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Mr. Hanson: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Gummer: No, I shall go on for a moment. I shall give way to the hon. Gentleman shortly.
The Opposition persist in putting all their emphasis on reducing leakage, as if that were the whole story--the be-all and end-all of water resource management. But that is only part of the story. The Opposition constantly say that recent legislation placed a requirement only on the customer to make the best use of water. That is because water companies already have that requirement. Section 37 of the 1991 Act places a duty on
The Government's approach is to use all the options available. That means selective metering and appropriate tariff structures, as well as utilising modern, water-efficient technology, particularly when supplying new properties.
Mr. Gummer:
I promise the hon. Gentleman that I shall go through all the options in detail, and he will not miss out.
If one is serious about global warming--as the Government are--it is necessary to use all the means at one's disposal. But, until today, Labour appeared--as the hon. Member for Truro will be aware--not to be prepared even to consider metering.
Mr. Dobson:
The Secretary of State claims that the privatisation law makes it possible for the regulator or the Government to oblige the water companies to stop leaking water. Why have they not done so, as the companies are leaking more now than when they were privatised?
Mr. Gummer:
Certain companies have not done well since privatisation on leakages, but others have done extremely well. We given every company a target. If a company does not reach it--or if it looks like the company is not doing enough to reach it--I will make the target mandatory and force the company to do what it has voluntarily agreed to.
By introducing a voluntary system, we were able to get the companies to agree to a speedier change than would have been possible if we had a general figure enforced by law. If one can get people to do something voluntarily, they will do it better and more effectively. The problem with Labour is that it is never prepared to do anything voluntarily. It wanted to jump immediately to mandatory levels, even though it did not know what those levels were and could get an idea only by discussing it with the companies. What company could operate satisfactorily when the Government is saying, "Give us the figures and we will hit you as hard as we can"? That is not a satisfactory way of getting the best figures or the best answers.
The Government should go to a company and say, "Look, this job has to be done properly. Let us look at these things together and get the toughest figure we think we can achieve. Frankly, we will screw it a bit further afterwards. If you do not reach that figure, we will have to use mandatory arrangements." That works more effectively, but I know that the hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras has little experience of making anything work.
Mr. Hanson:
I am interested in how the Secretary of State envisages the charging system after 31 March 2000. It will be illegal to use rateable value, and the Secretary of State has ruled out using council tax--leaving only water metering. What does he intend to do?
Mr. Gummer:
I do not blame the hon. Gentleman for being out of date--his party's Front-Bench spokesman, the hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras, is out of date also. We announced 18 months ago that we will change the law so that the rateable value system can continue after 2000, and we have made that clear. The hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras knows that, but chose to explain to the House that that was not so. If he did not know that, he was ignorant. If he, as the shadow Secretary of State for the Environment, is ignorant, he has no business moving any motion--particularly not the one we are debating.
Sir Anthony Grant:
A classic example of my right hon. Friend's voluntary approach can be seen in Anglian, which has the lowest leakage rate in the country. That rate is continuing to fall on an entirely voluntary basis.
Mr. Gummer:
My hon. Friend's area also has a succesful record in water metering and the most flexible system possible. A large number of people have opted for meters, and a large number who were given the opportunity not to have them decided that they wanted meters.
Using metering to help to reduce demand can provide a cheaper and more environmentally friendly alternative to costly capital schemes to develop new water resources, lessening the requirement for new reservoirs and further depletion of our rivers. Studies have shown that the installation of a meter in an unmeasured household can lead to an average reduction in per capita consumption of between 10 and 15 per cent., and a reduction in peak demand of up to 30 per cent. The hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras should realise that peak demands impose peak costs, which must be paid by everybody--metered or not. Water has many uses--some essential for public health, and others optional, such as swimming pools and watering lawns.
The hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras has not faced the fact that we need as widespread a metering system as is voluntarily acceptable and widely reasonable and a reduction in leakages. Only in that way can we start to use water responsibly. The fact is that the system works. In dry regions, companies that had extensive metering programmes in place during the summer of 1995 generally experienced lower peak demands and fewer supply difficulties than companies without such programmes--the very issue about which the hon. Gentleman made such a fuss.
Where water companies have a programme of meter installation, there is no installation charge. However, when a customer requests a meter under the meter option scheme, an installation charge is normally payable. I welcome the fact that companies are reducing this cost, and that the average cost of installing a meter has fallen by 51 per cent. since 1993. I am pleased that eight companies--Severn Trent, Wessex, Anglian, Folkestone and Dover, Mid Southern, South East, Sutton and East Surrey, and Wrexham--now offer free installation under their meter option scheme.
One of the best ways of testing our views is so see how our partners in Europe operate, in case we may learn from them. The hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras must accept that he is the odd man out. Metering is widely used in Germany, Finland, Belgium, Greece, Italy, Austria, Portugal, Denmark, France, Sweden and Spain. The Labour parties in those countries would have been amazed by the hon. Gentleman's speech today. They would think that he had taken leave of his senses.
Is the hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras suggesting that, in many cases, the socialists in those countries have supported compulsory water metering to do all the terrible things that he says it brings about? Did not socialist President Mitterrand compulsorily stop the system that previously obtained in much of France and turn it over to compulsory water metering? Does the hon. Gentleman think that that kind of socialism was designed to hurt the poorest families? Of course not--he is trying to make a party political point and gain a few votes by proposing a policy that is manifestly barmy and entirely opposed to anything proposed by any European Labour party.
Mr. Dobson:
Does the Secretary of State realise that those European states that have had water metering for a long time will not incur the installation costs that we will face? As a result of the Government's policy, this country will be voluntarily taking on extra costs that other European states do not face, as they spent the money years ago.
Mr. Gummer:
That is why I pointed out the approach of President Mitterrand, who totally changed the system in southern France and imposed new metering throughout that area, incurring, in the process, the costs to which the hon. Gentleman referred. But President Mitterrand was concerned with sustainable development, knew the meaning of biodiversity, had heard about the environment and would not have made the speech that the hon. Gentleman made today. He would have been laughed off the podium if he had even begun to do so. None of the European socialist parties would recognise the hon. Gentleman's argument.
Labour is the party that wants to give up the UK's veto, yet it is already entirely out of step with Europe on a mere matter of water. What would happen if Labour gave up the veto and the rest of Europe said, "Well, Mr. Dobson, we think by a majority that we ought to have water metering for all"? What would he do? The hon. Gentleman would be in some difficulty. All his socialist friends would favour it, but he would have given up the veto. Few hon. Members have a better claim than he to enthusiasm for our membership of the European Union, but the British Labour party would find it impossible to live with the Labour parties of the rest of Europe, because many of them have moved into the 20th century. To judge from his speech, he clearly has not.
"every water undertaker to develop and maintain an efficient and economical system of water supply within its area".
We did not repeat that requirement, because we are always being told by Labour that we do not need to double the burden on companies or individuals. If something is in the law, we do not need to say it again. "Say it again, Sam" may well be the policy of the hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras, because most of his speeches repeat the ill-founded view that we have not provided water companies with the requirements.
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