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8.41 pm
Mr. David Kidney (Stafford): This is a comparatively short Bill, so I shall keep my remarks short. I wish to comment on two points only, but I begin by congratulating the Government on the way in which the review that led to the Bill was carried out. The review was timely, and followed the Government's decision that there had to be an alternative to metering charges from April 2000. The manner in which the review was carried out--by consultation and by responding to the representations received--was commendable.
I wish to refer, first, to disconnections and, secondly, to the alternative to metering charges. On disconnections, the representations received in response to the consultation have not been strong enough to overturn Labour's determination to end the unfair practice of disconnecting people's water supply. Access to water is a basic entitlement, by reason of health, hygiene and social justice.
Water companies will lose the ability to threaten cut-offs of supply, but that does not necessarily mean that bad debts must rise in response. We have heard tonight that two companies have a policy of no cut-offs of supply, and nine companies have carried out no disconnections at all in the first six months of the financial year 1998-99. The Government strongly support water companies in their measures to avert bad debt--for example, the creation of the charitable trusts; providing easy-payment schemes; new designs of tariffs; helping customers to reduce their bills and minimise their use of water; and continuing direct payments from the Department of Social Security in appropriate cases.
Severn Trent, the largest water supplier in the west midlands, has written to me to say that it has a good story to tell in terms of such measures. Its charitable trust has helped more than 2,500 households, and it is a co-founder of a pay point scheme which allows the payment by instalments of water bills at more than 1,200 shops and petrol stations in the region. In the past six months, only two disconnections of household properties have been carried out, among 3.5 million customers.
I must not mislead the House into thinking that Severn Trent does not mind losing the power to disconnect--it does mind. I disagree with the company on the principle of disconnection, but I agree that it has a good point in terms of the practice of enforcing payment by customers. The civil debt recovery system is not as good as we have been led to believe by some hon. Members today.
Severn Trent referred me to a letter--which I must admit I missed--in The Times on 27 November from a solicitor in private practice, who said:
I had 20 years' experience in private practice as a solicitor before I became a Member of Parliament. Generally speaking, the enforcement system in the county court can work, but it is a bit of a creaking machine. I recommend that Ministers take an interest in the Lord Chancellor's Department's work to improve the enforcement of judgment debts, because, even in my short time as a Member of Parliament, I have received many representations from individuals and businesses who have had difficulty in getting payment even when they have won their county court cases.
There is broad agreement that we should keep open a choice of alternatives to compulsory metering. Most agree that, for the time being, rateable value is the only realistic option. For example, the Ofwat National Customer Council submission that we have all received says that it is the only alternative at present. It is not, however, a satisfactory alternative to metering. There have been no new rateable valuations since 1990, and all new houses have to be metered.
People do not understand how rateable values that have ceased to exist none the less determine how their water bills are made up, and there are injustices in past valuations that cannot be remedied retrospectively today. I have dealt with complaints from constituents who could not understand why they could not change their rateable value when they found that it was out of line with their neighbours'.
The citizens advice bureaux and the Ofwat National Customer Council report significant numbers of complaints on that point. If rateable valuations remain the only alternative to meters for very long, the choice will become less and less meaningful. That is why the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health has described the Government's proposals as "metering by stealth". I hope that the Government will eventually listen to the calls for access to council tax data, and I note that they have not ruled out the possibility in their response to the representations received.
Dr. Peter Brand (Isle of Wight):
We have had a lot of discussion about a little Bill. The socially concerned aspects of the debate, in particular, have had nothing to do with the Bill. I am delighted that Conservative Front Benchers do not support metering. In 1988, roads in the Isle of Wight started being dug up in one of the biggest social experiments ever in compulsory water metering: 95 per cent. of households were metered over three years, with almost 60,000 meters fitted.
The Isle of Wight was the largest of the 11 compulsory metering areas. What was the result of that great experiment? No reference is made to it in any of the background briefing for the Bill, and the industry does not seem to have remarked on it at all. After the experiment, 60 per cent. were better off, with 20 per cent. substantially better off.
The people who benefited most were not the little grannies in modest but fairly well-rated houses, but the people with enormous holiday homes who used them only during August. Some 40 per cent. of people were worse off, of whom 15 to 20 per cent. were considerably worse off, because at that time no provision was made in the benefit regulations to compensate people for the new bills that they had to pay.
Families with two children on a disposable income of £60 a week suddenly had to find an extra £5 to £8 a week to pay for water. I am glad that hon. Members have referred to the public health importance of water, because I saw the result of that policy. Children went unwashed, and when I visited little houses as the family doctor, I could hear the loo being flushed as I walked up the garden path. They knew I was coming, and they were embarrassed by the smell. It is disgraceful that that experiment was allowed to happen.
The Government have had to introduce a Bill because the time restraints on the previous legislation meant that something had to be done before April 2000, but they have not thought it through. If we take the Bill at face value and accept what the Minister said, within the area of each water supplier, communities will have a choice. However, the Bill will make it impossible to have a meaningful discussion on structuring tariffs to protect people, such as the elderly person with a small need for water living in a large house.
If the Government had been brave enough to have a policy, we could have gone back to a system based on rateable value and where people live, in the hope that that had some relationship to their disposable income, or we could have had water metering with a system that had some input into bills by suggesting how tariffs could be drawn up. Under such a system, standing charges and how much is paid for the essential amount of water per person in the household could have been written into the regulations.
Ofwat has been useless. With the previous Government, it galloped towards the metering of water. The Bill pretends that choice will exist, but it will not, because metering is a one-way street. Householders will be able to change their minds once, and go back a few steps, but most of the arrows point downstream, to inevitable
compulsory water metering. I hope that the Government will consider the results of the trials that have been carried out. Metering is disruptive, although it saves water, and that is good. A proper tariff structure must be built into water metering, and that is absent from the Bill.
Mr. Letwin:
Is it Liberal Democrat policy to extend that approach to gas and electricity?
Dr. Brand:
That is an interesting point, because three Conservative Members who have spoken equated all public utilities. However, people usually have a choice between gas and electricity for heating, and when the pinch comes, they can use coal. Many of my constituents still use coal because they cannot afford any other services--we are not a wealthy community. People can also use bottled gas or paraffin. But they have no choice about using water. In the 20th century, people should not have to try to flush their loos by taking a bucket to the stream or their rain butts.
"As a practising solicitor I can think of no instance in the last five years when a bailiff alone has managed to recover either money or goods . . . University research that I have seen shows that after county court proceedings in the small claims courts only a minority of defendants paid up on time.
That is a gloomy prognosis for the companies.
After six months many had still not paid. If the water industry is to rely on bailiffs it may as well write off those debts now."
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