Part 5: Water Section 89: Water quality: powers of Secretary of State
Subsection (1) provides a regulation–making power for the Secretary of State to make provision about the substances to be taken into account in assessing the chemical status of surface water or groundwater, and to specify standards for those substances, or in relation to the chemical status of water bodies. This will enable updates to the substances and standards currently used in that process, for example those set out in the list of priority substances and priority hazardous substances for surface waters in water quality legislation. The power can only be used to amend or modify the existing water quality legislation relevant to chemical status, listed in subsection (2).
	Subsection (1)(a) would allow an entirely new substance to be included in the legislation, or the removal of an existing substance. Subsection (1)(b) allows the environmental quality standard (EQS) to be set for a substance, or for an existing EQS to be modified.
	Subsection (3) enables additional provision that may need to be introduced as a result of exercising the powers under subsection (1). This may include, for example, specifying a date by which a standard for a specific substance must be achieved, changes to monitoring regimes to cover newly specified substances, or new measures to be introduced into river basin management plans in respect of such substances.
	Subsection (4) establishes that the Secretary of State can only exercise the powers in this section to make provision that could be made by the Welsh Ministers or Northern Ireland Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs under their own powers in sections 90 and 91 respectively with their consent.
	Subsection (5) establishes that the Secretary of State cannot exercise the powers in this section to make provisions which would fall within the Scottish Parliament’s devolved competency, given effect by powers under an Act of that Parliament, with the exception of parts of the cross border river basin districts lying in Scotland, where the Secretary of State could exercise the powers to make provisions but only with Scottish Ministers’ consent.
	Subsection (6) establishes the consultation requirements attached to the exercise of the powers. Paragraph (a) requires the Secretary of State, regarding regulations applying to England, to consult with the Environment Agency, which provides expert scientific opinion. Paragraph (b) requires the Secretary of State to consult with Welsh Ministers when making regulations applying to an England and Wales cross-border River Basin District (RBD) that lies in England, and when the Welsh Ministers’ consent is not required under subsection (4). This would mean consultation is only required if the provision being made is only for the English part and does not apply to the part in Wales. Paragraph (c) places the same consultation requirements on the Secretary of State in relation to the cross-border RBDs shared with Scotland.