| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
5.41 pm
Mr. Eric Martlew (Carlisle): I am sure that we have had some global warming tonight--we have just had 61 minutes of hot air. The last time I heard the Secretary of State speak in that way was when he told us, as Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, that there was no problem with bovine spongiform encephalopathy. He is as guilty as anyone in the House of causing the current problems with BSE. I fear for the environment while he is in charge.
I shall have to make a short speech because the Secretary of State took so long and hon. Members wish to get on. When the legislation to privatise the water industry was going through the House, many of us believed that we would move to a system of water rationing. That is what metering is about--rationing by price. The Government believe in rationing by price. There is no argument about it.
I always find that people who are in favour of compulsory water metering are mean in spirit and, therefore, tend by their very nature to vote Conservative. They are the sort of people who have had a large family and whose children have left home. They write to their Member of Parliament when they live on their own or as a couple, saying that there should be compulsory water metering. They forget that they benefited for many years from a system under which they paid less than they would have paid under compulsory water metering.
The point that I should like to bring home concerns pre-payment meters, which the Secretary of State touched on only for a sentence. He used plenty of time, but he skated over this one. The idea is put about that poor people would like a pre-payment system and want to use it. The only saving to poor people would be when they were disconnected.
I am proud to say that my local authority has joined the battle against North West Water, which is now United Utilities--that just means that the company can cut off our water and our electricity. My council, led by the mayor, who is a fine Labour member of the council and a fine mayor, has joined the campaign against pre-payment meters. However, not only Labour councillors, but Tory councillors in my constituency, along with other agencies such as housing associations and the British Medical Association, are opposed to pre-payment meters. They are against such a system because they realise that the water company could cut off poor people's supply without having to go through the courts. That is what it is all about. North West Water actually said so in last week's edition of the East Cumbrian Gazette. It was reported as saying of the pre-payment option:
It may sound dramatic, but I can envisage people who have no electricity using candles, a fire starting and there being no water to put it out. That is how serious the matter is. That is what we have come to in this country. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Mid-Staffordshire (Mr. Fabricant) dissents from a sedentary position, as he is prone to do--as you pointed out earlier, Madam Deputy Speaker. What I am saying is the reality for some people, and all we get is arrogance from Conservative Members.
Not only the Labour-controlled council is against pre-payment meters. Dalston parish council, which is not Labour, will come into my constituency, I am glad to say, following the boundary review. It has written to me, and perhaps to the right hon. Member for Penrith and The Border (Mr. Maclean), asking me to bring its objections to pre-payment meters to the attention of the House. It says that they would create a special problem for people who live in rural areas, where there is often no public transport, who will have to travel great distances to obtain pre-payment cards--or smart cards. The council does not
think that such a system is in the interests of its parishioners. I do not think that it is in the interests of my constituents. I hope that the Government will reject it.
I hope that local authorities in the north-west will pursue their threat to apply legal pressure. I believe that pre-payment meters are illegal. All they are about is reducing the debt levels of United Utilities. There is great alarm in my constituency about the matter, and great anger. Nine miles to the north of my constituency is Scotland, where households cannot have their water cut off. Perhaps the Secretary of State does not know that, but that is the reality. Within nine miles of the border we will have a system under which people who cannot afford to buy smart cards will cut themselves off and have no water. They will have no redress through the courts. That is a situation the Government seem prepared not only to tolerate, but to encourage. The Secretary of State should come to the Dispatch Box and apologise to the people he will put in that position.
Mr. Fabricant:
Does the hon. Gentleman accept that there are fewer disconnections of households with water meters than of those without? In any case, what is the hon. Gentleman suggesting? Is he committing his party to renationalising the water companies?
Mr. Martlew:
As I said in the debates on the privatisation Bill, I believe that water is a matter of health and that therefore everyone is entitled to an adequate supply. The hon. Gentleman obviously does not think that. I am talking about pre-payment meters. I do not think that the hon. Gentleman understands. People who live in new houses, most of which have water meters, tend to be able to pay their bills. The hon. Gentleman may be able to figure that one out for himself.
Pre-payment meters will be installed for people who have difficulty paying their bills. They will cut themselves off. The hon. Gentleman seems to think that that is fine. I came into politics to oppose hon. Members like him and to stick up for the people who need to be protected.
Mr. Gummer:
I wonder whether the hon. Gentleman agrees that a water meter is installed only if the customer requests it and agrees to it, and that it has to be taken out if the customer wishes. Does he agree that it is interesting that, when water was nationalised, there were twice as many disconnections as there were last year under privatised water? Will he consider the difference between the supply in Scotland during the difficult period in the winter and the supply in the privatised industry in England?
Mr. Martlew:
The Minister has spoken for an hour, but insists on coming back to the Despatch Box. [Hon. Members: "Answer the question."] I shall answer the question: first, a Conservative Government nationalised water. I was a member of the Carlisle water committee, and we did not cut people off. Secondly, people do not volunteer. We shall be arguing tomorrow about whether we have a salary of £34,000 or £43,000, but I bet that none of us will have a pre-payment water meter in our house. People are being forced, under threat of court order, to have meters in their houses. They are told that, if they do not install a meter, their water will be disconnected. The only saving they can make is if the water is cut off.
Mrs. Elizabeth Peacock (Batley and Spen):
I welcome the opportunity to contribute to this short debate. As vice-chairman of the all-party water group, I have spent quite a lot of time during the past year or so listening hard to what people have been saying. We have heard from everyone--consumers, providers and plumbers--and their views have given us all a much broader sense of reality. I wholeheartedly welcome the Government's decision not to introduce compulsory metering for domestic customers. I know that companies can continue to use rateable values into the next century--we do not yet know how long into the next century that provision will continue.
We have just heard the hon. Member for Carlisle (Mr. Martlew) talking about pre-payment meters. Perhaps he is not old enough to remember when households had pre-payment meters for everything and people put shillings--
Mrs. Peacock:
Yes--or pennies. That system helped many families with limited means to budget much more carefully. As the hon. Member for Carlisle rightly said, it enabled them to pay in cash for small amounts of whatever they were using rather than have to pay big bills. There is still a place for pre-payment water meters. I hear what the hon. Gentleman says about people cutting themselves off, but if the system helps them to budget better, I hope that that will not be an option--for many families, it will not be an option. Voluntary metering is an excellent idea for many households, particularly those with only one or two residents, to whom it is a great advantage.
I wonder what my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and my hon. Friends on the Front Bench would have to say about my local Labour Member of the European Parliament, who is in the process of installing a swimming pool at his property, which is supposedly a farm worker's cottage, as he does not have time to go to the swimming baths. I hope that he has a meter when he starts to fill his pool, as it will take a lot of water.
The Government must be involved in all the discussions with companies about water metering and about exactly how the rateable value system will be replaced in the next century. A recent Office of Water Services survey showed that the majority of customers believe that pay-as-you-use is the fairest method of charging--it is for some people, but I cannot imagine where it carried out the survey or to whom it talked. Many people still believe that water is free and should never be charged for.
If people place water butts outside their houses, as people did for many years, water is free. It can be collected in the butt and, if people want to use it and
dispose of it without a drain, that is free, but people must realise that there is a charge if they want someone to collect it for them and take it away after they have used it. It is not free. We also realise, particularly after last year, that water does not automatically fall from the sky to fill our reservoirs. We must all try to conserve water whenever we can. Last year's drought also showed that we need better water management.
We heard about the number of disconnections that now take place. That number has fallen dramatically since 1988-89, when there were more than 15,000; in 1995-96, there were 5,800. I appreciate that the figure may not include those who, as the hon. Member for Carlisle said, disconnected themselves through necessity. We should not become over-enthusiastic, but there is a move in the right direction.
There should be no disconnections--as we have heard, they are not allowed in Scotland. I know that Scotland has different laws in many areas of daily life, but why should we have disconnections in England? I hope that my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State will respond to that point when he winds up the debate.
We have spent many years ensuring that all housing has running water. If the water supply is cut off, we shall return to the wording of the original housing legislation and have to declare accommodation unfit for human habitation because it does not have running water. We must strive to avoid that situation in the late 1990s.
When we are discussing changes in charging for water and water supply, we must also study leakage and what action the water companies are taking to reduce such wastage. It is impossible to eliminate leakage--we would never be able to find a small drip in the millions of kilometres of pipes that run to people's properties--but it must be possible to eliminate many of the leaks that we have heard about, and many companies could do better. I understand that North West Water aims to reduce leakage to 22 per cent. by 2000. Yorkshire Water aims to reduce it to 20 per cent. in the longer term--I am not sure what that is and shall ask the company about it soon.
While those targets have to be applauded, leakage is still a great concern and a great waste of water. Given the climatic changes about which we have been hearing this week, we should study carefully how all our precious water is used. For too long we have accepted that water is there as of right and falls from the sky to fill up our reservoirs. We think that we can all turn on our showers, dishwashers and washing machines--we do not all have swimming pools--as if there were an unlimited supply. In the past year or 18 months, we have learnt that the supply is not unlimited, and we must consider that carefully.
I shall consider what has happened and what the water companies have done, and give a little credit where it is due. Since 1989, the water companies have replaced or relined 18,000 km of pipe. During that same period, 8,000 km of new mains have been added. When we compare that figure with the total amount of piping, we realise that it is only a start, but nevertheless they are taking the right route. A great deal of investment will be needed to achieve the targets set by the water companies, and I trust that that investment will be made as soon as possible.
The hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Mr. Dobson), who I regret is not in his place, spoke about the increase in water use by those with meters,
and said that meters did not help to reduce consumption. In fact, the Water Services Association paints a completely different picture. It says that, in all but one area--Severn Trent--there were reductions of 3.8 per cent. to 21.3 per cent. Severn Trent had a slight increase of 1.6 per cent. That stands on its head the figure that the hon. Gentleman gave.
It is important to note that the many people who do not have the opportunity to pay their water bills by direct debit are penalised when they want to pay them at the post office, where they have to pay an 80p charge. I checked with my local post office yesterday to see whether that charge had changed, but was told that it is still 80p. Many people cannot afford to pay that extra 80p. If there is no water company office, why should they pay it for the convenience of going to the post office? I urge, and my hon. Friend the Minister will urge, water companies to ensure that that charge is not passed on to the consumer; it is a deterrent to paying the bill. In Yorkshire, we do not like to part with any money we do not have to, and 80p every time we pay a bill is not on.
I mention last year's drought in any debate about water. I know that it is often said that, in 1995, there were only 60 drought orders--much fewer than in previous years--but my hon. Friend the Minister, who knows Yorkshire well, knows that West Yorkshire residents know all about drought orders and all the mismanagement last year. We had to have standpipes, we had to have our supplies interrupted and, unbelievably, our industry was told to relocate elsewhere.
Yorkshire Water's new management has started well by apologising for the mess and saying that it will set out to do better, but we all suffered and are still suffering. Today, I received a letter from a lady asking whether the rest of the world knows that we still have a hosepipe ban. I have written back to say that we do know, and the Minister knows.
I wish to draw attention to a paragraph in Ofwat's summary of its annual report of June 1996. It remarked:
I thank my hon. Friend the Minister and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, who is not now present, who have always been most helpful in discussions on water issues. I also thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Ribble, South (Mr. Atkins), who was very helpful when he was an Environment Minister.
"It will be aimed at low income customers, who may already be in debt to us".
I bet it will be. Such people will cut themselves off because they cannot afford water.
"Companies worked hard to avoid water restrictions. They acted quickly and generally maintained domestic supplies, despite high peak demands during the drought which were attributed to garden watering."
I am sure that companies did work hard, but in Yorkshire we were not enamoured of the way in which Yorkshire Water handled the crisis that we all suffered. As the company rightly says, it never cut off anyone's water, but the aggro of seeing the standpipes go up and of companies being told that they would have to close down every other day when most of them have continuous 24-hour processes, seven days a week, was difficult to put up with.
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |