Clause 20 - Register of certain protected rights
Water Bill [Lords]
2:30 pm
Mr George Osborne (Tatton, Conservative)
I should declare a sort of interest. The measure might catch me in the sense that at my house, near my constituency, in the Peak District national park I have a bore hole from which I extract water to use in my house, as indeed do most of my neighbours. Currently, we are not required, as far as I am aware, to register the bore hole with anyone except the local council, which checks the water quality periodically. A national park may well be classed as a particularly environmentally sensitive area.
I should be interested to know whether the Minister envisages a massive compilation on the register of all the people who live in such an area and who have bore holes and so on, because there are no mains water supplies in much of the national park. Is there any prospect of home owners—I am talking not only about farmers and large-scale users of water, but domestic users—having to pay a charge to register their rights?