To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs if his Department will introduce a requirement on water companies to submit an application for water scarcity status before seeking permission for any new reservoir capacity. (137610)

No. In their 25-year water resource management plans, water companies are expected to follow the twin-track approach of considering the need for new resources, such as reservoirs, in parallel with the full range of options for reducing demand. New resources should be developed only where the scope for managing demand is clearly insufficient or unjustified in terms of cost.

An application for water scarcity status would have to demonstrate that the measures proposed by the company, taking into account the water resources that are or could be made available, would be insufficient to address the deficiency of water resources.

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs what recent assessment his Department has made of the (a) merits, (b) practicality and (c) costs of constructing a water grid to enable the transportation of large volumes of water over long distances. (137611)

I refer the hon. Member to the answer I gave on 16 October 2006, Official Report, column 900W. The situation has not changed since then.

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs what volume of water in each region was supplied from (a) watercourses, (b) aquifers, (c) reservoirs and (d) other sources in the last period for which figures are available; what change each figure represents from the previous period for which figures are available; and how demand is expected to change in future years. (138622)

The data in the following table are taken from the e-Digest of Environmental Statistics, published on the Department's website, and shows an average for the whole year of estimated abstractions expressed in daily amounts (mega litres per day). The data originate from the Environment Agency. Estimated actual abstractions differ from the maximum abstraction permissible under the terms of individual abstraction licences. The level of future abstractions will depend on the extent to which abstractors use their licensed capacity together with that abstracted under new licences granted.

Non-tidal surface water includes reservoirs and river abstractions (watercourses).