My Lords, I declare an interest as chairman of the Committee on Climate Change, and I rise to support these two amendments. They are both based upon advice given to the Government by the Committee on Climate Change. We are talking about a very serious issue. Tens of thousands of houses have been built on flood plains and in circumstances which are more vulnerable than Cockermouth. This is serious. If we go on like this, we will be creating problems which we will have to meet. We cannot avoid it. This is going to happen. Not to do in this Bill what we can do is to avoid an opportunity, to the detriment of very large numbers of people.
The Adaptation Sub-Committee of the Committee on Climate Change told the Government that there are a number of simple things that should be done that could help protect us in future. For example,
water companies are not at the moment compulsory consultees to planning decisions, which means that they are in the very peculiar position of neither being able to comment under the statute on a planning decision, nor being able to refuse to connect the houses then built to an inadequate sewer. We have to put this right. When the committee suggested this to the Government, their official reply was that it would be inappropriate to do this. The word “inappropriate” may have been the right word before the floods in Cumbria, but to suggest that it is inappropriate to do this is stretching the English language beyond any possible appropriate use.
My noble friend may be unable to accept these two amendments at the moment, but it seems to me that it would be pretty impossible to explain to the public that we are prepared to continue with a position in which houses are being built without proper and adequate means of getting rid of the surplus water that they create, and without proper protection of the surplus water that is created outside. These amendments make sure that we have modern, sustainable drainage in a form which this House and the other House have already agreed, and which the Government support. Secondly, they ensure that developers have a duty to develop in a way that makes houses resilient to the normal circumstances of life.
I can think of no more moderate or reasonable amendments to put down, and I remind the Minister that they are based upon the advice of the body that spent a great deal of time researching independently what should be done. Therefore, if she is not able to accept them now, I hope she can give us some hope that between now and Report, the Government will take this opportunity to do two very simple things which will save maybe the lives—and certainly the property and the future—of a large number of people.