Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)

My Lords, this is my moment; I have waited all day and all night. It gives me great pleasure to move Amendment 197 and to speak to Amendment 198. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Willis of Summertown, for lending her name to both amendments, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Young of Old Scone and Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, for lending their support to Amendment 197. I hope that the amendments are self-explanatory. They are flipsides of the same coin, and they have huge amounts of support among interested parties, such as insurance companies, environmental managers and others, as I shall explain. Amendment 197 explains that developers have the automatic right to connect surface water arising from new homes to the public sewerage system, irrespective of whether there is a capacity for this or not. Both Houses of Parliament approved Schedule 3 to the Flood and Water Management Act 2010, the purpose of which was to end this automatic right to connect and provide a framework for the approval and adoption of sustainable drainage systems. It has not yet been implemented in England, but it has been implemented with a degree of success in Wales. Similarly, Amendment 198 links the right to connect to the public sewer to first having followed the Government’s newly introduced national standards for sustainable drainage systems, to provide a more robust incentive to developers to follow this guidance in the absence of full implementation of Schedule 3 to the Flood and Water Management Act 2010.