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Mr. Carmichael: The Minister mentioned the amendment relating to the use of the affirmative procedure and the importance of judicial authority in the issuing of warrants. I welcome those two points, because the Liberal Democrats placed particular emphasis on them in Committee. I am delighted that they now appear in the Bill and that their importance has been accepted.
I listened to the Minister waxing lyrical about proceedings in the other place. She explained how all the amendments had been considered and fully debated, and I almost began to look forward to a day when I might be translated to the other place. However, I hope that that will not happen for some years yet. The hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Mr. Hawkins) made a good point when he said that the use of the guillotine in this House is having an adverse effect on our ability to scrutinise Bills. We must continue our attempt to find a better way to deal with legislation, because I am all too aware—as someone who has taken part in a significant number of Committees since I entered the House in June 2001—of the significant deficiencies in the present system. The caveat to that, however, is that any changes will have to be matched by responsibility on both sides of the House. The tendency towards filibustering and making specious and spurious points will have to be resisted by all hon. Members. The remarkable aspect of the way in which the other place operates is that there is a little more statesmanship and bit less politics. All parties in this House could learn something from that.
The Minister said that the essence of the Bill was to ensure that people responsible for committing crimes could not escape responsibility simply by crossing a
border. Nobody could argue with that. Because it is now so much easier to cross borders within the European Union, legislation like this is inevitable. However, in our enthusiasm to reflect that, we should not lose sight of the need to protect the fundamental liberties and rights that we prize in this country. In some small measure, the amendments that we have discussed today and the issues that we discussed in Committee make a real contribution to that. With some reservations, we may be pleased with a job well done on this Bill.
Caroline Flint: I will write to the hon. Member for Surrey Heath on the role of the Lord Advocate and the issuing of words by electronic means, both of which he mentioned. The hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland talked about how we perform our duties of scrutiny in both Houses of Parliament. It is fair to say that a combination of talents is brought to Parliament by those who represent their constituents—and therefore have direct experience of what the public feel about issues through surgeries and other activities—and by noble Lords as they perform the job of scrutiny.
I have mentioned the work of the Home Affairs Committee, which adds to our debate in such areas. The all-party groups and people with particular experience of an issue also add to our discussions. It is important to have opportunities to debate, but that might not always happen on the Floor of the House or in Committee. We need an informed process, and I am pleased that the Government have considered other methods, such as pre-legislative scrutiny, to offer other opportunities to tackle some of the big issues of our time. The Bill deals with big issues, because it is concerned with the rights of individuals as well as the need to fight crime wherever it takes place. The Bill represents good work in both Houses of Parliament, and I look forward to its becoming law and being implemented.
Remaining Lords amendments agreed to.
Committee appointed to draw up Reasons to be assigned to the Lords for disagreeing to their amendment No. 27 to the Bill: Mr. Alistair Carmichael, Caroline Flint, Mr. Nick Hawkins, Shona McIsaac and Derek Twigg; Caroline Flint to be the Chairman of the Committee; Three to be the quorum of the Committee.—[Derek Twigg.]
Reasons for disagreeing to Lords amendment No. 27 reported, and agreed to; to be communicated to the Lords.
EUROPEAN COMMUNITY DOCUMENTS
Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order 119(9) (European Standing Committees),
Trans-European Networks
- That this House takes note of European Union Document No. 12817/02, amended draft Decision amending Decision No. 1692/96/EC on Community guidelines for the development of the trans-European transport network, No. 13244/03 ADD1, amended draft Decision amending an amended draft Decision to amend Council Decision No. 1692/96/EC on Community guidelines for the development of the trans-European transport network, and No. 13297/03, amended draft Regulation amending an amended draft Regulation to amend Council Regulation (EC) No. 2236/95, laying down general rules for the granting of Community financial aid in the field of trans-European networks; and endorses the Government's approach to discussions on these documents.—[Charlotte Atkins.]
PETITION
Fireworks
3 pm
Mr. Andrew Rosindell (Romford): I rise on behalf of my constituents Joanne and John Sifleet of Riversdale road in Collier Row, Romford. A horrifying incident took place at their house on the evening of 5 November, Guy Fawkes' night. The daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Sifleet cheated death when, just after 8 o'clock, a massive firework smashed through a double-glazed window and exploded in a room that she had occupied only a few minutes earlier.
Joanne Sifleet and her husband John were sitting downstairs when a mammoth firework ripped through the upstairs bathroom window, devastating everything in its path. Their daughter Chloe, a pupil at the local Clockhouse infants school in Collier Row, had been in the bathroom only minutes before. Luckily, she escaped injury, having left the bathroom to join her sister Gemma, 4, in another room upstairs. As reported in the local Romford Recorder newspaper, her mother said:
- "We heard this almighty bang . . . the kitchen ceiling started to fall down. We raced upstairs and I could hear my children screaming, 'We don't want to die, Mummy.'"
- To the House of Commons:
The Petition of the residents of Romford and the Collier Row area
Declares that "Display Fireworks" and imported non British Standards Fireworks have become such a nuisance to the general public that their sale and illegal importation must be restricted.
The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Secretary of State for Home Affairs to introduce Legislation which will ban the sale of "Display Fireworks" to the general public and stop the import and sale of non British Standard Approved fireworks.
Flooding (Eastleigh)
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Charlotte Atkins.]
3.3 pm
Mr. David Chidgey (Eastleigh): I am grateful for the opportunity to raise a matter of great importance to my constituents in Eastleigh. I want to draw the Minister's attention to the plight of the many local residents from foul water flooding after heavy rain.
I appear to have about three and a half hours to entertain the Minister on this matter, and my file contains a great many complaints from constituents, received over a considerable time. However, he will be relived that I intend to stick to plan A, and be as concise as I can. He will therefore have considerable time to respond.
It has become all too common in the Eastleigh area that the foul sewers serving residential areas overflow after heavy rain. Gardens and homes are flooded with raw sewage, and lavatories become unusable because the drains are full. Southern Water turns up promptly to clear up the mess afterwards, and that is all very well, but gardens are ruined and homes take many months to recover. If the storm-water drains cannot cope and surface water flooding is involved, residents often end up having to haggle with the water company and their insurers to determine which is responsible for reimbursing them for the costs of the flood damage.
All too often, as I am sure that the Minister knows, residents who win a satisfactory result have to pay higher insurance premiums. In some cases, they cannot get their insurance renewed at all.
I shall set out the scale of the problem. Since the 1980s, there has been massive housing development in Eastleigh. Tens of thousands of homes have been built in the area, around what used to be villages. We welcome the regeneration of our communities that has resulted. In recent years, thousands more homes have been built in brownfield developments in the heart of the old Victorian town of Eastleigh. We welcome that too, but it is clear that the drainage and sewage treatment infrastructure has not kept pace with housing developments on greenfield sites around the villages or on the brownfield sites around the old town.
The Minister will know that water companies like to claim that the problem is that global warming has caused heavier rain, which overloads their systems. However, I doubt that that is entirely true. An analysis by Southern Water's experts of the Eastleigh drainage system shows that the town's sewerage system will not cope with the demands posed by the new housing. After some prodding by myself and others, the company has released the executive summary of a study currently under way of the effect that some 1,400 new houses will have. Those houses are being built on brownfield sites in central Eastleigh.
The study predicts that a storm of a severity that might occur only once a year—a so-called "one in one year" storm—will cause such an overload on the drainage system that at five points the sewers will overflow on to the highway, and therefore into people's homes. It also predicts that progressively worse flooding will happen as a result of even more intense but less
frequent storm events—storms that might happen every 20 or 50 years, for instance. That shows that, without new investment to cater for housing development, residents can expect to suffer flooding at least once a year in five places in an area that is no larger than a square mile. More than half of the new development has already been built.Bad though the situation is, that is only half the problem. Sewage from the Eastleigh area is pumped directly into the Chickenhall waste water treatment works, located beside the River Itchen. The Minister will know of that river if he is a fisherman, and of the fine opportunities that it allows for sports fishing on inland water. He will know too that the river is the subject of a sustainability management project, and that an application has been made for EU designation as a special area of conservation. That designation would recognise the river's importance as a special environmental resource.
Interestingly, Southern Water—like other water companies in a similar position—is licensed by the Environment Agency to discharge partially treated effluent into the River Itchen through a storm-water overflow from its sewage treatment works. Because of the increase in flooding incidents over recent years and those projected for the future, the water company proposes to bring the storm-water overflow into full use, which will inevitably mean more partially treated effluent flowing into the Itchen. Only a few miles downstream, at Gaters Mill, is Portsmouth Water's water-extraction plant. While the people of Portsmouth may not take kindly to the thought of drinking from Eastleigh's effluent, it is a fact that the treatment at the extraction plant renders the water safe. However, what about that long stretch of river between the sewage treatment works and the extraction plant? What will be the impact of increasing the flow of partially treated effluent on the salmon spawning-grounds in the river, on the watercress beds and on the youngsters who use the water sports activity centre provided by the county council? Surely, planning to increase the discharge of waste-water floods into the Itchen flies in the face of attempts to create a special area of conservation free from pollution. We are suffering from a fundamental failure to ensure that our sewage and waste-water treatment systems have kept and do keep pace with demand, particularly in the area that I represent.
It is important to recall that one of the great achievements in urbanisation in the 19th century was the building of water supply, drainage and treatment systems to serve the swelling populations of our towns and cities. Killer diseases, such as typhoid, were eradicated. Not for nothing did public health engineering become a highly respected profession. It is a sad reflection that all too often in the case of sewers, it is out of sight, out of mind. We are now painfully aware that following decades of underinvestment in the repair and maintenance of our main drainage systems we are left with literally thousands of miles of crumbling, failing sewers. What a way to treat such a valuable legacy left to us by our forefathers.
How can it be that in the 21st century my constituents are faced with the fear of foul sewage flooding their properties on a regular basis—not because of some rare, exceptional weather occurring perhaps once in every 50 years or so, but every year and every time we get heavy
rain? How can it be that while Eastleigh borough council is making every effort to provide affordable homes on brownfield sites in line with Government policy, trying to address the needs of some 10,000 people seeking homes, our water company is wringing its hands over the lack of funds that are needed to expand its sewerage and treatment systems to meet the extra demands? How can it be that its existing sewerage and treatment system is so overloaded that the only recourse is to discharge partially treated effluent into a river that is recognised as being so important to the environment that it should have special protection from pollution?I fear that the residents of Eastleigh are not alone in their predicament. This pattern of failure is repeated across the country. One has merely to look at the statistics from Ofwat, from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and from Environmental Data Services to confirm that our water and sewerage companies are buckling under the strain of obsolete and failing infrastructure, increased demand from new development and inadequate streams of essential investment. Clearly, there needs to be a full inquiry into how we regulate, manage and resource the water and drainage industry. We need to look at the roles of local authorities, the Environment Agency and Ofwat and we need to see some joined-up government to ensure that the industry is working in the best interests of the community, the environment and, more important, the customer—my residents.
We need to ensure that local authorities and water and sewerage companies are fully in the loop where planning applications impact on the demand for drainage. At present the system is that local authorities have recourse to the Environment Agency as a statutory consultee in the process. Surely there is a powerful case for water and sewerage companies to be made statutory authorities under planning regulations. That would end the practice of all too many companies who do not or, even worse, will not reply to planning application notices, leaving local authorities to make decisions in the dark and without expert guidance. We need a statutory consultation process with teeth, not just a rubber-stamp exercise—local authorities constantly complain to me about that—with regulations that place obligations and accountability on the consultees.
We need to address the powers of the Environment Agency in controlling pollution. Just this week Southern Water—I mention it not because of any particular campaign against it, but because it is the company that serves my area—was found guilty of pumping raw sewage into the Solent. The Minister will know that the Solent is an area of international environmental importance. It is nothing short of an outrage that such an area of water should be subject to such pollution, yet the fine was a mere £5,000. In 2001 the water company is on the record as coming second in the league table of the worst water company polluters in this country, yet its total fines for this year amount to a mere £64,500. That is hardly even an incidental running cost to a company with a turnover which last year was in excess of £436 million. Clearly, there is a powerful case for reviewing the regulation of the industry with regard to investment priorities.
For far too long maintenance and renewal of sewerage systems has been the poor relation in the industry. I am pleased that Ofwat is now expressing concerns which, I believe, the Government share, about the lack of investment in this area. It is clear that water companies have put the interests of shareholders first. That is not just a knee-jerk reaction such as we so often hear in relation to privatised companies. Ofwat's report for 2002–03 on the financial performance and expenditure of the water companies states:
- "In 2002–2003, dividend cover fell as a result of a higher level of dividends despite lower operating profit. We recognise that investor confidence must be maintained but the level of dividends also needs to be sustainable over the long term. Dividends from regulated business should reflect the cost of capital and distribution to shareholders of a proper portion of the benefits of greater efficiency."
Eastleigh borough council wrote a letter to Ofwat regarding investment priorities. It concerns asset management planning 4. The first recommendation in the submission is:
- "That the funding currently being used to improve beach quality be diverted to improving the capacity of sewerage works. This would prevent blockages of the system caused by backing up and improve River Quality."
The council's second point is that much of the infrastructure serving Eastleigh is reaching the end of its design life or has already passed it. However, technologies are available that could be used to seal the leaking pipes with minimal disruption. The council submits that significant expenditure is necessary to upgrade all existing substandard pipework. Where is the money to come from? It is suggested that the £2.2 billion underspend in asset management plan 3 of all water companies, including Southern Water, could be transferred to enable those works to be carried out.
Like the council in its submission to Ofwat, we note that Southern Water proposes to increase its water bills by 35.1 per cent. during the AMP period and that such an increase is excessive, especially as in Eastleigh alone there have been two major sewer failures this year; gardens and homes were flooded with sewage and main roads were closed. That was the result of serious underfunding of the infrastructure during the past 20 years. Those are the views of my local borough council and I thoroughly endorse them.
To draw the attention of the House to the predicament suffered by so many people, I focus on the case of Mr. Alf Bushell, which was featured on Saturday in our local paper, The Southern Daily Echo, under the banner headline, "Veteran's Loo Trek Misery". Alf is an 81-year-old war veteran, a former Royal Marine who helped to shoot down enemy aircraft during the second world war and whose ship sank off the coast of Italy. This man should be treated with respect and dignity, but whenever it rains he has to walk 15 minutes to the nearest public convenience—whatever the weather—because his lavatory becomes blocked. Is it right that Alf and dozens of his neighbours in Consort road, my constituents, should suffer indignities that more correctly belong in the middle ages? I look forward to the Minister's response.
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