Clause 8 - Rights to abstract small quantities
Water Bill [Lords]
3:15 pm
Mr Elliot Morley (Minister of State (Environment and Agri-Environment), Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs; Scunthorpe, Labour)
I certainly understand hon. Members' concerns on this issue. I appreciate what they are saying and I have some sympathy with it. There are some problems with the amendment, however, as I shall outline. The Bill introduces deregulation for small abstractions: they no longer have to be licensed. That is welcome in relation to agriculture in particular. It also means that we can concentrate on the bigger issues of water management. There is a balance within the Bill.
I understand the concerns of mineral water companies that are extracting from a particular bore hole because that is important in respect of the composition of the water that they market. It is worth noting, however, that an abstraction licence does not offer a guarantee. The licence that the company holds does not offer a guarantee as to the continuing composition of the water that it can abstract, because compositions can change over time, for various reasons. The licence offers no guarantee that that particular chemical composition will remain in perpetuity. It may do, but there is no guarantee. Changes over time are a risk that mineral water companies face.
Under the current regime, the Environment Agency has a duty not to issue an abstraction licence that would derogate from the quantity of water available to a water bottler. That is useful in itself. The agency has separate duties to ensure that the groundwater is not contaminated, which is also important. If a company markets a product on its purity, it does not want groundwater contamination, and the agency has powers to deal with that, which are not changed by the Bill. The agency does not have duties to maintain the exact chemical composition of groundwater—indeed, it would be very difficult to do so, as I am sure hon. Members recognise. The agency does not have powers to control the drilling of bore holes where those are below the exemption threshold. The Water Resources Act 1991 regulates the abstraction of water and drilling of bore holes where abstraction is above the threshold. Therefore, there are protections for mineral water companies in terms of the amounts of water that can be taken out of the aquifer that serves them.
The amendment would require a person wishing to construct a bore hole for abstraction to obtain consent from the Environment Agency to do so if the bore hole might impact on groundwater that is bottled. I do not believe that the amendment would have the desired effect. The abstraction licensing system does not generally enable the agency to consider effects on water composition, only potential impacts on water quantity. The amendment would not change that.
It is possible that, if there were worries that there might be a large number of small extractions from the water company's aquifer, the Environment Agency, under the catchment strategies that it will put in place, would have the power to lower the existing thresholds. That would reduce the number of bore holes. The agency has some powers to deal with problems should they arise.