Clause 7

Part of Flood and Water Management Bill – in a Public Bill Committee at 5:45 pm on 12 January 2010.

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Photo of Martin Horwood Martin Horwood Shadow Minister (Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) 5:45, 12 January 2010

I shall speak about amendments 92 and 93, which are being considered in this group. I am attempting to be even more helpful to the Government by sharing with them a source of invaluable expertise and wise counsel. My background is in the voluntary sector, so I am naturally inclined to look to the third sector as a source of expert advice and well informed and well judged opinions. Voluntary organisations, of which there are a huge number relating to environmental, water and flooding issues, are an obvious group of  bodies to consult. They should be consulted properly and formally when a national flood and coastal erosion strategy is being drawn up.

We have the National Flood Forum, all the bodies involved in the “Blueprint for Water”, the Wildlife and Countryside Link, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, the Woodland Trust, the wildlife trusts, Froglife, the World Wildlife Fund UK—the list goes on. It is potentially invidious to name in a Bill specific organisations that we should consult. I know from my background in branding charities that their names change from time to time and that it is occasionally difficult to keep track of them.

Luckily, the Charities Act 2006 provides a neat way of identifying precisely which organisations the Environment Agency might care to consult on drafting its strategy. It provides the new heads of charity—the new definitions of charitable activity. It specifies

“the advancement of environmental protection or improvement”, which neatly encompasses almost everything in the Bill and a bit more besides.

That was the first piece of legislation I ever dealt with in this place and I assure the hon. Member for Norwich, North that even though it was only a couple of years ago, it seems like an eternity. One gets a number of these things under one’s belt in time. It is a useful piece of legislation, which carries a precise definition of environmental organisations. Those charities could easily be a category of statutory consultee for the national strategy. Indeed, the Charity Commission no doubt has those data in easily accessible form and could provide a list to the Environment Agency within a matter of hours. On the geography, postcodes are stored by the Charity Commission, so Welsh environmental organisations would be equally easy to identify definitively.

The amendments would add two other organisations in England and Wales that seem to be obvious and natural consultees. One is Natural England, which has overarching responsibility within Government for looking at the natural environment and advising the Government on it; it seems to be the most obvious consultee imaginable for a truly environmentally sustainable flood risk and coastal erosion strategy. Its equivalent in Wales is the Countryside Council for Wales. I am sure that at some point my hon. Friend the Member for Brecon and Radnorshire will give me the proper Welsh version of that.

Later, the Bill goes to great lengths to establish regional English and Welsh flood defence committees from the old flood defence committees. However, those are not statutory consultees in the process. Presumably, they are expected to be the principal reservoir—pardon the pun—of informal and voluntary expertise on flooding in particular parts of the UK. It is bizarre that they will not be part of the statutory consultation process.

What we are asking does not open great floodgates, add thousands of organisations or bring in a very complex way of consulting, but it would get away from the vagueness in the term “the public”, which has been referred to. That term could be used to cover up a lacklustre and half-hearted consultation. If we specifically include Natural England, regional committees and the voluntary sector, we can be sure that the public will hear of any issues arising from future versions—or even the  first version—of the national flood and coastal erosion risk management strategy. I heartily commend the amendments to the Minister.