Select Committee on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Minutes of Evidence


Examination of Witnesses (Questions 300 - 319)

WEDNESDAY 19 MAY 2004

BARONESS YOUNG OF OLD SCONE, DR DAVID KING AND MR IAN BARKER

  Q300  Paddy Tipping: Finally, let me turn to a specific which is the Thames Barrier and ask you about your thinking and planning on this. The Thames Barrier is being used more and more. It is getting out of date. It is going to have to be replaced. What is the target for replacement and are you on track for achieving it?

  Baroness Young of Old Scone: There was press coverage recently which talked about the Thames Barrier being worn out. I think that was the implication. I do not know what the words were that were used, but the implication was that it would be useless by 2020. That is not the case. We have known for a long time that there would be sea level rise and climate change implications—particularly sea level rise implications—for the Barrier. What we are not talking about is junking the whole Barrier and starting again. That is not the name of the game. It is about improving the standards of the Barrier and improving the standards of the flood defences all down the Thames estuary and a whole load of other, concomitant works. There was a piece of slightly bizarre press coverage that implied that the total investment in the Barrier was going to be junked after 50 years, which is not the case.

  Dr King: When thinking about the estuary, it is important not just to focus on the Barrier. The Barrier is a very important component but there are seven other barriers. There are 500 kilometres of embankment and something like 400 different sluices and gates that all operate as part of the tidal system. We are very fortunate in the design of the Barrier and indeed the other barriers that there is quite significant headroom, if you like, built in. The Agency has started a major study that is looking at the future flood risk management for the estuary. That study kicked off at the back end of last year and it will cost in the order of £16 million. It will take something like four years to complete because there is a significant amount of detail but the product of that will be a flood risk management plan for the estuary that will cover the replacement and the enhancement. The expectation is that we will start that programme of works in about 2015, but that would take us through defences right to the end of the century. That is not to say we will not do anything in the meantime, but in terms of having an overall good, strategic view and plan of the estuary, that is the timescale.

  Q301  Paddy Tipping: What are the threats to your plans?

  Dr King: Obviously there is significant development planned for the Gateway and, as part of that planning, probably for the first time flood management has become an integral part of the planning infrastructure. It is very important that the decisions that are taken in terms of moving the Gateway forward do not compromise what we need to do in the longer term, but we have been working very closely with developers, with the ODPM and others in ensuring that is the case.

  Q302  Paddy Tipping: Could you say that in plainer language? Are you saying that all this extra housing that is going round the estuary potentially causes a flood management risk and what you are trying to do is to work with the planners, work with the ODPM, to ensure that does not happen?

  Dr King: Clearly, if you add the quantum of houses which is something of the order of 150,000 into the estuary, it will increase the risk but what you have to remember is that the estuary, with the exception of the Kent Marshes etc, is defended today to a standard of 1:2,000 years. [As sea level rises, the standard of protection will reduce as planned to the design standard of 1:1,000 years.] There is a very good level of protection. Obviously the risk increases because the consequences of failure are greater.

  Baroness Young of Old Scone: Could I comment on some of the things that are needed in the Gateway if we are really going to keep the options flexible for the future? Clearly, we need to get to a level above individual development zones within the Gateway so that we have a proper, spatial plan and can anticipate where development can usefully happen, set back from the river, where we need to protect access so that we can ensure that circulation and access are still protected if there is a flood incident and that we also see flood resilience planning of the actual buildings and developments in the Gateway. We need a strategic approach. We need some strategic routes protected. We need to make sure we do not put vulnerable communities and developments in the wrong place and we need to make sure that the individual construction schemes are well managed.

  Q303  Paddy Tipping: Is all that happening?

  Baroness Young of Old Scone: We are working very closely both with the arm's length development bodies and the ODPM on how we can make sure that we do have all of those layers in place. Clearly, development in the Gateway is going to be quite an economically tight issue because much of the development is on brown field sites and that is quite a costly process to remedy. There is an anxiety about what the on costs of both flood defence and sustainable construction would look like in the Gateway. We have to be mindful of the fact that we cannot design solutions that are going to mean that economic development simply cannot happen. It would be inconsistent for us to do that when there is already a considerable amount of development protected to a one in 2,000 year standard. Providing both sides of the equation, the development equation, the environmental equation and the flood risk equation, respect each others' viewpoints as we move forward, we are working very closely.

  Q304  Mr Drew: In a sense, the more constrained we are by resources because of the macro schemes, the big schemes which may include the Thames Barrier, the more difficult it is for us to deal with the micro schemes, the ones Paddy referred to on the Severn. That has an implication for the ability to do anything with those areas. In reality, we are just going to use them as part of the flood protection, the natural flood plain, but the problem with that is you end up continually reviewing these schemes rather than doing them. It is a bit of a myth to pretend you are going to get any private money in because you have effectively precluded all development in that area. Can you see that there is a bit of a vicious circle there for some communities? They now do not have what they effectively thought they were promised, which is not hard schemes but just getting the banks repaired and so on. That has not happened. They probably will not get access to private money, so they are left in limbo. What sort of good news can you give to those communities? I have to go and meet one of them along with the Environment Agency, and they are saying, "We were promised this 18 months ago. It is further away today than it ever was."

  Baroness Young of Old Scone: One of the things we have to get better at is recognising when a community is not likely to have a scheme in the immediate future or even the foreseeable future and just being pretty plain and open about it. One of the things we have done in the past, which has been done from good intentions on our part but may not have served the community as well as we had hoped, was to desperately look for a viable scheme, with umpteen different options, different appraisals, constantly working with the community to try and find something that would work and, after two, three or four years, having to say to them, "I am sorry. We cannot find anything that stacks up." It is really heart breaking for communities that are put in that position. We have to find ways of recognising quite early on when we are flogging a dead horse in the short to medium term. I am sure David will want to comment more on a couple of other issues. One is we have heavily committed to a major programme of efficiency to try and make the money go as far as possible. Obviously, the more we can do that as well as bringing in additional funding, the further our funding will go. It may well be that for some of these communities the important thing is for them to flood proof their houses. It does make a huge difference in a flood incident if you have flood mitigation measures in your house, electrics coming in from the top rather than the bottom, impermeable surfaces on the ground floor, living on the first floor so that the stuff on the ground floor is less vulnerable. All of that can make a heck of a difference as to whether a flood incident is an annoying, disrupting phenomenon or a life breaking event which some of these floods are for some people. I think we have in some of the communities to encourage that approach. The Flood Forum is excellent. It is a group of flooded communities that got together immediately after the 2000 floods and they are great. They have been there. They have the t-shirt. They have had the flood. They know what they are talking about and they are working very closely with us on all of the measures, right across flood risk management.

  Dr King: Our priority is about flood risk management so the principle is directing funds where the risk is the greatest. However, if you follow that in its purest sense, you are absolutely right. If we just use the Gateway as an example, it is very early days but our estimate figure for a replacement of the defences is in the order of £4 billion. You would have to take that outside the norm and that may be true of other situations. In addition, if you look at the east coast, we have put significant investment post-1953 into defending the east coast. A lot of those defences will start to come to the end of their natural life and again there may be a case for looking at that outside the normal investment stream. That needs to be taken into consideration. Also, there is clearly a political judgment which is the speed at which you provide defences, because that is dependent on money. I would reiterate what Barbara said. There are quite a few additional tools in the tool kit now that are over and above just hard defences. One is about awareness and the effectiveness of awareness. It is all very well people being aware but they must take action. We run an awareness campaign every year and follow up with that. Secondly, in terms of warning, we are currently coming to the end of a project which will implement what we call multimedia flood warning, which gives the opportunity to people to receive warnings through internet, text messages or whatever way. That opens out the warning. If they put in the flood resilience, there is an opportunity for them to act. Secondly, the temporary defences. They are not all that expensive and I think there are opportunities for communities to use those.

  Q305  Chairman: In your evidence, in paragraph 4.7, you say, "Foresight may well not contain the worst case scenario."[10] Then you say there is a new study that has come out from Defra where you have reviewed the adequacy of the allowance made for climate change by an increase of 20% to peak flows. How on earth is anybody going to be able to plan definitively for the types of expenditure we are talking about when we have Professor Sir David King's report which is hailed universally as the ultimate study? Then we read in here that this may not be the ultimate study. There is an even worse case scenario. You are talking about expenditure outside the norm. The Foresight Report talks about responses requiring between £22 billion and £75 billion of new engineering by 2080. How are you going to get a consistent, agreed position to recommend to Government when you still seem to be feeling around as to what is the size and scale of the problem?

  Dr King: In terms of climate change, it is difficult to manage because there are lots of uncertainties. In the evidence we presented, what we flagged is—and this would be accepted—that in the Foresight study one model was used, the Hadley model, which is excellent, but there are other models available. The Hadley model is known to be dry, if I can use that expression. Some of the other models would show that there is greater precipitation in the summer period and that is what we are flagging there. As we move forward, obviously you are planning over a long time period. I do not think super David King would claim that it is the definitive answer. We will iterate this as we move forward and on each iteration and with better information and better modelling we will get a better answer.

  Q306  Chairman: In all of your evidence and indeed in the Foresight Report, to deal with flooding (a) you have to have a commitment to spend big money and (b) you have to spend this money over a long period of time. In other words, the message that comes out of here is that the problem is here and now. Unless we set out on a long road to deal with this problem, the consequences of flooding could be enormous. Governments find it very difficult to make the kind of long term commitment which is implied by these various scenarios. It is very easy to push everything to the right in public expenditure terms. One of the numbers kicking around here was that we are spending about £800 million on flood defences at the moment. If you put it up to a billion, you have to find another £200 million every year. On another one of these you could say it is a definite £billion a year. That is serious public expenditure commitment against a background where there is still doubt. I presume you are saying Foresight may be on the down side. You think it should be more. Somebody will come up with a model that says it should be less. How are you going to get certainty with people like the Treasury, who do not like spending any money at all on anything, to agree to underwrite a Defra budget to deal with these matters?

  Baroness Young of Old Scone: It is an area where certainty is difficult and therefore many of the decisions you have to make are what we call no regrets decisions, that do not prejudice the future but are moving in the right direction. To be honest, at the moment, in our terms, we are spending less than half a billion a year on flood defence action and therefore getting up to the billion would be a step in the right direction because that is absolutely without regrets. Under any scenarios at all, it is going to need something moving in that direction. I have no clue as to what we might get out of the spending review this time round, but if we are not going to move at all up the way I think that would be ignoring the future impact of climate change. The second point we need to make is that climate change is long term. There is still a lot of debate about whether what we are seeing is the front end of it or whether, in reality, it is going to be 2020-25 before we really start to see climate change in earnest. We are not in theory right up against it at the moment but we need to begin to make plans that take account of those future impacts. Let us make the progress we can against the bottom end of the ranges rather than worrying too much about the top end, because at the moment we will never hit the top end.

  Q307  Chairman: Mr Tipping made a very interesting observation when he asked about a small community. The message was, "Well, tough. You may not get protection." If governments have duties of care, which I presume they do, how do we communicate to the communities that are not going to get the money because, unless you spend it all, somebody by definition is not going to be protected in the way that they might want to be. Are those communities likely to judicially review the Government and say, "You are not doing your job, Government. We want protection. We cannot buy the insurance. The Environment Agency have put us in one of their flood risk areas. We are in the green area. We are going to be inundated, so what are you going to do to protect us?"? As a society, are we going to have to say, "You, you and you will be protected but you, you and you, including Mr Tipping's constituency, are going to be flooded"?

  Baroness Young of Old Scone: We should look at where we have come from. Many of these communities have been flooded in the past over many, many years. There are a number of things happening that make it worse for communities now. One is we are all much more affluent; we have carpets, electrical goods and MDF kitchens that fall apart under the onslaught of water. The impact is more severe the more affluent we have become. Many of these places have been flooding periodically. We had particularly bad floods in the year 2000 which were widespread but they were one in 300 year events in many cases or one in 200 or 150 year events. They were unusual and we hope that they are genuinely unusual. Clearly, we have a responsibility for flood defence but it is a discretionary power. We can undertake flood defence works but we are not obliged to and we have to use what money we can raise in the most prioritised, cost effective way. I think communities suing the government would probably discover that legally they did not have much purchase. We want to make sure that we are giving communities the right sort of advice and support so that if we cannot provide defences because they simply are not cost effective or they are impractical—in some cases it is communities where there literally is not a practical solution—we nevertheless do not leave them high and dry and hopeless and we introduce them to the measures. They can take a look at temporary defences and whether they are feasible and we can make sure that they get adequate warning so that we can try to ensure that we are not facing the worst circumstance, which is not loss of property but loss of life.

  Q308  Chairman: Work has already been embarked on by your Agency on the pilot river basin study for the Water Framework Directive, namely the Ribble. I was somewhat concerned to see in Sir David's report that the Ribble estuary has a nasty danger blob. Right over the top of it is one of the areas which could be subject to severe flooding under one of his many scenarios. Are you going to amend or take into account in the pilot river basin study the types of risk issue on flooding that we have been discussing?

  Baroness Young of Old Scone: The catchment plans for the Water Framework Directive will be very closely combined with a whole range of existing catchment plans that we have either done or are in the process of doing on water resources, water quality and flood risk management. All of that will be brought together. The underlying principle of the Water Framework Directive is that we do look at all of the land management and water impacts in collaboration and try to identify where, through our river basin characterisation process and the programmes and measures we have to draw up in order to get all of those who can have an impact on that catchment to take the right action to improve the status of those waters. All of those issues will need to be taken into account. That will also include issues like sewerage and land drainage as well as flood risk management.

  Dr King: In terms of the Water Framework Directive, the river basin plans will be underpinned by a number of other plans, one of which is the catchment flood management plan. It is the catchment flood management plan that would factor in climate change considerations.

  Q309  Chairman: You are going to try out the work on that in the Ribble estuary plan, are you?

  Dr King: We are already progressing catchment flood management plans in a number of different locations.

  Q310  Mr Mitchell: If you have Paddy's unsaveable villages, are you not going to have to designate them in some way, like they used to designate certain mining villages D in the Durham coalfield. D stood for, "Die, you bastards." You are going to have to designate some as UW, under water. They are going to have to be told, are they not?

  Baroness Young of Old Scone: We need to keep calm on this because the fact that we know more about flood risk does not mean to say that they are at any higher risk at the moment. Because we are right at the front end of climate change, many of these communities are not at a substantially higher risk than they have been for many, many years. They may be slightly at a higher risk because we are seeing other factors like more concrete, so that means faster run off and therefore faster flash floods. Sometimes the way in which land is managed for forestry and agriculture can have a big impact. There may be changes that have happened as a result of other things that are happening within the flood catchment, but many of these communities are not in any worse a position than they have been for a long time. We need to stay calm. If what we are predicting in terms of climate change means that they are going to have an enhanced risk, we need to be very open about that but it is over a substantially lengthy period. In the Foresight study, we are talking about 2030 to 2080. There is a long time to prepare. I do not think we should be regarding houses that are at risk of flooding more frequently, for example, than one in 75 years, which is the level that the ABI have set for beginning to ask questions about the insurability and the premium loading. Beyond that, they may flood tomorrow. The houses that are defended to more than one in 75 could equally well flood tomorrow because it may be a one in 100 event or a one in 150 event. The message we get over to all communities that are in the flood plain is even if you have a whacking great defence do not relax because the reality is there will be events that will over top even the best protected of defences. We cannot simply protect against the one in whatever unexpected event. If you are in the flood plain, you need to have a proper flood plan. You need to know what you are going to do with your granny and your hamster and where your insurance policies are. You need to know how you are going to react and plan to protect your house and family if you find yourself in that position. Clearly, you take a view about the degree of protection you have but even for people with defences, if you are in the flood plain, you really seriously must think about what would happen if the defences were over topped. Perhaps we can point Mr Mitchell in the direction of our website where there is an admirable piece that shows exactly what we would like all householders in the flood plain to do.

  Dr King: It is a very important message that you cannot stop flooding; you can only mitigate against it. The question is how you mitigate.

  Q311  Mr Mitchell: I heard you say you were going to spend 60 million quid on a new study for the replacement of the Thames Barrier. That sounds a ridiculous amount. What are you going to have? Gold sluices?

  Dr King: £16 million.

  Q312  Mr Mitchell: Let us move on to reservoirs, in that case. You seem less keen on reservoirs than Water UK which said that reservoirs may well be necessary. What you say is that it is unlikely that new resources will be needed solely to deal with climate change. "Solely" is the weasel word there. Are we going to need more reservoirs or are we not?

  Mr Barker: We may well need more reservoirs. I was surprised to see in some of the earlier submissions that there is a view that the Agency is against reservoirs. Some three years ago, we published a strategy for water resources in England and Wales that looked 25 years ahead and was based on the Foresight scenarios and different socio-economic models, to try to understand what might happen to demand for water within houses, within industry and within agriculture. Within our strategy, we took the view that on a twin track approach there is a lot that could be done with demand management to make better use of water, but nonetheless new water resources developments would almost certainly be needed to meet growing demand. We proposed some 1,800 megalitres per day which, in old money, is about 400 million gallons a day worth of resource developments, including a number of new reservoirs and a recommendation that some companies look seriously at the potential and the need for new reservoirs and also consider the need to raise existing reservoirs.

  Q313  Mr Mitchell: What will they be used for? I, in my simple minded way, thought they would be used for storing winter rain so you can drink it in summer, but it was also suggested to us in earlier evidence that they would be used for managing river flow. Will they be used in that way?

  Mr Barker: It depends on the reservoir and where it is. Some reservoirs can be used for a variety of purposes to help overall water management within a catchment. For example, a reservoir near the head of a catchment can store winter run off and can release that water during the summer to maintain flows downstream. That flow augmentation can benefit not just the ecology of the river but can be used by other people downstream to abstract water as well as the water company that built the reservoir in the first place. Then of course there are the recreation and community benefits from the reservoir. Counter to that is the cost and the impact of a reservoir. There is a careful balancing act in determining whether, in response to changing or growing demand, a reservoir is the best option in terms of meeting that demand.

  Baroness Young of Old Scone: One of the reasons that we are portrayed as being anti-reservoir is that we are pretty keen that some of the other measures that need to be in place to manage demand are seriously addressed by the water companies, things like reduction of their own leakage. We are in a position where we are seeing the leakage in the Thames increasing, year on year and the amount of water lost from leakage in the Thames could supply five million people. We are talking about big volumes of water that need to be resolved by proper leakage management. We believe that universal or semi-universal metering of households would help. It would help not only to identify where leaks are happening but it also has a proven track record in reducing demand. Education of the public by the water companies and by others in demand management and all of those need to be tackled as a first option. I know that metering is an unpopular prospect because people believe that it bears down hard on poorer households, but there are ways in which smart tariffs can be used that will allow all households a basic slug of water and then ramp up the costs for what I would call luxury use: watering your garden or filling your swimming pool or washing your car. Also, there are models within the electricity industry for things like the Energy Savings Trust, a Water Savings Trust, which could provide money to poor households to capitalise them for lower water use, new white goods that use less water, low flow shower heads, low flow taps, those sorts of things that would help them reduce their water use and would be a social benefit because it would mean that they could reduce their water bills as well. We are keen to look a bit dog in the manger-ish on this one because it does mean that the first option of a reservoir, which is a hugely disruptive thing for local people and vastly expensive and a nightmare to get through the planning system—we do not really want to see too many of those if we can avoid as many as possible by demand management measures.

  Q314  Mr Mitchell: You are therefore saying that although all that is being done you are not in a position to tell us how many new reservoirs would be necessary. Are you in a position to tell us?

  Baroness Young of Old Scone: It is a bit like a game of chicken at the moment because we think we are not quite at the point where we are going to see companies running out of water because they have not built a reservoir but we are going to get there quite soon. Their water resource plans which they have submitted as part of the price round are being crawled all over by Ian's people at the moment to just establish where we really believe a company is beginning to make a proper case for further resource development and where we do not believe they are. We will be having pretty robust discussions with the water companies over the next few months on that precise issue. We think we know where there may need to be new resource development, either in increasing reservoirs or one or two new ones, but we would feel it very unwise to talk about that publicly because we do not believe that we yet have water efficiency measures out of the companies.

  Mr Barker: The message for this Committee is that in terms of what we know and think we know about climate change, over the timescale which it is sensible for water companies to plan, we do not believe that climate change in itself will be a driver for a new resource, but it is something the water company would need to take account of in its planning for any new resources that were necessary to meet demand.

  Q315  Mr Breed: In a macro sense, have you had any discussions with the ODPM in respect of their planning policy? Do you believe that they understand and ensure that climate change is a factor in determining where they consider new developments should be?

  Baroness Young of Old Scone: With Defra, we have been talking to the ODPM about planning. We are at a point where the planning system is changing quite markedly so there is a real opportunity, particularly at the level of the new spatial plans, to ensure that climate change can be built in, both in the national guidance given by the ODPM and in the work that is being done at a regional level on spatial planning. Our regions are connected with that work at regional level. There is also new planning guidance underway and various draft planning policy statements (PPSs) at the moment have the opportunity of making sure that sustainability and the impact of climate change can be built in—things like PPS1, which is about creating sustainable communities, and PPS11 on regional planning and PPS12 on the local development framework. All of these recognise climate change as an issue that needs to be taken on board in plans. We are also talking to the ODPM about building regulations where we have some real opportunities. You may have seen in the last week or so the sustainable buildings task force report which has come out with a number of propositions to improve the design of buildings in ways that can be achieved through building regulation powers, to try and ensure that buildings reduce the amount of energy and water they use and take on board other climate change issues, including flood risk management as well as issues unconnected with climate change like waste and ability to manage waste as well as the issue of construction waste. There are lots of opportunities at the moment in terms of national, regional and local planning policy to build climate change and sustainability in. We are in discussion about that. The important thing will be the proof of the pudding being in the eating. It is true to say that we still have to win hearts and minds in terms of some planning authorities, where we find that though many of them have improved their engagement with us on development in the flood plain, for example, there are still some who, against our advice, build houses in the flood plain with the attendant risks, disruption and lack of insurance that that involves.

  Q316  Mr Breed: You have more or less indicated that planning guidance at the moment is not strong enough to ensure that planning authorities do not allow development in potentially risky areas.

  Baroness Young of Old Scone: In principle, it is. We need to keep the pressure up to make sure that in practice the new planning policy does deliver that on the ground.

  Dr King: If you are looking specifically at PPG25, the planning guidance that covers development in the flood plain, firstly one has to recognise that that was only published in July 2001 although it will be reviewed this year. We have seen an improvement from local authorities. However, there are a number of things we would like to see in terms of the strengthening. Firstly, the Agency is not a statutory consultee on matters of flood risk and we believe we should be. We are hoping that that will be addressed this year. Secondly, there is a requirement for local authorities to refer back to the Agency where they are minded to permit development where we object. That is not always happening, so we would like to see stronger reinforcement of that. We also believe that with the regional spatial strategies and indeed the local development frameworks there should be a requirement there for strategic flood risk assessments.

  Q317  Mr Breed: What about those sorts of situations where there is already development, with local authorities being much more constrained about where they can build and going on to previously developed land, often known as brown field sites? If you have a brown field site which is at risk of flooding, are you going to say that, notwithstanding the need for housing and everything else, this is an opportunity to use this piece of land which has been previously developed for housing but, nevertheless, because it is at potential risk, you are going to say, "No, you cannot use it any more."

  Dr King: No, that is not true. In terms of PPG25, there is a sequential test which enables the developer or the local authority to work through. There is a requirement under PPG25 to carry out a flood risk assessment and we would object if no such assessment was carried out but obviously we would look at the merits of the case.

  Q318  Mr Breed: Even if was previously developed land?

  Dr King: Yes.

  Baroness Young of Old Scone: There are a number of things that we would still be pressing for on the planning front. For example, planning authorities are still struggling with their role in responding to climate change. There was research that the ODPM commissioned a few years ago to look at good practice on local planning authorities' response to climate change. We believe that that can be transmuted into guidance and issued to planning authorities. It would be very helpful to them. Also, we feel that water security and water supply need to come higher in some of the planning guidance. We are seeing, for example, in the new development zones propositions for housing in areas where we are really quite anxious about how we are going to be able to provide water to them. The availability of water resource should be a material consideration in the planning system which it currently is not.

  Q319  Chairman: Your comments on water supply neatly take us on to water pricing issues. In paragraph 3.4 of your evidence you say, "We expect companies to make allowance for these in their long-term water resources plans."[11] I had a look at a document which was sent to me by United Utilities, a final water and waste water services plan for 2005-10. I expected to find some reference in this glossy document to their beginning of plans for dealing with climate change. I even looked at your own chairman's comment: "What our stakeholders say. The investment water companies will make in the environment will be more than offset by the economic and social benefits that it will bring to local areas and communities. A better environment stimulates tourism and economic regeneration bringing jobs and opportunities to the areas, as well as creating a better place to live and work." Wonderful. No mention of climate change. No mention, in United Utilities arguments for spending all of their customers' money, of climate change whatsoever. Here we have one of the biggest water companies in the country who seem to have completely ignored your advice. Are you monitoring what these companies are doing and, more importantly, what they are saying to their customers to prepare them for the fact that they are going to have to spend more money on their water and their sewage and part of it is to deal with this long term problem?

  Baroness Young of Old Scone: I think you are being a trifle hard on United Utilities but I will leave Ian to explain why.

  Mr Barker: What you have there is the public version of the company's plan, I suspect. Each company has submitted to the Agency and to Ofwat its detailed water resources plan and we are currently scrutinising those plans and expect to see in them, as you suggest, the fact that they have taken account of the impact of climate change on the availability of their resources. We are currently analysing the plans to see whether climate change has had an impact and, where a company believes it has had a significant impact, we have asked them to carry out additional modelling work. We have yet to establish whether or not that has been undertaken for those companies where it might be necessary. We will not know to what extent companies have heeded our advice until we finish that analysis and then we shall report to ministers in July this year with our findings on the companies' plans. In terms of North West Water, most of the evidence on climate change suggests that the impact in terms of water resources availability will be less in the north west of England than in the south east. One would not expect to see it as as big an issue for United Utilities as for some of the southern companies, for example.


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