| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
Mr. Brake: If the hon. Lady is on the Standing Committee considering the Bill and if the Liberal Democrats table an amendment to address the regional disparity in water prices, perhaps she will support us. Let me also point out that at present there is a greater proportion of Liberal Democrat Members in the Chamber than Labour or Tory Members.
Mr. Alasdair Morgan (Galloway and Upper Nithsdale): But not Scottish Nationalists.
Mrs. Gilroy: Still, Liberal Democrats representing the part of the country that suffers the most problems are conspicuous by their complete absence. The hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Mr. Brake) mentioned the consideration of the Bill in Committee. I shall cover some of the issues in my speech, but I am not sure that the Bill--welcome though it is--is the vehicle for achieving the objective that I share with Liberal Democrat Members with constituencies in Devon and Cornwall.
Under the present proposals, customers in England and Wales will continue to pay very different bills, with my constituents shouldering a greater burden than others. It seems wrong that households in one part of the country should be penalised for the performance of their local water company or because they live in a particular place. Reference has been made to the fact that water meters measure only water volume and not sewerage, yet it is sewerage charges that cause my constituents' bills to be so high. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Mr. Burden), who said that we should look at many issues relating to metering in the longer term.
Mr. Letwin:
The hon. Lady said that she thought that the Bill might not be the right vehicle for an amendment
Mrs. Gilroy:
I shall come to that in just a moment.
Following discussions with the stakeholders in the south-west, I approached my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State with proposals for a water quality fund. I know that "Raising the Quality" restates the principle that quality improvements have to be paid for by water and sewerage customers, but the "polluter pays" principle has been used as an argument against the consideration of such a fund. I am not at all sure that all polluters do pay or that there is any practical way of making them do so.
The whole country benefits from improvements in bathing water and the avoidance of prosecution by the European Union--the state, rather than one region, has an obligation to comply with standards--yet only those living in coastal regions end up paying for improvements. On equity grounds, I believe that there are sound arguments for a scheme that smooths the difference in bills arising from those factors and, although it may be difficult to achieve that under the present legislative and regulatory framework, I urge my hon. Friend to examine that proposal.
Clauses 4 and 5 give the Secretary of State powers to make regulations on charging schemes. They are intended to allow him to protect customers who are vulnerable owing to ill health, disability or financial circumstances, by specifying the nature of the support that they may receive. That could include a requirement to charge such households the average bill for the company.
I hope that, through the Bill, my right hon. Friend will ensure that the regulations can protect these vulnerable customers in the south-west from high average bills which mean that they could be paying £153 more than those in the Thames region, where the average bill is only £201. Perhaps my hon. Friend could refer to that in his reply to the debate or, if time does not permit, write to me to clarify his view on an issue of great importance to some of my constituents. He may also care to ponder how a Cabinet Minister would feel if he received a £7,000 bill for water and sewerage charges, which would reflect a similar proportion of his income.
Mr. Alasdair Morgan (Galloway and Upper Nithsdale):
I was interested to hear what my hon. Friend the Member for Ceredigion (Mr. Dafis) said about value added; he argued that Welsh water should not be exported but that the industries and jobs that needed the water should be moved to where the water was. In Scotland, of course, we have a different concept of value added--we change our water into whisky before we export it.
I shall be brief as only a small part of the Bill--clauses 12 and 14 and some of the schedules--has any relevance to Scotland. The provisions are tacked rather uncomfortably on to the end of more substantial and totally different proposals for England and Wales. It was significant that the hon. Member for West Chelmsford (Mr. Burns), in opening for the Opposition, did not discuss the Scottish clauses, which perhaps reflected his party's political prospects north of the border.
The debate concerns the principles rather than the details of the Bill. For me, the Bill contains two important principles. First, it deals with an issue that has been devolved to the Scottish Parliament under the Scotland Act 1998, which recently received Royal Assent. The Scottish National party believes that the matter should be left for that Parliament, which will be set up next year, to consider.
Secondly, I believe that the overriding desire of the Scottish people is not for a water regulator but for full democratic control of, and accountability in, the water industry in Scotland. The Government have done a U-turn on their pre-election commitments on that. In December 1997, the Secretary of State for Scotland said:
My party will seek to remove the provisions in the Bill that deal with Scotland. It is an affront to the spirit of the Scotland Act that such measures are being dragged through the House on the coat tails of a Bill for England and Wales. As the measures will have to be implemented by the Scottish Executive in any case, it makes no sense for Westminster to impose a framework for them. The Scottish Office--and the House of Commons--should leave the Executive to make up their own minds about the powers of the consumer council area committees, about the role of any regulator, if there is one, and about how those bodies and individuals are to be financed.
The Scottish National party will seek to introduce legislation in the Scottish Parliament to return water to democratic control, a policy that I am sure will have widespread support among a range of Members of the Scottish Parliament. I believe that, by imposing the system proposed in the Bill, the Government are crudely attempting to tie the hands of the Parliament in any future review of the Scottish water industry. Indeed, the Secretary of State for Scotland confirmed that that was so. Of the Parliament, he said:
What we have here is a far cry from what was planned by the right hon. Member for Hamilton, South (Mr. Robertson), who said at the Scottish Labour party conference before the election:
"The Labour Party manifesto included a commitment to return the Scottish water industry to local democratic control."
In response to a question that I asked, he said,
"we are strengthening the democratic controls".--[Official Report, 16 December 1997; Vol. 303, c. 154.]
The Bill fails to deliver on that commitment. A regulator will still be democratically unaccountable--the Bill may impose more controls, but they are hardly democratic. If the Government had any desire truly to democratise Scottish water, they could have used the Bill to do so. The fact that they did not must lead us to conclude that they have no intention of fulfilling their manifesto pledge.
"I would expect that it will wish to allow the system to settle, and to perform, before considering any further options."--[Official Report, 16 December 1997; Vol. 303, c. 147.]
Next May, the people of Scotland will vote for parties with distinctive proposals for Scottish water. They will not look kindly on a Labour Government who use Westminster to put up barriers to real reform. There is no
justification for introducing a system now and using it as an excuse for preventing the Scottish Parliament from making further changes.
"On my first day in St. Andrews house, I will end this undemocratic farce."
Of course the right hon. Gentleman bypassed St. Andrew's house and went straight to the Ministry of Defence. However, that does not excuse his colleagues in not carrying the plan forward.
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |