Flood Risk: London

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Wednesday 20th April 2022 Westminster Hall

[Felicity Buchan (Kensington) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered flood risk in London.

In July last year, my constituency of Kensington suffered devastating flooding. It was not only Kensington: the adjoining boroughs of Westminster and Hammersmith and Fulham, which are represented by the hon. Members for Westminster North (Ms Buck) and for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter), were also badly affected.

I want to give a sense of the magnitude of the flooding. On that Monday evening, London Fire Brigade received almost 1,800 flooding calls. If related calls are included, that figure reaches 3,000, which is the highest number that the London Fire Brigade control room has ever taken. I did a survey of the most affected wards in my constituency, and although people in almost 500 homes replied to say that they had been flooded, the reality is likely to be multiples of that number.

Flooding has truly devastating consequences for those who suffer it, and I will give a few examples. I heard from one lady who had just bought her first home. The floodwater in the basement was almost up to the ceiling with only a few inches spare. Many constituents—not just one or two, but multiple constituents—are still out of their homes nine months later. A lot of the basement properties in my constituency are actually owned by housing associations, and residents in those basement properties have lost absolutely everything they own—from clothing and photos to important documents, everything has gone.

Constituents of mine were flooded not just in July, but three or four times over the past 10 to 20 years. That is an important point, because although July was a truly devastating flood, it was not a one-off. The flood that I am referring to happened on 12 July, but London saw another devastating flood only two weeks later on 25 July. There was another in 2007, and I should declare a personal interest in that one, as my own house was flooded on that occasion. Those were three devastating floods, but we also had floods in 2004, 2005, 2016 and 2018.

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing this debate. She is pursuing this issue on behalf of her constituents, as I am on behalf of mine, and she has hit the nail on the head by saying that we have had previous floods and we were told that the problem had been solved, but it has not. Does she agree there is a danger that, again, we have a partial, patchwork solution—flooding local improvement projects here, one or two schemes there—when what we need is a comprehensive solution so that our constituents do not live at constant risk, particularly in the summer months, of their homes being devastated in this way?

[Felicity Buchan]

This is one of the rare occasions on which the hon. Gentleman and I completely agree. We need a comprehensive solution, which I will go on to talk about: we need a short-term solution, because my constituents are very anxious about this summer since most of this flash flooding has occurred in July, August and September, and we also need a long-term strategy. My constituents, like the hon. Gentleman’s, simply cannot live with this risk hanging over them.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jo Churchill]

As pointed out, these so-called never events appear to be happening more frequently. Given the combination of climate change with other things, we need to look fundamentally at how the system is joined up. I think the hon. Member for Hammersmith articulated that this does not need a “bit” approach but an overall approach. Hopefully, hon. Members will see where the thinking is going.

That overwhelming meant that we got complex localised surface water flooding. Water does not stop. It knows no bounds. It does not stop at a constituency edge or a road end. Indeed, many of our towns and villages have lanes called Water Lane, for example, because we know that is the natural course of water. It happens quickly; it is difficult to predict; it can be exacerbated by the impenetrable surfaces that my hon. Friend spoke about, and it can overwhelm the drainage networks. Everyone—all those agencies, individuals, local authorities, Ofwat, the Environment Agency—has their part to play in understanding the flood risk and the mitigating actions they should take, as do the householders, to ensure they can best protect themselves and their property.

The statutory responsibility to manage flood risk falls to the risk management authorities such as the Environment Agency and the lead local flood authorities and water companies. As my hon. Friend well knows, the Environment Agency has the strategic overview role, and while it does not lead on surface water flooding, it provides support and advice and facilitates partnerships. I know that she has met with all the agencies and with Sarah Bentley at Thames Water to champion her constituents’ challenges, but I would like to reassure her that that cross-partnership work is going on.

Lead local flood authorities have the operational lead in managing local flood risk, including surface water risk. They are best placed to understand, mitigate and respond to these risks. Working with local communities and with the invaluable information that Members and other bodies bring forward, as part of the local flood risk management strategy, they are driving down and making sure that we get the right mitigations in the right places to protect people.

The Government fully support and encourage greater collaboration and partnership working. Following the flooding, many organisations stepped forward this time to work together to make sure we got the right result. As everybody has said, this is not a situation where responsibility can be passed on. There is a task and finish group going on. The Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton Deane (Rebecca Pow), covers this part of the portfolio and will be meeting with the deputy Mayor shortly to hear more about this work. She will challenge them to ensure that the right work is going on in the right places to drive the right results and make sure there is ambition.

What I have heard from everybody is that they want there to be the ambition to protect constituents. The task and finish group has been working on a range of issues, including better communication. As was alluded to, we know that many residents do not have English as a first language. We know that there were challenges because of transient populations, and a sub-group on communications has been set up. I have been assured that the failures seen last summer are noted and being addressed and rectified. I believe the call centre went down, and there were various other challenges.

[Andy Slaughter]

It would be useful if we could have the details of the task and finish group and have communications with it. Yes, work is going on, as the hon. Member for Kensington (Felicity Buchan) indicated, but there is a real lack of trust, because we have been through all this before. We have had sewer and surface flooding, and the solutions are only partial flap valves that really deal only with sewer flooding. We cannot allow this to happen again. We need a comprehensive solution. It may cost a lot of money, but we have to protect the thousands of people who are vulnerable. To echo the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) made about Flood Re, will that cover our constituencies as it covers rural constituencies?

[Jo Churchill]

Flood Re is a scheme jointly administrated by Her Majesty’s Treasury and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, and it has covered some 335,000 properties. I am not entirely sure of the scope of things, but I will make sure that Members are written to, because it is a valid point. As my hon. Friend the Member for Kensington said, the challenge—one that I have had in my own constituency—is that when the work is done, the reinsuring becomes either prohibitively expensive or in some cases virtually impossible. I will make sure that I write to Members on that matter.

Thames Water commissioned an independent review of the performance of its network, including the Maida Vale flood defence scheme and the cancelled Counters Creek scheme. As my hon. Friend said, it also committed £10 million in property flood resilience measures, including those non-return valves. Counters Creek is arguably not a single solution to this. It was designed for specific storm events, not the rain bomb or the intensity of the events of last summer, and it has been argued that it would not have prevented the flooding.

I would like to reassure my hon. Friend that that has been looked into. Further investigations were done by Thames Water, and it implemented the flooding local improvement project to reduce the risk posed by the non-return valves. The challenge with rainwater is that it is almost like watching popcorn. We cannot be sure where the flood is going to occur, because of the different meteorological effects and all the rest of it.

Animal (Penalty Notices) Bill

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 8th December 2021 Public Bill Committees

In conclusion, we support the Bill overall. The intention is reasonable. We all want better, more effective enforcement, but there is a risk of unintended consequences. I think this Bill fits uneasily with the Animal Welfare (Kept Animals) Bill. It feels a bit of a mess, and it needs more work. We will not oppose the legislation today, but we will monitor it closely to ensure that it does what the Government and the hon. Member for Romford says it does.

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Twigg. I congratulate the hon. Member for Romford on the Bill, and I entirely support its principle.

I have a brief question for the Minister on the use of fixed penalty notices. They are increasingly being used to do the heavy lifting in the criminal justice system. They clearly have a function, and it is clear what the intended function is here: to fill a gap. The experience with fixed penalty notices over recent years, particularly during covid, has not been a good one on either side. For the Ministry of Justice, if there is not proper recourse to a judicial process, that contains many risks for the alleged offender. On the other hand, if fixed penalty notices are used and not followed up, one gets into the situation where they are issued and there is no consequence. If time goes by and they are not enforced, the period in which they may be enforced elapses.

What I am concerned about is not that fixed penalty notices are being proposed for use; it seems a suitable use. I am concerned about our experience of them at the moment. I entirely understand why the Government want to use them. There is huge pressure on the criminal justice system. The backlog, not only in the Crown court but in the magistrates court as well, was very large before covid. It is now extremely large indeed, and it is not timetabled to come down over any short period of time.

I absolutely understand why the Government would look to fixed penalties as a way of trying to deal with the backlog and relieve some of the pressure. However, it comes with a whole raft of other changes, such as single justice procedure, where there is less scrutiny of offences, less of an opportunity to have one’s day in court and less public access to the justice system. All of those are risks with fixed penalties.

Often these are emotive, quite serious offences. I understand that the fixed penalty notices are intended to deal with those at the lower end, but I wonder if the Minister could say something about this. Could she give us reassurance that, for somebody who believes they are wrongly being given a notice, there will be a proper and clear course they can take that will lead to a judicial process? Secondly, are the mechanisms there to ensure that the prosecuting authorities are able to enforce these notices and that they do not just become pieces of paper that people can disregard?

Impact of Floods in North Westminster

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Tuesday 7th September 2021 Westminster Hall

[Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the impact of floods in Westminster North.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir David, in this short debate.

I am grateful to the Minister for being here today and for this opportunity to raise an issue that has been hugely important to my constituents this summer. I will ask for her help in holding Thames Water to account for its very poor performance in the aftermath of the floods in my constituency and in getting responses from it to a number of unanswered questions about how the floods occurred. In doing so, this debate will also have implications for water companies and flood preparation in other parts of the country.

Before I turn to the specific events that happened in Westminster North, I will briefly refer to the context in which they happened, because they clearly took place in the context of rising flood risks, arising in particular from climate change. We know that climate change is impacting harder and faster than even our worst fears a few years ago, and that devastating floods have wreaked havoc across the world, from New York to Germany and elsewhere. We have to accept the reality that extreme weather events are the new normal. Also, while poorer communities are always at greater risk of damage from such extreme events, floods or other kinds of extreme weather—such as the extremely dry weather that causes forest fires—are no respecters of postcodes.

So when Thames Water points to an exceptionally slow-moving weather system concentrating unusually high rainfall in a particular area, as was the case in my constituency in July, it may indeed be right. The question is whether such a powerful monopoly provider as Thames Water should have done more to anticipate and prepare for such events. Also, given the history, which I will refer to in a moment, why did the preparations that had been made fail and why was Thames Water’s immediate response to the flooding so inadequate?

Westminster City Council also has duties in this area. After the introduction of the Flood and Water Management Act 2010, responsibility for local flood risk management, including surface water run-off, groundwater and flooding from ordinary water courses, was passed to lead local authorities, of which Westminster City Council is one.

Westminster City Council had already identified, via its floods policy, that:

“Due to the heavily urbanised nature of Westminster, and the predominantly Victorian drainage infrastructure, there is a widespread risk of surface water flooding…It is expected that sewer flooding may occur within Westminster and a consistent risk profile is therefore applicable. There is a risk of groundwater flooding within Westminster, and this risk is likely to be exacerbated by increased below ground development (basement extensions etc.).”

The issue of basement extensions has been a hugely controversial one for me in recent years.

The council’s floods policy continues:

“There is a residual risk of flooding due to the failure of either water mains or canals”.

The council recognised in the policy that:

“Further enhanced surface water flood risk modelling was undertaken…in 2015…The study considered the impact of climate change on surface water flood risk assuming a 20% and 40% increase in peak rainfall intensity.”

The council is currently undertaking its own review of the July floods and we expect a report imminently. However, it is already clear that the increased risk of flooding, due to climate change in particular, was understood.

So what happened on 12 July, the day of these particular floods? In the afternoon, intense rain impacted on an estimated 500 properties, mostly, although not entirely, in the Maida Vale area. The water rose incredibly quickly and in addition to the rain and the overflow, sewage pipes backed up, covering many homes—particularly basements—with raw sewage. Thousands of calls were made to Thames Water, with little or no response from it in the immediate aftermath of the flooding.

The London Fire Brigade was in attendance and many local residents spoke of there then being a specific intervention by the fire brigade, which led water to drain away “like a plug being pulled out of a bath”. Over that night and the next day or two, hundreds of residents and businesses were left in crisis, due not only to the damage but to the obvious health risk associated with the sewage overflows.

After a varyingly slow start, which was particularly slow by Thames Water, staff from the council, from housing providers and then from Thames Water got to the scene to support people and begin the clear-up. People helped their neighbours magnificently and many staff worked very hard in the aftermath to ease the distress. Even so, people fell through the net. One constituent, who is HIV positive and currently receiving cancer treatment, was put into a hotel and no payment was made. My office was dealing with him on the night after the floods when he was crying in the lobby because of the lack of support.

Many people had to be urgently rehoused after their home was flooded with sewage. That was not organised for a couple of days and, even now—as recently as last week—I heard from a woman who is still confined to a single room in her home as she is immune suppressed and the rest of her home is badly affected by the damp and mould, to which she cannot risk prolonged exposure.

Those affected and many others in the at-risk areas want to know why the water rose so fast and why the sewers backed up and then why the water disappeared so fast once the London Fire Brigade attended. They deserve to know whether anything could have been done sooner to avert disaster as the rain fell. A typical comment went, “As you might know, the water levels dropped very suddenly after the fire brigade attended on our street and seemingly opened a flood valve or removed some kind of obstruction. The rain was still falling as heavily as it had been, but the water went, in my case, from 70 cm deep to ground level within minutes. Thames Water are blaming heavy rainfall but that does not explain how the water just dissipated.”

Many, although not all those affected in Westminster—the problem was particularly concentrated in the Maida Vale area—have a wider question. After localised flooding some 10 years ago, ward councillors, residents and I pressed Thames Water to increase drainage capacity in the W9 and NW6 areas. This was strongly resisted for some time. Thames Water took the line that these were 100-year events. We counter-argued that there had now been two 100-year events in the course of just three years. It gave in, and in the middle of the last decade, new tanks were installed under Tamplin Gardens in W9 and additional capacity was increased, with major works around Warwick Avenue and Westbourne Green lasting two years.

In 2012, Thames Water told us it would complete the Maida Vale sewer flooding alleviation scheme over the next two years, saying that the alleviation project would cover four wards in the Maida Vale area and be good news for the 400 or so residents who have experienced sewer flooding over the past few years, some of whom have been flooded with sewage up to nine times.

The heart of the matter is this question, which Thames Water and, to some extent, Westminster, must answer. Why did a major alleviation scheme designed to cope with 100-year events fail so spectacularly within just half a decade? Was the additional capacity insufficient and should that have been foreseen six or seven years ago? Was the system properly operational? Were there any blockages in the system? Were the drains clear and properly maintained? If the rain that fell on 12 July was a 300-year event, as we have now been told, how long before it fails again?

If Thames Water now suggests that we cannot build our way out of the severe weather-related flood risk, how and when will a package of alternative measures be put in place across agencies to achieve a reasonable level of protection?

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend for securing this debate because several hundred of my constituents were equally affected by the floods she is describing. Thames Water candidly described its response to me as “bloody awful”. It said it was under new management with new shareholders, but it is always under new management and new shareholders. That is the problem. It was exactly the same 10 or 15 years ago, when the same properties were flooded for the same reasons and the schemes have either been cancelled or have not worked. Does she agree that, like the Thames tunnel and the Bazalgette sewers we rely on now, whoever ends up paying for and delivering this, it needs Government direction, because this is a serious matter that repeatedly affects our constituents?

[Ms Buck]

My hon. Friend is right. We are constantly told that Thames Water is under new management. That management always seems to enjoy a level of remuneration that would make my constituents blanch. It continues to charge costs to consumers and is seemingly impervious to the kind of challenges and questions that he and I are raising.

We were told by Thames Water at a public meeting at the end of July that this event was simultaneously unforeseeable and yet also likely to happen again. Legally, its position remains that it is not liable for the damage arising as a result of the flooding. It claims that London’s sewers were never designed to deal with rain on that scale, and yet relies on the fact that its systems meet the targets as evidence that it was not negligent. If that position holds and is reaffirmed by the inquiry set up by Thames Water, this question arises: how can targets be adjusted significantly to reflect the changing weather expected over the coming years before more homes are affected by similar events?

Almost everyone who was in touch with me and ward councillors over the days and weeks after the July floods has good grounds for feeling that Thames Water failed them with its response that night and in the aftermath. A significant minority of people whose homes were flooded are still suffering and feel that their housing providers, council and Thames Water have not acted as swiftly and caringly as they might have done, despite many of the employees stretching every sinew to help.

What assessment has been made of the capacity in local authorities and housing providers to resource their emergency responses? They have been cut back drastically in the past decade and, as we saw with Grenfell, an effective emergency response cannot be guaranteed without the staff available to deliver it. Increasingly, they also have to be able to manage more than one crisis at a time, or in close succession.

Has the Minister undertaken an assessment of the capacity of local councils and others to support residents who lose everything in disasters such as this? Local support payments are designed to patch the increasingly large holes in social security, not to help what might be hundreds of people on lower incomes who are uninsured and left without furniture, clothing and toys. Also, local support payments offer assistance only to those on qualifying benefits—excluding people on working tax credits, for example.

Locally, we have organised crowd funding and worked with the local voluntary sector to relieve hardship. I congratulate such volunteers and One Westminster for their assistance; they have been significantly more supportive of the community than has Thames Water, which I asked to contribute to the hardship funding quite separately from the issue of liability—a request that has been ignored. Why is it that volunteers and community organisations can raise more money for people who have been devastated by floods than the powerful monopoly water provider can?

I turn back to the flood itself. The threat of recurrence now haunts us locally. How are the Government working with local authorities in areas such as mine, where large numbers of basement properties are understood to be at particular risk? Westminster’s 2019 flood policy states:

“Self-contained basements or basement flats wholly or partially below ground without freely available access at all times to a habitable space above ground level within the same dwelling are ‘highly vulnerable’”,

and that

“applicants are encouraged to incorporate flood resistance and resilience measures as part of the design…to prevent water ingress and to reduce flood damage should flooding occur.”

Is encouragement enough, however? How will that be monitored? Where will the responsibility lie in privately owned properties, whether freehold or leasehold? What rights do private tenants have? Who would pay for such alterations to social housing? The time for warm words and vagueness is definitely now over; in terms of damage and indeed safety, we need firmer action. Do the Government have plans to scale up the expectations of local councils—backed by the necessary resources—to review, report on and deal with factors that expose residents to flood risk?

Then there is Thames Water. Ultimately, as I said, residents feel that Thames Water let them down catastrophically. One typical comment was:

“Thames Water were extremely slow in dealing with this emergency and when they made an appointment either didn't turn up or if they did were several hours late. They then arrived with a dust pan and brush and a bottle of bleach and were quite unhelpful commenting always how it was not the fault of Thames Water and what a wonderful company they are.”

My constituents believe they deserve compensation for the damage caused, although Thames Water has already been quick to deny liability. Will the Minister assist my constituents and me in pressing Thames Water to ensure that the already somewhat foot-dragging independent inquiry is now completed as a matter of urgency, so that we have absolute clarity on the sequence of events on 12 July? How can my constituents hold Thames Water to account more effectively given the obvious imbalance in power and resources between them—me—and a private company of such size enjoying a monopoly position as a provider? I and hundreds of local residents need the support of the Government if capacity is to be increased, people protected and Thames Water held to account. I look forward to the Minister’s response.

--- Later in debate ---

[Rebecca Pow]

I thank the hon. Lady for that intervention, and I hear what she says. Measures were put in place when the Met Office gave its warnings, but of course it was all so quick: the fire brigade swung into action, but those things that the Environment Agency could whizz into place, such as trash screens, just could not cope with that flooding or the sewage overflows and so forth. That is what the Thames tideway tunnel project is going to address, and I have a meeting with those involved later this afternoon. However, the hon. Lady is right that questions need to be asked about that new development. As she referred to, a big public meeting was held with Westminster City Council after the flooding.

[Andy Slaughter]

Will the Minister give way?

[Rebecca Pow]

I will just finish this bit and then give way. There were lots of people—the council, Thames Water, the Environment Agency and so forth. They have committed to doing this independent review, which is crucial. As Minister, I need to wait until we hear the consequences of that review and the Westminster section 19 investigation before making any further comments. I will be looking at that with interest and I will be happy to have a conversation with the hon. Lady when we have got that, because we do need to get these things right.

Of course, Ofwat is the regulator and Government set the policy. We are working on our draft policy statement to Ofwat for the next period and will be highlighting surface water flooding more than ever before, along with things like water quality and the whole sewage issue. We are doing a lot on that in the Environment Bill, as I am sure the hon. Lady knows.

[Andy Slaughter]

I am grateful to the Minister for allowing me to intrude. Thames Water has told me that the tideway tunnel, which is very welcome in preventing pollution going into the Thames, would not have helped in this situation. It would only have helped properties very near to the river, because this was high tide and therefore some water would have been let through. It would not have helped my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North or most of my properties that way.

What would have helped is the Counters Creek flood alleviation scheme, the £300 million project which went down the middle of Kensington and Hammersmith and would have protected those two boroughs. That was cancelled by Thames Water and has not taken place. Will the Minister accept that we need an inquiry into why that did not happen and what can now be done to prevent exactly the same properties flooding on a regular basis?

[Rebecca Pow]

Of course, many different schemes are underway, but the Thames tideway tunnel is the biggest scheme we have taken part in for decades. It will address serious issues around mixing of the waters and sewage overflows in times when we get these extreme weather events. It will make a big difference. I will put your points to them this afternoon.

All flooding projects are ranked and rated according to properties protected, delivery and so forth. There is strict protocol for that. The Environment Agency is involved in trying to find out what happened at this incident. It took part in a resilience forum after this event and is very engaged in advising and helping.

I want to take the opportunity to talk about surface water. It is pertinent, because we just published an updated report on surface water management, setting out progress in delivery of our surface water management action plan. David Jenkins did an independent report on surface water and drainage responsibilities. Key highlights include Government funding to provide better surface water flood risk maps in 28 lead local authority areas by summer 2022. That site list will be crucial to the areas mentioned and those across the country, so that people know what is happening. That is what the hon. Gentleman is getting at, I think. We need a clear view of what the situation is on the ground, what is working and what else needs to be done. These flood risk maps will be really important. Improved mapping will provide over 3 million people with more detailed information about local surface water flood risk.

The Met Office and the EA are scoping out a new approach to provide faster communication for surface water flood forecasts when an incident is deemed likely, which would be helpful since people need to react very fast. Water and sewerage companies are working with other risk management authorities to produce drainage and waste water plans, ensuring that drainage and sewerage systems are resilient to withstand these future pressures. Again, Thames Water will have to do that, and it is working on that now. The Government are making these plans a statutory requirement through the Environment Bill. Weirdly, that was not statutory before, and it will be important to looking at the issues the hon. Member for Westminster North is dealing with. We are considering right now the guidance and reporting necessary to ensure timely action in areas with greater surface water flooding problems.

Alongside all that, the Government are investing more in actions to mitigate surface water flooding overall. In April 2020, we made a change to the partnership funding arrangements, which are already having an effect. In July, we published our investment plan over the next six years, which includes £860 million in investment this year to boost design and construction of more than 1,000 schemes. We are aware of the big issue and more than a third of those will tackle surface water flooding, including in London, with two schemes in Westminster. They are the Kilburn Park Road surface water scheme, which should be completed by March 2022 and will better protect 44 properties, and the Upbrook Mews surface water scheme, which should be completed by March 2025.

Alongside that, I have been given assurances that Thames Water is also taking action through its surface water programme. That is investing £3 million in partnership with five local authorities and will be investing a further £1.5 million through a wider call for projects. That project could come under the scope of the reference made by the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter). It will help better manage surface water entering the sewer network and enable the implementation of a sustainable drainage system, while also creating green spaces and amenity value, because a lot of that is also linked to the schemes. I have seen some of the schemes and they are extremely welcome in neighbourhoods; they make the whole neighbourhood look and feel better while having the double-whammy achievement of helping to sort out the flood risk, the drainage and so on.

We are also working with 25 local authorities across England, investing £150 million in place-based resilience innovation projects. Some of those will include mitigating surface water and flood risk, and the outcomes will be shared with other local authorities and risk management authorities, so they can learn from those projects and—if we find something that particularly works and would apply, for example, to Westminster or Thames Water—adopt some of those measures.

In addition to the Government’s investment, water companies will be investing more than £1 billion between 2020 and 2025 to reduce the impact of flooding on communities across England and Wales. They have proposed an additional £2.7 billion of environmental investment through the Government’s green economic recovery fund. Some of those projects have been accelerated, partly owing to the impacts of covid and the lockdown, because there were so many spin-offs from those sorts of projects. A lot of those include measures such as blue-green infrastructure, natural flood management and partnership working at a catchment scale, which is important. It is not just about what is happening outside our door, but where that water is coming from and what has affected it further up the catchment. That still applies to all the London areas as well.

The Environment Agency works with lead local flood authorities to manage surface water flood risk through strategic planning, supporting the development of projects, access to Government flood and coastal erosion risk management funding and access to regional flood and coastal local levies. The regional flood and coastal committee levy plays an important role in the financial support for the development of the lead local flood authorities—all those titles are very wordy, are they not, Sir David? That can help fill the funding gap outside the direct legal lead local flood authority funds and the grant in aid, as well as paying for Thames flood advisers to provide additional service on scheme development. I know the EA teams are working with the Greater London Authority, Thames Water, Transport for London and the local authorities on sustainable urban drainage systems, flood risk, water quality and all those measures.

Our ambition is to make a nation more resilient to future flood and coastal erosion and work to manage and mitigate the effect of surface water flooding will continue at pace. I hope I have demonstrated that I mean business about this, as do the Government, contributing towards implementing the flood and coastal risk management policy statement. We are working with stakeholders on all of this. We will be undertaking a review of maintenance responsibilities to examine whether existing local buyers are efficient in ensuring local assets are maintained and expertise is shared across authorities. I think the hon. Member for Westminster North will be interested in that.

We are also reviewing with the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government the policy for development in areas of flood risk. Finally, the storm overflows taskforce will make recommendations on lots of those issues as well as sustainable drainage and the sewage outlets. I hope I have demonstrated my commitment. I am always very happy to talk to the hon. Lady and I thank her for raising the subject today.

Question put and agreed to.

11.30 am

Sitting suspended.

Environment Bill

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons
Wednesday 26th February 2020 Commons Chamber

[George Eustice]

I am going to make some progress.

The annual progress report we published last May showed that 90% of the highest-priority actions from our first 25-year environment plan, which will become our first improvement plan, have either been delivered or are on track. We have heeded the advice of both the Environmental Audit Committee and the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, and I look forward to continuing to work closely with my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow (Philip Dunne). The OEP will enforce compliance with environmental law where needed, complementing and reinforcing the work of the world-leading Committee on Climate Change.

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

Given that clause 40 gives the OEP quite broad prohibitions on the disclosure of information, how will we know what it is up to? Will the Secretary of State explain—he can do so in writing—why we need those prohibitions? Will he confirm now that the Environmental Information Regulations 2004, which are so important to public access, will not be interfered with? Will he state in the Bill that there will be no restriction on the public’s access to information through the EIR?

[George Eustice]

The framework set out in this Bill contains multiple mechanisms through which information is made available. We will be setting targets that will be reviewed every five years. There will then be a published environmental improvement plan that will also be reviewed every five years, and a progress report will be published annually. There are many mechanisms through which our public approach to delivering on our targets is made clear.