Clause 3 - Licences to abstract water
Water Bill [Lords]
10:30 am
Mr Ian Liddell-Grainger (Bridgwater, Conservative)
I support my hon. Friend's argument. He used the example of quarries, and the hon. Member for Falmouth and Camborne (Ms Atherton) mentioned canals and other sources of water extraction, and I shall refer to them and to farms. We must consider three things in respect of the proposal: first, who will take the final decision? Counties and districts consider planning applications, and in a dispute between a county and a district or a parish, the application may eventually go to appeal before the Minister, which may cause enormous problems, because such matters are time-sensitive. If they have to go through the planning mechanism, they take an enormous amount of time. Another point to be borne in mind is that the weather conditions in this country change rapidly.
Secondly, as subsections 1(a), (b) and (c) of new section 24A of the Water Resources Act 1991 refer to a period of 28 days or longer, are there any provisions for a system of roll-over licences? For example, a quarry may want to remove a tonnage of stone but something goes wrong and it will take longer to extract the material. Can the planning application be rolled over, rather than people having to re-apply and go through the whole process again?
Thirdly, boring for water is one of the most inexact sciences I have ever come across. You bore a hole and it does not quite work, so you bore another hole and keep on. [Interruption.] The Minister kindly refers to divining, which I have tried but not mastered. The scientific world is probably better at divining than anything else. Boring for water, which is frequently undertaken in this country, may cause problems for the Minister, because water moves around rapidly. I completely agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Leominster that the planning system must be flexible enough to take that into consideration, and this proposal is not flexible enough to do so. The Minister may like to think about that.