Manchester Ship Canal Company Ltd v United Utilities Water Plc
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | Lord Hughes,Lord Sumption,Lord Neuberger,Lord Clarke |
| Judgment Date | 02 July 2014 |
| Neutral Citation | [2014] UKSC 40 |
| Date | 02 July 2014 |
| Court | Supreme Court |
[2014] UKSC 40
Lord Neuberger, President
Lord Clarke
Lord Sumption
Lord Hughes
Lord Toulson
Appellant
Jonathan Karas QC Julian Greenhill Richard Moules James McCreath
(Instructed by Pinsent Masons LLP)
Respondent
Robert McCracken QC Rebecca Clutten
(Instructed by Bircham Dyson Bell LLP)
Intervener
Stephen Tromans QC Catherine Dobson
(Instructed by Canal and River Trust)
Intervener (The Middle Level Commissioners)
Charles Morgan Laura Elizabeth John
(Instructed by Taylor Vinters)
Intervener
Douglas Edwards QC Richard Honey
(Instructed by Anglian Water Services Limited)
Heard on 6–7 May 2014
Lord Sumption (with whom Lord Clarke and Lord Hughes agree)
The question at issue on this appeal is whether a sewerage undertaker under the Water Industry Act 1991 has a statutory right to discharge surface water and treated effluent into private watercourses such as the Respondents' canals without the consent of their owners.
Discharge into a private watercourse is an entry on the owner's land, and as such is an unlawful trespass unless it is authorised by statute. It is common ground that no express statutory right is conferred by the Water Industry Act. The question is therefore whether it should be implied. A statutory right to commit what would otherwise be a tort may of course be implied. But since this necessarily involves an interference with the rights of others, the test has always been restrictive. The implication must be more than convenient or reasonable. It must be necessary. As a general rule, this will involve showing either that the existence of the power is necessarily implicit in the express terms of the statute, or else that the statutory purpose cannot be effectually achieved without the implication. In particular a right to commit what would otherwise be a tort may be implied if a statutory power is incapable of being exercised or a statutory duty is incapable of being performed without doing the act in question: Manchester Corporation v Farnworth [1930] AC 171, 183 (Viscount Dunedin), Allen v Gulf Oil [1981] AC 1001, 1013 (Lord Wilberforce).
It has been said that a court "should not routinely investigate the statutory predecessors of provisions in a consolidation statute": R v Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions, Ex p Spath Holme Ltd [2001] 2 AC 349, 388 (Lord Bingham of Cornhill). This is not so much a rule of construction as a valuable warning against the over-ready assumption that a consolidating Act means exactly the same as the enactments which it replaces. There are, however, cases where a consolidating Act cannot be understood without reference to the state of the law as it was when it was enacted. This is one of them.
Until 1973, sewerage services in England were generally provided by local authorities, initially under powers conferred by local Acts of Parliament and then under powers successively conferred by the Public Health Acts of 1848, 1875 and 1936. The Water Act 1973 transferred the sewerage and water supply functions of local authorities to statutory regional water authorities. The Water Act 1989 privatised the water industry, transferring the sewerage and the water supply functions of the regional water authorities to commercial water undertakers and sewerage undertakers, and comprehensively restated the powers and duties of those charged with these functions. The Water Industry Act 1991 is a consolidating Act which was passed on the recommendation of the Law Commission in order to tidy up the statute law relating to water and sewerage services. It consolidates with amendments the provisions of the Act of 1989, together with a number of other statutes concerned with water management. At the same time, the Water Consolidation (Consequential Provisions) Act 1991 repealed a number of earlier statutory provisions, including some thought to be "spent and unnecessary": see section 3(1). It is on these changes that the issues on this appeal turn.
No right to discharge from public sewers into private watercourses has ever been expressly conferred by statute. It is, however, common ground that such a right existed at least until 1989 and was the basis on which the industry operated for many years. In Durrant v Branksome Urban District Council [1897] 2 Ch 291, the Court of Appeal held that a right to discharge surface water and treated effluent into private watercourses was impliedly conferred on local authorities by the Public Health Act 1875. Section 15 of that Act imposed on local authorities a duty to cause such sewers to be made as might be necessary for effectually draining their district. The extent of that duty was largely demand-led. This was because section 21 entitled any owner or occupier of premises in a local authority's area to connect to a public sewer, and section 18 provided that a local authority should not be entitled to discontinue the use of a sewer unless it made available another sewer which was as effectual for the use of those served by the existing one. The critical sections from which the Court of Appeal derived the right of discharge into private watercourses were sections 16 and 17. Section 16 empowered a local authority to "carry any sewer" through, across or under any street or road or, on notice to the owner or occupier, any land within their district. Section 17 was a proviso in the following terms:
"Nothing in this Act shall authorise any local authority to make or use any sewer, drain or outfall for the purpose of conveying sewage or filthy water into any natural stream or watercourse, or into any canal pond or lake until such sewage or filthy water is freed from all excrementitious or other foul or noxious matter such as would affect or deteriorate the purity and quality of the water in such stream or watercourse or in such canal pond or lake."
The Court of Appeal did not say that an implied right of discharge into private watercourses was necessary to the efficacy of a local authority's statutory powers and duties. Nor did they derive it from the mere existence of a power under section 16 to lay sewage pipes through streets, roads or private land. Since the Public Health Act 1875 conferred extensive powers of compulsory purchase on local authorities for the purpose of enabling them to perform their sewerage functions, neither point would have been sound. What they said, adopting the reasoning of North J, the trial judge, was that the right of discharge was implicit in the express terms of section 17, which by restricting the right to discharge foul water into any watercourse impliedly recognised the existence of a right to discharge treated effluent and surface water: see pp 295 (North J), 302 (Lindley LJ), 303 (Lopes LJ), 304–305 (Chitty LJ). There was no provision requiring local authorities to pay for mere exercise of their rights under sections 16 and 17, but they were required by section 308 to pay "full compensation" for any "damage" caused by the exercise of any of their powers. This was held to be a sufficient answer to any objection based on the adverse effect on property owners.
All of the features of the Public Health Act 1875 on which the Court of Appeal relied in Durrant's Case were reproduced in the Public Health Act 1936, which replaced the earlier Act and continued to govern the sewerage powers of local authorities and then of the regional water authorities and privatised sewerage undertakings until 1991. In particular section 17 of the Act of 1875 (the protection against discharges of foul water) and section 308 (the compensation provision) were re-enacted with no material changes as sections 30 and 278 of the Act of 1936.
When the water industry was privatised by the Water Act 1989, the transfer of sewerage functions and associated assets, rights and duties from the regional water authorities to the new sewerage undertakers was achieved by section 4 of the Water Act 1989 and by schemes made under that section. The object of the schemes was to transfer the "property, rights and liabilities" of the regional water authorities: see section 4(1). Their contents were regulated by Schedule 2, paragraph 2(1) of which provided that with effect from the "transfer date" the scheme would transfer to the privatised undertakers in accordance with its provisions all the property, rights and liabilities of the statutory water boards which were not required to be transferred to the National Rivers Authority. In accordance with that provision, the transfer scheme in this case transferred to the undertaker "on the transfer date all property, rights and liabilities to which the water authority is entitled or subject immediately before that date." The object of these provisions is to achieve a seamless transfer of the relevant functions, assets, powers and duties to the new undertakers. Under section 4(1), the Secretary of State was empowered to appoint the "transfer date" on which the functions of the regional water authorities would be transferred to the new undertakers and the transfer schemes would come into effect.
Section 194(3)(b) of the Water Act 1989 provided that among other provisions Part II, Chapter III (Provision of Sewerage Services) should automatically come into force on the transfer date, i.e. simultaneously with the transfer of the rest of the undertaking. Part II, Chapter III included all the relevant provisions governing the duties of the privatised sewerage undertakers. These included sections 67 and 69. Section 67 imposed on the privatised sewerage undertakers the...
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