Clause 17 - General consideration of licence applications
Water Bill [Lords]
10:45 am
Mr George Osborne (Tatton, Conservative)
What the Minister is saying sounds reassuring: the agency would revoke a licence only as a last step; it would first sit down with the company, the farmer or whoever to try to sort things out. One would hope that that would happen, but there is no guarantee. If we inserted into the Bill the Secretary of State's code of practice, which the agency would be required to follow, that would be a fall-back mechanism. We would hope that it would not be necessary, but it would ensure that the agency acted reasonably in those circumstances.