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6.26 pm
Mr. Roger Gale (North Thanet): I want to talk about disconnection, which is covered in clauses 1 and 2; responsibility for domestic supply pipes, which is not in the Bill and should be; and sewerage, which, despite the fact that it is mentioned in the long title, is not referred to specifically in any of the clauses. I intend to quote from a letter sent to me by the Director General of Water Services, Ian Byatt, on 20 November; from the briefing paper from Ofwat's southern customer service committee, which has been sent to all southern Members; and from the Ofwat National Customer Council briefing paper, which I believe has been sent to all Members of Parliament.
I represent a constituency in which more than 30 per cent. of the population--double the national average--are over retirement age. In some areas of the constituency, the figure is as high as 60 per cent. I think that I can reasonably claim, after 15 years in the House, to have listened to many pleas for assistance from many elderly people, and to have a reasonably detailed knowledge of their circumstances and requirements. I take no pleasure in saying that I also represent the area of the south-east of England--the Isle of Thanet--with the highest level of deprivation by all social factors.
I am sure that several of my constituents have had their supplies disconnected in the past three or four years, but, despite the fact that, like most Members of Parliament, I hold a regular surgery and receive a vast amount of correspondence, I have not received a single letter in that time about unfair disconnection, or simply about disconnection. That suggests that, if any of my constituents' supplies have been disconnected, it has been for good reason. I have certainly not received any representation on the matter from an elderly person, but, over many years in the House, I have received many letters from elderly people complaining bitterly that they are paying and carrying the can--and the burden of debt--for people who do not pay their way.
The overwhelming majority of our citizens living on modest retirement incomes have been used, over many years of privation and hardship--including throughout the
war--to paying their way. They pay their bills first, before spending money on beer, cigarettes, satellite television or any other luxury, and they take a pride in doing so. They do not know any other way, and they resent the fact that there are other people who simply want a free ride. That is a subject on which I receive letters.
Clause 1 will actively encourage the non-payers not to pay. Disconnection was mentioned by the Minister, by my hon. Friend the Member for West Chelmsford (Mr. Burns) and by the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hillsborough (Helen Jackson). I concur entirely with the view that water is one of the essentials of life, that any modern household requires a supply of clean water and that, on health grounds, the removal of that supply is highly undesirable; but adducing the law relating to habitable properties is unrealistic. When we talk about habitable properties, we mean that a proper supply is not available in those properties: we are not talking about a short-term disconnection. Even the Minister will agree that the disconnections to which he and others referred have been short-term ones.
Helen Jackson:
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Gale:
I shall give way to the hon. Lady in a moment.
I do not know anybody who believes that a supply of clean water is not desirable, but I am worried that the Government's approach will encourage non-payers. Worse, it will create circumstances--as my hon. Friend the Member for West Chelmsford said--in which the water companies, instead of going to court and applying for a disconnection order which would last for a short time in almost every case, will seek permission to attach income or benefit, or to send the bailiffs in to seize property.
I can foresee circumstances in which the Minister will come under pressure in the House from hon. Members. They will say that one of their constituents is a tenant, and his landlord, who uses the address of the flat, has not paid the bill. The tenant, who pays a rent that embraces the water bill as part of the deal on a furnished property and knows nothing of the circumstances of the non-payment, suddenly finds the bailiffs at the door ready to seize his goods. What provision is the Minister making to ensure that that does not happen? We may face that problem in a few months if he does nothing.
The Minister has not come to grips with the advantages for domestic budgeting of pre-payment meters for those who have difficulty in paying water bills, although the hon. Member for Milton Keynes, North-East (Mr. White) touched on the issue when he intervened in the speech by the hon. Member for Hillsborough.
The principle behind pre-payment meters is accepted for the electricity supply. The electricity companies use such meters sensibly, cautiously and intelligently, in cases in which customers are known to have a history of non-payment or a difficulty in budgeting and paying, as some people do. The Bill will prevent that from happening in the supply of water.
The hon. Member for Hillsborough agreed with the hon. Member for Milton Keynes, North-East, and said that
it was an imaginative idea, but the Bill would prevent it. I believe that it would be sensible to go a stage further, and provide the pre-payment meter with a built-in cut-off point, as has happened in the past. They should give a warning signal followed by several days of supply, so that the customer knows that the money has run out, followed by--if necessary--disconnection. All the customer has to do is go down to the office, get the key recharged, and reconnect the supply. That involves no difficulty, and no legal intervention.
I raised the issue in my letter to the director general, and his reply, in a letter dated 20 November 1998, read:
Mr. Burden:
The hon. Gentleman must be aware that there are many easy-payment aids to budgeting that do not involve disconnection. He believes that "can't pays" should not be disconnected, and that pre-payment meters should be allowed to have automatic disconnection facilities after a warning, but how does the unit know whether it is dealing with a "won't pay" a "can't budget" or a "can't pay" before it cuts the customer off?
Mr. Gale:
The answer is that it does not know, in the same way that an electricity meter does not know, but I doubt that any Labour Member would say that pre-payment electricity meters are unfair. If the customer runs out of money, the house goes dark.
It is all very well saying the electricity supply is different from the water supply, but it could cause problems if elderly people's electricity were cut off on a night such as last night, and they have no fire. However, I have received no complaints about such a circumstance. Other hon. Members may have done so, and they may pray those cases in aid. I have not done so, and, I repeat, I represent a constituency with a high elderly population, whose interests I take a pride in seeking to represent.
I do not believe that the Bill is the right way forward, and nor does the Ofwat National Customer Council. I propose to place sections of its briefing paper--all hon. Members have received a copy--on the record. In its advice in the section on debt recovery and disconnection, the council states:
The briefing paper continues:
The briefing paper also states:
I turn now to the issue of responsibility for domestic supply. The Bill is an excellent opportunity to address another problem of particular concern to my elderly constituents, and, I suspect, to those of other hon. Members. The Bill will give people the right to have a water meter installed. Elderly people will be led to believe that they will save money by doing so, because they are low users.
What will happen when the water company comes along to install a meter, and discovers--as is often the case in elderly properties that are not as well maintained as they should be, because the owner cannot afford it--that the pipe from the meter to the house is rotten and leaking? That is a real problem, because the pipe is the responsibility of the householder. Such householders are often elderly and on limited incomes, but the water company has a right to say, "We must renew that pipe, because it is leaking. The director general of Ofwat and the Government have told us that we must repair leaks. We are going to repair the pipe between the new meter and your stopcock, and we are going to charge you for it, because it is your responsibility."
The cost will depend on the length of the pipe involved and on what has to be dug up. The pipe may go under a conservatory or patio that someone installed without knowing that the pipe ran under it. The cost could be a minimum of £500, and, if it is a case of taking up a patio or conservatory floor, it could be £1,500 or £2,000. That enormous bill will suddenly land on the doormat of an elderly person who the day before had a water supply and no problems.
The Bill is an opportunity to deal with that problem once and for all. It is an opportunity to say--there is an element of rough justice in this, I concede--that the water company has a statutory duty to lay the pipe to the stopcock in the house if it requires repair.
That will mean two things. The company will incur a cost, which it will have to transfer, as it will not bear it alone, so everyone will pay a little more. Labour Members may say that that sounds like rank socialism--[Laughter.] In that case, they should support me, and help me to move an amendment to the Bill. In this instance, I would sooner everyone paid a pound or two more a year as an insurance policy. One day we will all benefit. I would sooner that happened than that some of my elderly constituents--plucked out non-selectively because they happen to have
applied for a water meter--found a bill for between £500 and £2,000 on their mat. I very much hope that the Minister for the Environment will take that matter on board.
I raised that matter with Ian Byatt, who told me:
Finally, the long title of the Bill mentions sewerage, but there is no mention of it in the Bill itself. I pay the Minister the warmest compliment that I can. On the very day of the summer recess, if I remember rightly, he courteously and quickly received me and a delegation of my constituents to discuss Foreness Point sewerage provision, for which I am deeply grateful, as are my constituents. Therefore, he is aware of the problem that I face in my constituency, but it is a broader problem.
In north Thanet, Southern Water wants to extend a sewage treatment plant. To do so, it requires the right to acquire land and dig up a site of special scientific interest and of natural beauty. We are told that the site will be reinstated when the job is done, in four or five, or perhaps even six or seven, years. In the meantime, my constituents will be subjected to considerable disturbance. However, when the job is done, we will still be pumping sewage into the sea, and, in this day and age, that is not acceptable.
The Bill does not deal with that problem, but makes it harder for the water companies to deal with it, which I find incomprehensible. I cannot understand why we and Ofwat are saying that the water companies have been efficient and have made large profits, so we should take those back and share them out among the customers. I want that money to be put into better services, so that we have fewer leaking pipes. Above all, I want it to go into modern, 21st-century treatment plants, which will satisfy the needs of our children and grandchildren.
If we are to bequeath a legacy through the Bill, surely it must be that it is incomprehensible that we should dig up fine land and, despite having a water shortage, pump sewage into the sea, rather than properly treating and recycling the usable effluent by putting it into rivers, allowing it to become diluted, and abstracting it lower down. However, neither I nor the Minister can tell Southern Water that we require it to install and pay for--at considerably greater expense--an inland treatment plant, if we are saying in the next breath that we will take away the money that the company could use to do it.
Kent is short of water. Tourism and light industries are developing, and, increasingly, Kent is becoming a dormitory for London, so it will need more water. Southern Water and Mid Kent Water will have to build a reservoir at Broad Oak or raise the banks at Bewl water to provide it. Where will they get the money to do so, if the House--through the regulator and legislation--denies them the means and resources?
"The Government intends to ban disconnections, and the High Court has ruled that budget payment units are not lawful operated as they were with a disconnection facility. While I agree with you that disconnection is an effective last resort (and it must be used carefully with proper procedural safeguards)"--
I agree--
"regulators must work within the law."
The Bill should address that problem. The water companies believed that such meters were a useful tool, and so did the director general of Ofwat. They have to work within the law, but we are in the process tonight of changing the law, and I cannot understand why the Minister will not permit it to be changed in that way.
"The Government wants water companies to rely exclusively on civil debt recovery procedures available through the courts. We believe that this may prove less effective and no less unpalatable than disconnection--in particular the use of civil debt recovery procedures will add to the customer's debt."
That may cause the problem that I mentioned earlier when bailiffs go in and seek to seize property belonging to someone who is not the householder.
"The level of customer debt in the water industry will rise as more customers refuse to pay; the costs of debt recovery and unpaid water charges will be borne by other customers."
I emphasise that those are not my words, but those of the Ofwat National Customer Council. Once again, the payer will be asked to pay for the non-payer.
"The DSS Direct Payments Scheme enables money to be passed directly from customers' benefit payments to water companies to help them budget to pay their water bills and avoid disconnection for non-payment of charges.
That is another flaw in the Bill, and the Government should pay much more attention to the section of the Bill referring to that issue.
The Government has confirmed that the scheme will continue to operate when household disconnection is prohibited but has not said precisely how; more detailed assurances are required."
"Making water companies responsible for the customers' supply pipes would involve changing the law and is obviously a matter for Parliament."
We are Parliament, so let us change it. Let us do my elderly constituents and those in other constituencies some good.
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