LORD SANDFORD

I am glad to give the assurance asked for by both my noble friends. The Amendment slightly modifies the balance but not, to use my noble friend's words, so as to upset the important feature for which we have all along striven—that there shall be an overall majority of local authority representatives on each regional water authority. My other noble friend asked for an assurance that the needs of industry, as being one of the greatest users of water, were not going to be overlooked. I can give him that assurance, and also the assurance that my right honourable friend the Secretary of State will be looking for members with experience of the management of large industries and concerns. In giving him that assurance, I should not wish my remarks to be taken as implying that the experience was not also available among local authorities, because I am sure it is.

On Question, Amendment agreed to.

3.19 p.m.

LORD SANDFORD moved Amendment No. 3: Page 4, line 40, after first ("county") insert ("or of a county in Wales").

The noble Lord said: My Lords, I beg to move Amendment No. 3, which is little more than a drafting Amendment. Clause 3 at present provides for the appointment of members of regional water authorities to represent metropolitan counties and non-metropolitan counties but not members to represent counties in Wales, which under the Local Government Act of 1972 are a separate category. The Amendment ensures that the same numbers of members can be appointed for the Welsh counties as for a non-metropolitan county of England, provided that the population test is satisfied in the same way. This is necessary because the Severn-Trent Water Authority will include in its area a substantial part of mid-Wales and the new county of Powys will therefore be represented on it.

On Question, Amendment agreed to.

3.20 p.m.

BARONESS WHITE moved Amendment No. 4: Page 5, line 26, leave out subsection (10).

The noble Baroness said: My Lords, this is simply a move to endeavour to obtain information; I have no real wish to leave out subsection (10). Those of your Lordships who were here will recall that when I was trying to obtain information about the proposed structure of the Welsh Authority that information was not at that time forthcoming. I shall be glad to know just what the Government propose and what their timetable is for what will presumably be an interim arrangement for the Welsh Authority. Your Lordships will see that this is subject to the Affirmative Resolution procedure in Parliament; therefore it seems to me it is going to run pretty tightly for time, as we are still not entirely in the concluding stages of this Bill.

Beyond that, I should very much like to have from the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, who I presume is to speak for the Government, just what the numerical composition of the Welsh National Water Authority is to be and, in particular, what is to happen to Powys, which presumably will have representation on this Authority as well as on the Severn-Trent Authority, because parts of Powys are not included in the Severn catchment area. Is there any suggestion that there shall be cross representation from the Severn-Trent Authority on the Welsh National Water Development Authority, as there is provision in the earlier part of Clause 3(4) that there shall be a member of the Welsh Authority sitting on the Severn-Trent Authority. Perhaps we could be vouchsafed this information. I beg to move.

LORD ABERDARE

My Lords, I hope I can go some way towards satisfying the noble Baroness's question. I am delighted to know she has no wish to leave out the entire subsection, which would have rather an unfortunate effect on the Bill. The interim constitution for the Welsh Authority has not been finally decided, but it is intended that the draft Order shall contain provisions for every county in Wales, and that includes Powys, for two counties in England, Cheshire and Hereford and Worcester, to appoint one member to the Authority, and for the districts within each of those counties to appoint one member each. So the total local authority membership of the Welsh Authority as proposed will be 20 members.

BARONESS WHITE

My Lords, I am sorry to interrupt the noble Lord, but I am not quite clear. Does he mean that the Cheshire districts and the Hereford and Worcester districts between them appoint one member?

LORD ABERDARE

My Lords, each county will appoint one member; each Welsh county, and the two English counties of Cheshire, and Hereford and Worcester (which is one county), will each appoint one member, so that gives a total of 10; then the district councils in each county—the same 10 counties—will also appoint one member each, so that will bring the total to 20 members from the local authorities. Proposals for ministerial appointments will not be finally decided until the Bill has become an Act and we know exactly what Parliament has resolved with regard to the regional water authorities in England. But, whatever is decided, I can give the noble Baroness this assurance: that there will be more than a bare majority of local government members on the Welsh National Water Development Authority. Without prejudice to Parliamentary consideration and the Welsh Authority's constitution Order, letters have recently been sent to the local authorities concerned inviting them to consider whom they might wish to appoint to the Authority. This is in order to minimise any possible delay once the Order has been passed. Letters have also gone to various interested bodies, Welsh bodies, such as the appropriate Welsh authorities of the C.B.I., T.U.C., Countryside Commission and so forth, asking them to suggest names which the Secretary of State might consider for his appointees. I hope that goes some way at least to clarify the position for the noble Baroness.

BARONESS WHITE

My Lords, I think the noble Lord did not quite answer my question about timetable. Are the Government hoping to have this Order approved before we rise for the Summer Recess?

LORD ABERDARE

My Lords, the Order has to be laid within one month of the Bill's receiving Royal Assent.

BARONESS WHITE

Yes, my Lords, but it is the Affirmative Resolution procedure, and therefore it has to be placed before both Houses of Parliament. That is why I am asking whether we can hope to get it done so that we can get a move on with the organisation. Otherwise, if we have to wait until October, it seems to me that the Welsh Authority will be at a disadvantage.

LORD ABERDARE

We are getting rather like Committee stage, but if I may, with permission, answer the noble Baroness, we are in the same position as the English Authorities, who also have to bring their processes into effect within a month of passing of the Bill.

BARONESS WHITE

My Lords, with that explanation I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

LORD SANDFORD

My Lords, I beg to move Amendment No. 5, which again is little more than a drafting Amendment. At present, the subsection in question mentions reference to a Select Committee of either House, but a Private Bill can in certain circumstances be referred also to other types of Committee.

The Amendment is designed to take account of that. I beg to move.

Amendment moved— Page 6, line 2, after ("Select") insert ("or other").—(Lord Sandford.)

On Question, Amendment agreed to.

Clause 4 [Establishment and functions of National Water Council]:

BARONESS WHITE moved Amendment No. 6: Page 6, line 39, leave out ("the") and insert ("a").

The noble Baroness said: My Lords, perhaps in moving this Amendment I may say how delighted I am to receive a note from Lord Aberdare about my preceding Amendment, saying that they are hoping to get this matter through before the Recess. I beg to move Amendment No. 6. It might be convenient to take Nos. 6 and 7 together, because although they are not on precisely the same point they do have a bearing one upon the other. May I first address my remarks to Amendment No. 6? The reason for submitting this Amendment is that in the Bill as it stands it appears to me that the Government have been far too categoric in referring to the national policy for water, because, taken at its face value, that would appear to mean that once for all a national policy had been determined and that this was something received from Mount Sinai and never to be altered. I am sure that is not in fact what any intelligent Government would propose.

On the other hand, one is a little concerned at reading paragraph 7 in the extremely interesting paper, to which I wish to refer further and which was circulated on June 21 by the noble Lord, Lord Sandford, on this whole question of the central organisation of research and planning. In paragraph 7 there is reference to a general framework within which detailed planning must be carried out. The paragraph goes on: Fortunately, this framework is already provided by the work of the Water Resources Board for they have examined the possible large new source of water for the whole of England and Wales and have studied their possible combination to meet various patterns of expected demand …". and so on. Up to a point that is quite true. We have not yet received the final report, what I call the swan song, of the Water Resources Board, but when we do presumably it will set out in terms what appears to be the framework within which our longer-term planning must now take place. Nevertheless changes do occur, knowledge is extended, circumstances alter, and therefore it appears to me that to refer to "a national water policy" would be a good deal more satisfactory than to insist on calling it "the national water policy".

The really important Amendment on this clause is Amendment No. 7, which we put down in an endeavour to meet the doubts and difficulties which a good many people, both inside and outside this House, felt in relation to the Government's concept of the way in which they propose to organise planning and research in the future. The document which the noble Lord very kindly circulated to us and which I hope all noble Lords who are interested have received (I know there was a fairly wide postal circulation of this paper and it is also available in the Printed Paper Office) is a most revealing document. I was extremely interested to read it because it sets out with far greater clarity than anything we have hitherto seen the thinking behind the Government's proposition. I hope I may be forgiven for saying that reading between the lines one cannot help having a certain suspicion—perhaps not well founded but certainly in my mind—that possibly one of the reasons why the Government did not accept the advice of the Water Resources Board on this matter, which is set out with great forcefulness in the introduction to their ninth report, was what one might call a certain professional jealousy of the Department for the success of the Water Resources Board. I do not think there is any other way of interpreting this document.

As we have all said, both in this House and in another place, the Water Resources Board has been one of the success stories of public administration in the last decade, but if one looks at the explanatory paper, particularly paragraphs 10 and 11, it is made very plain that in the view of the Department, and presumably therefore the Government, the Water Resources Board have been going further than the Government like. They have been thinking too hard; they have been accused of having made political judgments. My Lords, I believe that the word "political" in this sense is being used erroneously. I do not believe for a moment—and as a Minister I had undertakings and negotiations with the Water Resources Board—that they were doing anything which by any stretch of the imagination one could call Party political. Had they been doing that, any such criticism would have been well founded because it would have been entirely improper for such an organisation to take Party sides in any matters in which they were to advise the Government, not least because they themselves are civil servants and as such have to obey the normal rules of the game.

Surely, what is meant here is that the Board was making value judgments, which is not the same thing as political judgments. Such value judgments may take into account social matters, economic matters and political matters only in the sense that if, for example, you are proposing to have a large reservoir in mid-Wales you know that there will be political trouble. In that sense they may have been taking political judgments, but any intelligent person who knew anything at all about the background of any such enterprise would do so. So it seems to me that the criticism in this paper is really of extreme importance for bodies of this kind because this is setting out a philosophy on the terms on which such scientific advisers should presume to advise Governments. It is saying, in paragraph 11, for example: The Central Water Planning Unit which is now proposed under the Government scheme— will therefore be limited to producing the technical answers to the problems which it is asked to examine, but it will not be asked to select one in preference to another. In the preceding paragraph it had been propounded that if you select one in preference to another you are making what is called—as I say, I think wrongly—a political judgment. I say you are making a value judgment.

I ask myself, supposing I were someone well versed in these matters of water planning, should I wish, if I were really at the top of the tree, to work under this sort of limitation? Should I not work far better if my remit were to make certain that one had all the possible facts and all the possible options, but that then one used one's intelligence, which is a fusion of one's basic scientific knowledge with the total situation which one is asked to study, and, on suitable occasions obviously, one said, "We have looked at all these possibilities, (a), (b), (c), (d), (e), and, taking everything into account, in our considered judgment we say that (c) or (d) is to be preferred". Whether the Minister then accepts that advice is of course entirely up to him. It is he who makes the political judgment in the proper sense of the word "political", and presumably he would then take advice from his Department.

It is these comments on the way in which the Water Resources Board and the Department work, and the way in which a somewhat comparable body—although we have said frequently already, with different terms of reference—might work in the future which worry me. The Government obviously have been influenced by their advisers into taking this line of thought. I do not think that it is going to produce people of the highest quality who would be prepared to work under such limitations. I think you are putting a limitation on the way in which the best minds work. There are, as we all know, scientists and scientists, as there are in other professions. There are those who work best within a fairly narrow field where they know more and more about less and less, but there are others who have the kind of creative imagination which one needs in these circumstances, who are not satisfied with the barest of facts but who, to my mind rightly and properly, want to put those facts into their proper context and use their intelligence to form rational judgments as to the probable effect of what they may be recommending to Ministers. This is one thing which worries me very much about the Government's attitude towards this question.

Furthermore, when one considers this document, one finds that towards the end of paragraph 11, about the relationship between the Central Water Planning Unit and the National Water Council, the document says: The Government consider it essential to ensure that in this work the Unit is fully independent not only of the Department but also of the water industry itself". One must recall that this is a planning unit which will be advising on planning schemes of one sort or another, presumably the major schemes which would be of such national importance that they could not be left exclusively to the regional water authorities. It continues: … the programme of work"— of this planning unit— will be determined by a steering committee which will be presided over by the Chairman of the National Water Council with members drawn from the Council, the Water Research Centre and Government Departments. But, my Lords, if the programme of work is going to be determined by the steering committee which includes, so far as one can judge, as full members, the representatives of Government Departments, how does it maintain its independence of the Government Departments?

I am supposing that the Government Departments concerned would be the Department of the Environment, the Welsh Office and the Ministry of Agriculture. If your programme of work is to be determined by a steering committee on which these Departments are fully represented, how can you then maintain your complete independence of the Departments? The two things do not go together, and I should be glad to have a further explanation from the Minister about this. We are told that the Director of the Unit will be responsible for his own publications, but again he is subject to the steering committee being satisfied that the questions posed have been covered. In other words, he is not completely independent even in the matter of publication.

I am glad to see further on that the Government reiterate what has been said before, that there should be opportunities for interchange of staff. I wonder whether there is any significance in the National Water Council being omitted from the various staffs mentioned. It is not included. The staff of the Unit, the staff of the regional authorities, the staff of the Water Research Centre, the staff of the Director General of Water Engineering and the Department of the Environment are in here, but not that of the Water Council. If that is significant, I think that we should have an explanation. So far as the Planning Unit is concerned, we are not happy about the Government's attitude to the way in which these national planners are to engage on their work; we are not satisfied that they will really be independent of the Department; and we are not happy on our side that the National Water Council will not be able to do very much more than be a sounding board for the views of the regional water authorities and the various other organisations that are mentioned, the C.B.I., the N.F.U., the amenity societies, and so on. I am sure that it would exercise a useful function there as a go-between between the Government and these various bodies, but it will not, as a Council, have any kind of real responsibility for the work of the Planning Unit because this is going to be shared by the various other people referred to as members of the Steering Committee, including the Government Departments. Therefore, it will not be a really independent adviser of Ministers. I think that the noble Viscount, Lord Ingleby, said at an earlier stage that if it came to planning matters, this lack of independence would seem to be of a considerable constitutional importance.

I do not wish to speak at much greater length, because I hope that one or two other noble Lords who have knowledge of these matters of research and planning will intervene in the debate. I have had apologies from a number of noble Lords who have very strong views on this matter but who are unable to be here to-day; in particular, of course, the noble Lord, Lord Sinclair of Cleeve, who intervened on an earlier occasion. The noble Lord, Lord Molson, is sorry he cannot be here, as is the noble Earl, Lord Cranbrook. I do not pretend that the noble Earl is completely of one mind with us because I do not think he had been following the Bill with such close attention as have the noble Lords, Lord Sinclair of Cleeve and Lord Molson; but I hope that nevertheless he may be able to come in at some later stage in our deliberations. I am sure that your Lordships will appreciate that one of the objects of the Amendment which is before us—while it is by no means the same as the argument that arose over the Nature Conservancy Council Bill, it nevertheless has a certain element of similarity with it—is that we want to make sure that, if it should prove desirable, the National Water Council may itself undertake such planning or research work as we think may be necessary for it in order to carry out its other duties.

When we discussed this previously the noble Lord, Lord Sandford, pointed out that neither the Research Centre nor the Planning Unit is mentioned in the Bill, and this was one reason he gave for resisting an earlier Amendment which would have included them specifically as pan of the National Water Council. Those Amendments were not accepted by the Government, and therefore it seemed to me that instead of being as specific as those earlier Amendments had been which, with the Government's philosophy, might have caused some difficulties, it was better to have a situation in which the National Water Council would be enabled to extend its activities if this proved to be a sensible way of doing things. If we do not make some such Amendment to the Bill as the one proposed—and if the drafting of it is not acceptable we could of course have consultations before Third Reading—it might be very difficult, even if experience proved it to be desirable, for the National Water Council fully to carry out the functions that many of us think are necessary.

I have spoken more of the Planning Unit than the Water Research Centre. I understand from the paper circulated some of the difficulties about the Water Research Centre because of its conglomerate nature; nevertheless, it seems to me that the arrangements proposed in the Amendment could be used to meet any difficulties that might arise if the Water Research Centre was not able, or was unwilling, to carry out the kind of central research which I believe might be necessary and desirable in this field. I beg to move.