Clause 15 - Applications: types of abstraction licence
Water Bill [Lords]
9:00 am
Mr Elliot Morley (Minister of State (Environment and Agri-Environment), Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs; Scunthorpe, Labour)
I understand the hon. Gentleman's point about making text less ambiguous when there is a case for doing so, but I believe that his amendments would make it more ambiguous. The clause enables the agency to require an applicant for one type of abstraction licence to apply instead for another type, or to group several related applications together. It might, for example, be more appropriate for an applicant to have a temporary licence, rather than to spend a lot of money on a time-limited one, so the provision would work to the applicant's advantage.
The amendments all propose to modify the basis on which the agency may require applicants to apply for different types or groups of licences. Changing the drafting throughout new section 36A(1) to read,
''will be considered as if''
rather than ''ought to be'' is to make a distinction without a difference. Those words in the amendment add ambiguity.
The key issue is that the agency must be able to decide that an application is not right. If it decides, for proper and relevant reasons, that the application ought to be different, the clause requires the licence to be treated differently. The amendment, however, would not require the agency to decide why an application should be treated differently but simply that it should be so treated. That would miss the crucial test of the agency having to justify why the licence ought to be treated differently. That is the reason for the difference in the language, and I hope that, as a result of that clarification, the hon. Gentleman will withdraw the amendment.