Examination of Witnesses (Questions 264-279)
MR BRIAN
DUCKWORTH, DR
BOB BREACH
AND MR
GRAEME SIMS
WEDNESDAY 27 NOVEMBER 2002
Chairman
264. Gentlemen, welcome to the Select Committee.
And for the sake of the record, Mr Brian Duckworth, you are the
Managing Director of Severn Trent Water, Dr Bob Breach, Head of
Quality and Environmental Services, same company, and Mr Graeme
Sims, Head of Water Regulation at United Utilities. Is all of
that right?
(Mr Duckworth) Absolutely.
265. Thank you very much indeed. We have got
a big agenda, so we are going to try to keep our questions fairly
crisp, and we would be grateful if you could try to do the same
in your responses. The Brussels Commission has said that this
is a very ambitious Directive, both in its objectives and its
timetable. Is it an achievable Directive?
(Mr Duckworth) I think achievement is a function of
when you start working on it. I think perhaps we have already
lost a little bit of the headroom that we were given, and I think
there is quite a lot of work to do. It all depends at the end
of the day how much we need to do, in terms of creating new structures
and providing new assets, if a lot of investment is needed in
the water industry. But in terms of achievability with a 2012
deadline, it is not beyond the wit of man to be able to deliver
against that; but there is so much work to be done up front and
I think we are slow in starting that detailed work.
266. You say there is so much work to be done,
would you like to give us some headlines of what that work is
and indicate the delays?
(Mr Duckworth) The catchment management plans and
the detail that has to go into that, we are woefully slow in preparing
for that.
267. Sorry, who is the "we" in this?
(Mr Duckworth) I am not talking about we in the water
industry, we as Great Britain plc, if you like. Someone has to
give some direction, someone has to take some leadership, someone
has to start the ball rolling, and that process really has not
started, and it should have started by now.
268. You used the word "someone" three
times. Could you put a name to the someone, in each of those instances?
(Mr Duckworth) I think some guidance, some direction,
needs to be given by DEFRA.
269. Right; so DEFRA is slow in getting this
thing off the ground, is that what you are saying?
(Mr Duckworth) Yes.
(Dr Breach) Could I add. You have said this is a massive
project, it is probably the biggest single water project in Europe,
hugely ambitious, and what we do not see is the disciplines of
project management. Water companies have been used to delivering
large, multi-billion pound programmes, we have quite sophisticated
project management skills, we know who takes decisions, what information
you need to make those decisions. What we find very hard to see
at the moment is who is doing what, what is the process, who is
responsible for what, who is responsible for making decisions;
that clarity does not exist for us at the moment. We see consultation
documents, we hear the EA is beginning to set up a team to do
this, but it is very unclear to us who is actually taking the
lead, who is doing what in this huge project management process
that we need to implement.
270. So the decision tree, which is one of DEFRA's
latest beloved metaphors, is still a tiny sapling, is it, as far
as this is concerned, and not much is perching on it?
(Dr Breach) It may even be a seed. There are disciplines
like critical path analysis, in which we, the country, are very
experienced, and one of the problems seems to be that the Directive
is being implemented in a very linear process. In other words,
we do stage one before we do stage two. That is almost guaranteed
to make us fail, because there will be so much thinking and analysing
before we actually get to doing something. We believe a process
whereby you can implement different stages in parallel would probably
be much more effective, to allow us to make the key decisions
that result in cost-effective investment, to make the outcomes
we are trying to get to.
271. And have you talked to DEFRA, have you
gone along to DEFRA and said, "Look, old chap," or "old
girl," "this aint going to work, unless you get a bit
of oomph and wellie behind it and actually start getting a bit
of method"? Have you done that, or has your industry association,
whom we are seeing in a minute?
(Dr Breach) I think you will probably hear from Water
UK, who are speaking after us; clearly, as our industry association,
it is for them to implement and interact with DEFRA and many other
stakeholders, and I suspect that is probably a question best answered
by them.
272. One of the things which concerns us, as
a Committee, and which we have mentioned in a couple of reports,
is whether DEFRA, and I dare say this may well be true of other
government departments as well, have really got that sort of competence
in depth throughout the structures to be able to deliver these
very, very complex pieces of legislation and administration. Is
that a fear you share?
(Dr Breach) Yes. I think, if you look at some of the
many other Directives that have been implemented, there are a
number where we have ended up facing infraction proceedings and
then there has been a last-minute panic to put things in place,
which probably is not the cost-effective way to do it. The Government
signed up, as a Member State, to this Directive, that obligation
is there.
273. If I were to ask you, in pursuit of what
you have just said, to set down, if you were seconded to DEFRA
and you were asked, "Come on, produce for me an action plan,
or scenario, of who ought to be doing what, when," so precisely
the sort of programme which you have talked about, of trying to
do many things at the same time, or not wait for one thing to
finish before another is starting, would you be able to do that?
(Dr Breach) I am sure we have the capacity in this
country to do it.
274. No, would you be able to set it out for
me?
(Dr Breach) Yes; well I think some of our colleagues
will be able to, because, as I say, water companies are used to
managing multi-billion pound investment projects, they are very
sophisticated processes, because the tools and techniques are
there, they are not new.
275. So would you do it for me?
(Dr Breach) I am currently employed by Severn Trent
Water.
(Mr Duckworth) I think we could do the piece that
applies to the water industry. There is a danger that a Directive
with water in it means that it has total application to the water
industry, and it does not. This should be a land Directive, or
an environmental Directive, and I think we would be quite capable
of doing everything associated with the water part of the environment.
When you start tackling agriculture and other aspects of diffuse
pollution, I think there will be some other experts that we need
to call upon.
276. I quite understand that, and, indeed, since
you have got your association sitting behind you, it may be that
you want to devolve the responsibility to them, which presumably
is what you pay them for.
(Mr Duckworth) We do work very closely with them.
277. But the reason I asked the question is
simple. If you say that this work is not being done in DEFRA and
you think it ought to be done, one way is to go along and say,
"Look, we can help you, this is what we think you should
be doing, and this is the sort of outline," and give them
a head start?
(Mr Duckworth) I think, more importantly, it would
be much easier if we worked closely with DEFRA and with the Environment
Agency, and as far as I am concerned there has not been sufficient
high-level involvement between DEFRA, the Environment Agency and
either Water UK or members of individual water companies to get
that part of the Framework Directive in place. And there is a
willingness and a capability in our organisations to do that.
278. Now United Utilities, which I am familiar
with, because you operate in bits of my neck of the wood, at any
rate, you said in your evidence that you regretted, I think, that
there was not a pilot trial in the United Kingdom and you would
like to have one, especially in the North West of England. The
argument put to explain that has always been, "Well, the
United Kingdom has been doing schemes based on the River Basin
Management model already, so we don't need a trial because this
is actually our sort of normal practice." Do you think that
holds water, if I may use that?
(Mr Sims) Not entirely, because I think it is clear
that the type of River Basin Management Plan envisaged by the
Directive is significantly more extensive than the river basin
planning that has taken place hitherto. And I think one way to
clarify a lot of the current uncertainties around the interpretation
of aspects of the Directive is to have something of a test-tube
environment where those issues can be thoroughly worked through,
before we are very much up against the deadline of implementing
programmes and measures towards the end of this decade.
279. So do you think the reason why we have
not put one forward is actually more to do with administrative
capacity?
(Mr Sims) I am not sure I would like to speculate,
but I think the reason given does not seem quite to square up
against the demands of the Directive.
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