Baroness Browning (Con)

My Lords, I am very pleased for the first time to be able to contribute to Committee on the Bill. I will speak to the two amendments in my name in this group, Amendments 54 and 88. The Minister will already be aware of my enthusiasm for the use of grey water and its importance in new-build domestic construction. I support my noble friend Lady Pickering in what she has just said on this group. The Committee has already drawn attention to increasing problems of safe disposal of sewage from buildings and the challenge going forward to adequate supplies of domestic drinking water. The fact that the existing system cannot cope with either does not augur well for the Government’s planned housebuilding target, which will include mandatory planning targets set out in the National Planning Policy Framework. The Minister will know from Second Reading that I support her endeavours in the Bill, but the two amendments in this group tabled in my name seek to mitigate what could quickly become a standoff between the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government. I urge the Minister to take some action through these two amendments to prevent this, if nothing else. I am very grateful for the assistance and legal advice given to me on these two amendments by the lawyers at WildFish, a charity involved in the protection of all wild fish in watercourses. Some developers argue that, because of the legal obligations on sewerage undertakers to treat wastewater, the question of sewer and sewage treatment capacity is not a material consideration in planning. There is therefore a reluctance among planning authorities to impose conditions to protect the environment from sewage pollution, partly because of the case of Barratt Homes v Dŵr Cymru 2009, where the Supreme Court confirmed that Section 106 of the Water Industry Act 1991 provided a right for householders to connect to the sewer network and that only in narrow circumstances could the water company refuse such a connection.