Lord Mitchell
Member of the House of Lords · Labour · United Kingdom
“In those days, no one quite understood the long-term dangers of radiation, and protection was rudimentary. For him, it was fatal. In 1998, he was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukaemia, which he knew was terminal. He told me, in his usual blunt way, “I know how this story ends and it is not pretty.”
“My Lords, on 9 October 2000, my parents-in-law, Jack and Ruth Lowy, committed joint suicide. He was dying and she had decided to accompany him on this last journey. Jack was born in Bratislava in what was then Czechoslovakia. The family were Jewish and following the events in Munich in 1938, they fled to Philadelphia.”
“My wife in particular sensed that they would carry out their wishes. After all, they were both intelligent people who had carefully thought this through. There was no one to support Jack and no one on hand to help Ruth in what must have been hell for her.”
“I cannot be certain about my mother-in-law’s motivation to join him, but they both knew that his own suicide at home could well run the risk of her being charged with committing a crime as an accomplice. What I do know is that had this Bill been law, she probably would have chosen life.”
“I always felt that the issue of antisemitism on campus did not emanate solely from the students. It also came from the laissez-faire attitude of the faculty.”
“We kept the brief tight, with no references to the Middle East; we judged that there was nothing we could do or say that could make any difference. Where we could definitely make a difference was through reference to our common UK experiences and our heritage. I think we made progress.”
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“My Lords, this debate is long overdue, and I thank the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, for introducing it today. I speak as someone whose total professional career has been in the IT industry: first with IBM, as a systems engineer, and then as an entrepreneur in the services sector. I have also consulted for IBM and Hewlett-Packard. I have never been directly involved in a big IT project, but I know people who have. I am indebted to all those who have helped me with their views, opinions and deep experience in the preparation of this speech. Political life is not always fair. An impression gains hold in the public psyche and once there it is hard to remove; and so it is with public sector IT projects.”
“My Lords, I express my interest as chairman of Weizmann UK. Two weeks ago, the Hebrew University awarded PhDs to its students. Among them were several Arabs, many of whom were women. Does this not show that the behaviour of the Israeli universities is very much to encourage Arabs in their midst?”
“I now hear rumblings that, if British universities boycott Israeli universities, American universities will boycott ours. Is that what the UCU wants? More to the point, is it what our universities want?”
“I am the one who battles with the authorities to get my Palestinian students here. I deal with the roadblocks and the identity checks. What do they do?”. The proposed boycott is bad for science. It counters the very concept of science, which is about absolute truth and academic freedom. The boycott is also bad for the Palestinians and their desire for nationhood. All that it does is alienate their friends and supporters in Israel and give comfort to their enemies. They have chosen the wrong target. The proposed boycott is bad for Britain. Boycotts beget boycotts. Two can play at that game, perhaps even three. Israeli academics can equally boycott the UK. If that were to happen—heaven forbid—academics in both countries would be the losers.”
“My Lords, I declare an interest as chairman of Weizmann UK. The Weizmann Institute of Science is located in Israel and is concerned with the development of basic science. It is one of the foremost institutes of its type in the world. I was there last week. The topic of the proposed UCU boycott was hot news, as noble Lords would expect. The institute is nationally blind. Scientists come there from all over the world; some are Muslim, including Israeli Arabs and Palestinians. All that matters is the science. One professor said to me: “Don’t they realise that the nucleus of the Peace Now movement is located on campuses just like this? Do not they see we are fighting first-hand the same cause as they are and that they claim to espouse from the comforts of their armchairs?”
“I might have been expected to be sympathetic to the operators, but I absolutely am not. When consumers are the victims of monopoly power and when producers conspire to maintain artificial prices, the moment comes for such power to be contained. That is what the EU has done. It has taken the first step and it deserves all our thanks.”
“This debate centres on the EU, but outside it are huge markets which are further cartel sub-markets for the operators. Many of our citizens go to the United States for their holidays or for business. Roaming charges from America are astronomical, as they are from Asia, Russia and Australia. I would like to see moves to cap these sector prices as well. The thrust of the industry criticism is that the natural forces of competition should rule pricing policy and that the EU should stay out. Well, they are bound to say that. Last Tuesday, there was a withering editorial in the Wall Street Journal accusing Ms Reding of being a “Soviet era central planner”. What utter nonsense. I am not a politician, but an entrepreneur by background. In my bones I understand full well the balance between risk and reward.”
“SMS texting is not covered by the new European arrangement, and neither is data. The text messaging business is huge and a licence to print money. I do not understand why this sector has not been capped. Then there is data. Next month there will be a revolution in mobile phones. Apple Computer is about to launch its iPhone. Apart from being a phone, it is also a multimedia device. Users will be able to download or transfer photos, movies, podcasts and music. It is like an iPod with a high-speed mobile phone connection. The demand for data is going to explode. Imagine the very same European citizens on the beaches in Europe next year, this time sending multimedia data across the continent on their iPhones. Data pricing is uncapped and the operators are going to have a field day.”
“If you call another user in a third country, that too does not count, even if that user is on the Vodafone network. That has now ended, and we must thank the real heroine of the hour, Commissioner Viviane Reding. Despite heavy lobbying by the industry, which is out to protect its nice little €6 billion earner, she has persevered in getting these price caps in place. Roaming charges are about to be reduced by 70 per cent, and the commissioner did it. This summer many glasses of champagne or prosecco ought to be raised to thank her. She will be saving phone users in Europe €4.2 billion a year. I call that a real result. It would be wonderful if that were the end of the story, but sadly it is not. The operators still have other sub-markets where they use their oligopolistic powers to continue to rip off consumers.”
“I am fairly good on technology—probably better than most—and I know how to set my phone abroad to use a specific network, but I wonder how many other people know how to do that. It also does not tell you who its operators are. In Italy, where I spend a lot of my time, I think that I can draw the conclusion that VodafoneIT is part of the Vodafone network, but who would know that it is SFR in France? However, it is a total roulette to select your operator in Italy. You can face one way one day and you get one operator: you can face the other way on another day and get another operator. In addition, you are not told that SMS texts are not included. Vodafone also fails to mention that if you are called from a landline within the EU that does not count.”
“It is calculated that €5.8 billion per annum is spent on inter-EU country roaming charges. It is true that the operators have made some half-hearted attempts to lower roaming charges. I shall pick on Vodafone for no reason except that I use it, but what I shall say could be true of any other operator. Vodafone has come up with a great wheeze called Passport. Basically, if you make a call from abroad and you are signed up to the Passport programme, you pay a 75p fixed charge per call and then you pay the standard domestic tariff. But there is an awful lot that you are not told about this programme. It does not tell you that it works only if you use a Vodafone network operator overseas.”
“Why has super-pricing on roaming charges continued for so long and why has the market not encouraged competition to do what the European Union has stepped in to do this August? I think I know the answer. Until last July I was gainfully employed and my company paid my mobile phone bills. I never looked at them. Now I pay the charges myself and I am staggered by what I have seen. I would bet that most business people are just like I was—totally oblivious. Someone else picks up the tab and roaming charges become just another cost of doing business. As for the man on the street—or should I say, as the noble Lord, Lord Freeman, said, the man on the beach in France or Spain—a few pricey phone calls a year from there to here hardly warrants a major investigation. Complacency has ruled and the operators have profited from consumer inertia.”
“On a contract where the charge is £30 a month you get so many minutes free of charge and so many hundreds of free SMS text messages. It is highly competitive and each operator offers special goodies to entice new customers. That is the competitive environment that gives capitalism a good name. However, Mr Phillips is wrong in regard to market sectors where operators relentlessly exploit sub-markets not located on the high street and where price cartel is the order of the day. Roaming within the EU has been one such cartel. Last night at the Champions League final in Athens, tens of thousands of football fans must have been calling home to Liverpool or Milan. The cost of such calls would have been as high as 85p per minute. No wonder Vodafone was the major sponsor of the event. It must have got its money back from the football fans alone.”
“It has taken risks and invested massive amounts of money, and it deserves its rewards, or at least some of them. I must start with a quote from a Mr Tom Phillips of the GSM Association, a global trade association representing 700 GSM mobile phone operators in 218 countries. It claims that its members represent 2 billion mobile phone users, which is equivalent to 80 per cent of all mobile users. Mr Phillips said: “Mobile phone operators price their services to a broad range of customers … our members operate in a highly competitive market”. That is a nice try, Mr Phillips, but you are half right and half wrong. You are right when you look at domestic tariffs. Here in the UK, for example, you can walk from shop to shop comparing what is on offer.”
“Once it was the preserve of well heeled business types, who carted their massive handsets around like suitcases—I know; I was one of them—and today the pocket-sized cheap mobile is everywhere, even in poor villages in Africa. For all its curses, it offers us communications that were undreamt of just a few years ago, from the City types who are virtually welded to their BlackBerries to worried parents who can now be secure in the knowledge that their children are safe. As a parent of teenage children, I confess that there is no sound more wonderful than the text bleep telling me that they have arrived at their destination. It has revolutionised our lives. I am going to say some fairly critical things about the mobile phone industry, which is why I have prefaced my speech by saying what a great job the industry has done.”
“I thank him, because at least it reminded me of the fact that the mobile phone has become ubiquitous. Very few places on Earth are out of reach, except, predictably, Hampstead, where I live and where reception is zero. When I think of Mr Baber, I also think of roaming charges. What does it take to link up a phone call from the top of Everest, via China Telecom directly to the UK? The cost per minute must have been enormous. Luckily for Mr Baber, it was too cold to speak for long. The mobile phone industry has been a huge success. In 20 years, it has grown from almost nothing to become one of the largest industries on the planet.”
“My Lords, if ever there was a timely debate, this is it, because just for once the European Commission has shown its mettle and resisted ferocious pressure. Yesterday the European Parliament voted to cap mobile phone charges. I thank the chairman of the EU Sub-Committee, the noble Lord, Lord Freeman, for the efficient and inclusive way in which he led this investigation. In a short time, we took evidence and produced an excellent, hard-hitting report. The noble Lord has set an example to us all. There are two heroes of the hour: Mr Rod Baber and Commissioner Viviane Reding. Mr Baber’s name might not be known to noble Lords, but he became the first person ever to make a mobile phone call from the summit of Mount Everest. He is a hero because he had to remove his face covering and oxygen mask to make this epic call.”
“That is beyond our power. But this Bill, by making the dangers of alcohol more widely known, will undoubtedly result in some babies being born healthy who otherwise would not be. If we can do that, we will spread joy where otherwise there would be sadness. That is why I have introduced this Bill and why I hope your Lordships will support me in taking it further. Moved, That the Bill be now read a second time.—( Lord Mitchell .)”
“Imagine, if you can, the guilt and grief that thousands of mothers endure, realising only too well what the momentary pleasure of drinking went on to cause. It does not bear thinking about. Finally, the children themselves only want normality. There is somehow a haunting plea from all of them—“Mummy, why can’t I be normal?”. In market research that we commissioned, 61 per cent of women admit to drinking when they are pregnant and 75 per cent are aware that it might have some effect on their unborn child. Sadly, it is still the young and less-educated women who are unaware of the dangers and it is particularly them we seek to inform. Ask a mother-to-be what she wants for her baby and, whoever she is and whatever her background, the answer will be the same: “I want my baby to be healthy”. It is not given to us to make all babies healthy.”
“In Canada, in a survey, 98 per cent of paediatricians and GPs had heard of FAS but fewer than half felt able to diagnose it. Dr Mukherjee states that diagnosis is key because after the birth of a single child with FAS, the risk of another child, similarly affected, being born to the same mother increases by 800 times. The ethical issues are enormous. In getting to this point, I have been helped by many people whom I must thank. In particular, I have been ably assisted by Susan Fleisher, who heads NOFAS-UK, and Mr Ross Cranston, a former MP who helped me to draft this Bill. I owe both of them a huge debt. There are also many people who confront the consequences of foetal alcohol spectrum disorder every day of the year; that is, doctors, social workers and other carers, but most of all parents, particularly mothers.”
“He cites a case in the American state of Wisconsin where a mother was charged with attempted murder and reckless endangerment because she drank heavily during her pregnancy. It was held that she should be held accountable to her unborn child by her actions. The Wisconsin appeals court concluded that because a foetus is not a human being the mother could not be held criminally liable. In our country, if a mother were to feed her newly born baby with neat alcohol, she could be prosecuted for doing so, but if she feeds her unborn child alcohol through her bloodstream, she has no responsibility. I find this somewhat bizarre. Dr Mukherjee also shows in the same article that many healthcare professionals have shown difficulties in diagnosing FAS.”
“Elsewhere the tobacco companies ply their wares with ever increasing resolve. All of this is a pretty strong indicator that multinational companies, whether tobacco or alcohol, will respond to imperatives only if legally compelled to do so. The alcohol companies would do well to study what happened to the tobacco industry and the potential for legal actions against them. In a recent article in the Lancet , Dr Raja Mukherjee of St George's Hospital in London and Mr Nigel Eastman address some of the legal and ethical issues. Dr Mukherjee has been to the forefront in matters to do with foetal alcohol syndrome, and we should all thank him for his persistence and scholarship.”
“I should like to take a few moments to make a further comparison with the tobacco and cancer issue, because it is relevant and a pointer as to how matters could develop if not addressed now. The tobacco companies were well aware of the links between smoking and cancer from the early 1950s, yet they sat on the evidence and denied it in public. Labelling was eventually introduced on tobacco products, despite intensive lobbying by the very well resourced tobacco industry. Finally, the anti-smoking lobby won through. Warning labels are now printed on every pack of cigarettes, and with great success. Today, smoking in public places has become socially unacceptable. In many countries it has been banned outright, including our own with effect from 1 July of this year. At least that is true in the developed western world.”
“In the United States compulsory labelling has been in place since 1989. In France a law was passed last year. Others are following; for example, Finland, Chile and Poland. Of course this causes the alcohol industry a great dilemma. How can it possibly object to compulsory labelling in our country when it is forced to include it elsewhere? Where is the logic that requires one consignment of Scotch whisky going to New York to have an American label stuck on at the distillery, whereas a similar consignment bound for London from the same distillery will not? Is it really saying that British women are not entitled to have the same health message as American women? I sincerely hope not.”
“I therefore ask the Department of Health to reconsider its current position, which is that for pregnant women a few units per week are acceptable. The only reliable message that they should be giving is that no alcohol is safe during pregnancy, and it is to be totally avoided. Then the question is whether a code imposed by self-regulation is sufficient. I do not think it is, and that is why I believe that this Bill, making it mandatory to include a warning label, is a better solution. I simply do not believe that all suppliers of alcoholic beverages will abide by the code all of the time. The bottle of Bacardi Breezer may have the label attached, but will the bottle of Château Lafite 1982? Perhaps the Minister will let us know the department's thinking on that point. Other countries have taken the lead on this issue.”
“And, “If they say 14 units, they probably mean 20; and if they mean 20 then probably we can get away with 25”. Such is human nature. Standing around a bar with a bunch of friends is no place to consult the alcohol unit calculator. Nevertheless it is a start. What would be even better is if the label had a warning specifically directed at the dangers of drinking while pregnant. That would be the bold decision. When it comes to pregnancy we are dealing with an imprecise measure. We do not know how much alcohol is safe. Neither do we know when it is safe. It is a game of Russian roulette—drink at one moment and the chances are you will be safe, but pick the wrong time, without realising it is the wrong time, and the consequences can be lethal.”
“That is an odd and somewhat parochial conclusion when you think about how rampant binge drinking and alcohol abuse is in this country. Refusing to take no for an answer is now paying dividends. We hear that the Department of Health is close to reaching an agreement with the alcohol industry. It has been reported that the industry is willing to adopt a code that will encourage labelling. I gather that the label will warn the public in general to restrict alcohol consumption to a number of units per week. I have always had a problem with units as a measure; it is too imprecise and too easily fudged. What is a unit? Is it a glass of wine? How big is that glass of wine, and how strong is that wine? Is it 14 units per week spaced over the week, or is it 14 units consumed in one boozy evening?”
“But the harsh reality of foetal alcohol syndrome is that these births are not inevitable. They are not a quirk of nature; they are the result of someone else's actions, and that someone is the child's mother. The fact is that foetal alcohol syndrome and the complete spectrum is preventable: it does not have to happen. For many years I and others have been lobbying the Department of Health, the alcohol industry and anyone else we can get our hands on, to make them aware of this problem. In the beginning we received polite but cool brush-offs. They asked: where is the evidence? And when confronted with experiences elsewhere, particularly in the United States, we heard, “Just because other countries make it mandatory for alcoholic containers to have labels attached to them, doesn't mean that we have to follow suit”.”
“Foetal alcohol syndrome manifests itself in many ways. In some cases the child appears physically normal; in others the child has a series of facial deformities. Widely spaced eyes, a small head due to a smaller brain, thin lips and a flattened philtrum between the base of the nose and the upper lip are all indicators of the presence of the syndrome. However, it is the hidden brain damage that causes maximum problems. Children with FAS are emotionally and mentally delayed. Typically, they have difficulty in telling time, they get lost, they cannot remember instructions and they are largely innumerate. Eighty per cent are not able to live independently and will always need to rely on the state or other carers. Sadly, many children in this world are born with all sorts of physical or mental handicaps and sometimes with both.”
“It is also felt that many forms of juvenile unsocial behaviour can be similarly traced back to FASD. The cost to our society resulting from such conduct is vast. Any action taken to ameliorate this condition would be of benefit to society as a whole. It is believed that one live birth in 100 produces a baby with some form of foetal alcohol spectrum disorder. Put another way, this equals 7,500 babies per year. At the other end of the spectrum is foetal alcohol syndrome. This takes the problem into a different and more acute dimension. It is judged that in this country between one and three children in 1,000 are born with the condition. That represents somewhere between 750 and 2,250 per year. That is more than the combined number of babies born with muscular dystrophy, spina bifida, HIV and Down’s syndrome.”
“Nevertheless, the relationship of one to the other is now beyond dispute. So it is with drinking when pregnant. Harm is not certain, but it is more likely. It is the risk of this harm that we are trying to address. Through no fault of their own, future children are being sentenced to lifelong brain damage. Tragically, many of their mothers have not been educated or informed about the risks of alcohol in pregnancy. That is the objective of the Bill—to inform them of the harm that their unborn babies could be exposed to. That harm is called foetal alcohol spectrum disorder. As a spectrum it has many forms. In its most benign form it can cause many types of behavioural problems. It is claimed that, for example, some forms of attention deficit disorder are caused by FASD.”
“However, put sex and alcohol together and there is indeed a cocktail, but of a very different kind. The physiology is simple. The developing foetus in its early stages in the womb has no liver. Its formative body is unable to deal with the same toxins as the fully fledged human being. Therefore, all the poisons its mother ingests will pass through the placenta into the baby’s bloodstream. Alcohol is a lethal poison. It has the potential to cause great harm to a foetus. It can kill brain cells that can never be replaced; it can damage the nervous system and connections within the brain itself; and it can retard the growth of vital organs, particularly the heart and lungs. Like tobacco and lung cancer, the correlation is not perfect. People who do not smoke still get lung cancer, just as people who smoke do not get lung cancer.”
“It does not need me to stand here today to tell your Lordships about the alcohol pandemic that plagues our country; we see it in the media, and we see it in all its harsh and revolting reality on our streets. However, we are walking a tightrope; we do not want to come across as puritans preaching against fun. Drinking is a highly pleasurable experience, and most of us enjoy it. We are not against young people drinking, even occasionally to excess—after all, which of us never did that? However, what we do want to do is to increase the awareness of the dangers of drinking while pregnant. Since time immemorial, drunken young people have engaged in sexual encounters that when sober they might have avoided, and there is nothing much we can do about that.”
“The words “nanny state” have already been raised in some quarters, so we have ensured that the Bill is only about giving a warning and is not about forcing any member of the public to do anything that he or she does not want to do. Finally, we have thought about the cost of labelling. It is predictable that the alcohol industry will raise this matter, but its argument looks a little thin when it already meets identical costs in other countries where labelling is compulsory. In a nutshell, the Bill is being introduced because drinking alcohol while pregnant is dangerous. Many women are unaware of the danger. We seek to make them, their partners and the world in general aware of the risks to the unborn baby.”
“My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time. It has a very simple objective: it seeks to compel manufacturers, distributors and retailers of alcoholic products to display a warning label on all bottles or cans that contain alcohol. The label will state the following: “GOVERNMENT WARNING: drinking alcoholic beverages during pregnancy, even in small quantities, can have serious consequences for the health of the baby”. In drafting the Bill, several points have been uppermost in my mind. The first is that the Bill should be tightly focused. We could have widened it much further, but we judged that for a privately introduced Bill of this nature, the wider it is, the less likely will be our chances of success. We also thought long and hard about the inevitable objections that will be raised.”
“I thank the Minister for his remarks. It was good that he said there was government understanding of the issue and no complacency about the fact that something needed to be done. He gave a very strong hint about a voluntary code. If such a code were 100 per cent effective, it would be a good thing. However, he hinted strongly that if there were any wavering on this issue, the Government would support legislative action. That is as much as we can hope for. I ask the House to give the Bill a Second Reading. On Question, Bill read a second time, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.”
“We are talking about the minority who drink a lot or perhaps even a little, whose foetuses may be affected if the alcohol is consumed at the wrong time. We are not preventing them from drinking, we are just issuing a warning. On the subject of labels, to the best of my knowledge the relevant labels that I have seen are on the back of bottles of wine. That is certainly the case with bottles that I have seen in the United States. In Australia, I believe that they are on the side. I have no desire for such labels to be inspired by the designs of Matisse or any other great artist. I should have loved the noble Baroness, Lady Neuberger, to be a co-sponsor. I agreed with everything that she said. I thank the noble Earl, Lord Howe, for the support that he gave on the previous occasion the Bill was introduced and again today.”
“My Lords, it was almost predictable that we would have a good Second Reading debate today given the list of speakers. I thank all noble Lords for their contributions. I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, that I thought very seriously about notices in pubs and off-licences. She made a very strong point. As I said in my opening remarks, I wanted to keep my speech very focused. I take the point that she made about the cost to society and the nation of children who are affected by this syndrome. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Monson, that we are not saying that all pregnant women who binge drink will have foetuses with some form of foetal alcohol syndrome. Nor are we saying that the foetuses of all pregnant woman who drink will have foetal alcohol syndrome.”
“My Lords, I beg to introduce a Bill to make provision for the labelling of alcoholic beverages; and for connected purposes. I beg to move that this Bill be now read a first time. Moved accordingly, and, on Question, Bill read a first time, and ordered to be printed.”
“Would it not be wonderful, just for once, if they were to say, “We think the committee has made a valid point and would like to pursue it further”? To me, it feels like the departments regard the Select Committee investigations as a total pain in the neck: an intrusion and an inconvenience, interfering with the very busy and, I am sure, important schedule of the officials concerned. This report on water management was a clear case in point: an uninspired response to an excellent report. This House deserves better.”
“We have called on the very highest level of witnesses and have travelled far and wide in our investigations. We have produced excellent work, which we have submitted to your Lordships’ House. But what happens after our submissions? The reports go off to Government and we wait for a reply, which eventually comes. In my experience, in every case, the Government’s reply has been underwhelming and—dare I say?—grudging. Or at least that is how it feels. Take this particular report: we have been staggered by the poor quality of the Government’s unenthusiastic response. This highly talented sub-committee has prepared an excellent report on an important subject. We have made a series of well reasoned recommendations, and what is the response? Nothing—nothing that we did not know, and nothing that we had not considered.”
“Its inability to repair emergency leaks with any sense of urgency is ample testimony of a company that is badly managed and oblivious to its customers’ requirements. What is the solution? Perhaps competition. We should be able to buy our water from other authorities much the same as we can buy electricity from other electricity companies. Having ranted about Thames Water, may I be permitted to raise one hobbyhorse not quite on the theme of water management, but not quite off it either? I am just about to come to the end of my stint on your Lordships’ Select Committee on Science and Technology. I have loved every minute of it and I thank your Lordships for appointing me. I have served on at least six Select Committees. I believe that this Select Committee has done some magnificent work.”
“The worse the service gets, the more they are rewarded. They under-invest. They have the highest percentage of leakages in the UK. They are slow to fix burst water mains and a third of the water simply disappears. Yet I and millions like me have been banned from watering our gardens. They have achieved record profits and they pay their top management outrageous salaries; yet I and millions like me have to pay inflated bills to compensate for their mismanagement. They are now up for sale and private equity companies are circling them like vultures, offering their shareholders billions upon billions; yet I and millions like me have been made to feel like criminals if we use a hose to wash our cars. Thames Water is a shambles. And do not let any of us fall for the bleating about its legacy of ancient pipes and sewers.”
“There is a common thread that draws together each of these successful Australian and British water authorities. Unsurprisingly, it is good management—business managers who have clear vision, precise guidelines and a determined focus on meeting their targets. How lucky they are, and how unlucky are we who live in London and the south-east. I am by nature an inveterate capitalist and a serial entrepreneur to boot. I understand how business works. I understand very clearly the relationship between risk and reward. In my days, I have enjoyed some reasonable successes, but I have also suffered some pretty painful failures. I know the rules of the game. But Thames Water, and some of the other water companies in the south of the country, leave me speechless. They seem to play by different rules.”
“We visited Yarra Valley Water in Melbourne, which is right at the cutting edge of using and reusing water, where office buildings have their own reprocessing units, and townships where grey water is recycled to provide a stunning environment. The Melbourne water authorities should be studied by all UK water utilities. Finally, we visited Sydney Water where drought has become a permanent way of life, yet where people have learnt to live successfully with it and to adapt to the problem. The Australians showed us how they recycle water and how they have persuaded their population to install new and efficient shower-heads and dual flush toilets, and encouraged almost universal use of rain butts to collect roof and garden run-off. Australia makes every drop of water count.”
“Well, it would be nice to say yes to that, but it cannot really be the answer. Or is it because of mismanagement? Of course, the sad reply is yes, it is. The title of this report refers to water management, but my interest has been in water managers. We visited some brilliant water companies. Yorkshire Water in this country turned a disastrous situation into one for which it has twice been awarded the prize for the number one public utility in the country—and it shows. Water leakage in the Yorkshire region has been reduced dramatically. If you travel around Yorkshire you do not see roadworks caused by burst water mains. And why not? Because there the company deals with such incidents on an emergency basis. That is somewhat different from the chaos that happens in this capital city.”
“We saw a nation versed in water conservation where from childhood everyone understands that water is a precious commodity. But even after six years of drought in the Sydney region, people are still permitted to water their gardens, albeit between 10 pm and 4 am. There they succeed, even in that arid climate, in making their beautiful gardens look like gardens in Surrey. So when my friends tease me, I am shamefaced to admit that in my city—the greatest city in Europe—with its reputation for grey skies and constant rain, we face a major crisis in our water supply. I ask myself why? Is it because it does not rain enough? Well, that has to be partially true. Is it because of climate change? Well, that, too, has some relevance. Is it because of regulation and government interference?”
“Here in the south-east we were banned from watering our gardens and from washing our cars. It appears that we were only days away from additional powers being granted to several water companies. Like many other noble Lords, I, too, had to suffer the indignity of being ribbed and teased by foreign friends who simply could not believe that London had a water problem. And to be frank, I still cannot believe it. My family has a house in Umbria in Italy. We have a large garden and a swimming pool that evaporates throughout the summer. The summers are hot; the rain is infrequent; yet our property is irrigated and the squirters go on every other night. Our water comes from the mains and a well, and there is not even a hint of a water usage ban. The Select Committee spent a week in another hot country—Australia.”
“I, too, express my thanks to the noble Earl, Lord Selborne, for the inspired way in which he chaired this sub-committee. He did what a good chairman should do—he defined the project right from the start, kept his eye on the ball and pulled us back when we were straying from the point. I very much enjoyed being part of his team, and I believe that we have produced a magnificent report. I also thank two other people—Professor Ashley for his knowledge, his incisiveness and his skill in formulating this report, and Tom Wilson, our Clerk, who kept us all in good order and who played a crucial role in developing the topic as we progressed. We certainly got our timing spot on. We reported to your Lordships’ House just before the Summer Recess; at a time when water and drought were on everyone’s mind.”
“My Lords, I offer my congratulations, and those of your Lordships' House, to the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, on his maiden speech. The noble Lord has had a distinguished career in the National Health Service, and he has a wealth of knowledge and expertise that will benefit us all. As chief executive of the NHS, he managed the first half of a 10-year plan. Sometimes we lose perspective of the sheer size of the NHS and the job involved. At one point, it employed 3 million people—the biggest employer in Europe; some 60 million potential customers; the largest civilian IT project in the world; and an accumulative five-year budget, approaching £0.5 trillion, which is bigger than the GDP of most medium-sized countries. Your Lordships’ House will be a better place with the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, among us, and we welcome him.”