Clause 21 - Form, contents and effect of licences
Water Bill [Lords]
2:45 pm
Mr Robert Key (Salisbury, Conservative)
I apologise, Mr. O'Brien; you are entirely correct.
The MOD does not have a good record on water and sewage disposal. It realises that its water treatment plants and processes are antiquated and, some might say, legendary. Indeed, a few years ago the Cholderton and District Water Company, a small private undertaking, discovered that there was carbon tetrachloride in the tap water. Some zealous NCOs on Salisbury plain had been cleaning out the tanks for the dry cleaning of military uniforms and the pollutant had gone into the aquifer. However, the military are making huge efforts to put that right with Project Aquatrine, the biggest single PFI project in the MOD, which will contract out all their water and sewerage systems throughout the country.
The problem is that there has been massive abstraction in the Salisbury Plain chalklands for many years, with the water being exported from the area to Yeovil, Chippenham and other places. The beneficiaries have not been my constituents, but they have suffered from the low flows that occur because of excessive pumping out in the headwaters of the catchment. I am particularly concerned that legislation will make a nonsense of catchment abstraction management strategies, or CAMS, which I am afraid brings us back to the water framework directive. I suspect that both Crown immunity and the military's failure to tell us how much water they are taking will fall foul of the directive.
I asked some parliamentary questions about the problem in February, starting with how many bore holes there were on Salisbury plain. The answer is that there are 24 belonging to the MOD, but I cannot be told where they are for security interests. That is fair enough—I do not mind where they are—but I wanted to know how much water they abstract and what impact they have on the low flows in the streams that share the aquifer.
I asked another question about the daily abstraction rate from all 24 bore holes, the emergency bore hole, the largest volume bore hole and the smallest volume bore hole. I received an answer on Tuesday 8 April:
''The abstraction rate from individual boreholes has security implications and I am therefore withholding it under Exemption 1 of the Code of Practice on Access to Government Information.''—[Official Report, 8 April 2003; Vol. 403, c. 145W.]
Under the heading
''Defence, security and international relations'',
that exemption cites
''information whose disclosure would harm national security or defence''.
I know a bit about the problems of water being used by terrorists as a means of distributing pathogens
because I also represent Porton Down, which is only a few miles from the area that I am talking about. I specifically did not ask for that information, but the MOD was not prepared to give even the global figures. It will not do for the Minister to reply by saying that the Defence Secretary invokes the code and that is the end of the story, because that is not joined-up government. We need to know why the MOD has done that—it must justify its actions.
It is also absurd if large public companies have the information and the Environment Agency does not. I say that because I had a letter from the area manager of the South Wessex division of the agency on 16 April about the important Bourn and Nine Miles rivers project, which involves low flows and abstraction from chalk, telling me about the current position.
I wrote back asking the area manager if he would explain how much water was extracted by the MOD because I had not managed to get such information. I asked if all his modelling on the Bourn and Nine Miles rivers project and the River Avon and special area of conservation strategy was taken into account. What particularly struck me is that when I spoke to a representative of Thames Water at the launch of those projects on 4 April, he expressed surprise that the MOD was withholding information. He said that all that information was public knowledge and was available to Thames Water and Wessex Water, without restriction or confidentiality agreements, in connection with project Aquitrine.
I wanted to know why, to the MOD, the information was so secret. The area manager wrote back to me on 19 May. He said:
''I am given to understand that various pieces of information concerning Ministry of Defence sites were made available to bidders under Project Aquitrine, but am unaware of the nature of that information.''
He was not told. The Environment Agency did not know, although the commercial company knew. The letter continued:
''No detailed abstraction data was received in this Region under those auspices and so I am unable to make further comment other than to say that any information we have concerning Ministry of Defence abstractions must be treated as confidential.''
That is why I tabled the amendment.
It is extraordinary that the MOD, without justification, can say that it will not tell anyone anything, but it then gives information to the water companies, which are large organisations employing hundreds of people. One can imagine the number of copies of the letters that are circulated to telling everyone, but the agency is not told and neither are Members of Parliament. That is not joined-up government and it will not conform to the water framework directive. It is an abuse of Crown immunity, whether or not it is in the security interests of the MOD to tell us.
I hope the Minister will agree that my amendment is sensible. It does not seek to say that the MOD should not have any secrets, which would be ridiculous. Of course it should, but the blanket approach to saying
no is not in the spirit of the age in which we live and is certainly not appreciated by my constituents.