Storm Henk

Harriett Baldwin Excerpts

Monday 8th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Robbie Moore]

My Environment Agency colleagues are working incredibly hard across Oxfordshire. The Oxford flood alleviation scheme is in place, but I am more than happy to meet the hon. Member to discuss what further action she would like to be taken. I want to reassure her that we are working around the clock to make sure that all households, businesses and farmers are protected from the implications of Storm Henk.

[Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)]

I commend the flooding Minister for his energetic response to Storm Henk, and all those who have worked so hard during this terrible weather. In West Worcestershire I have worked with his predecessors and the Environment Agency over the years to deliver schemes in Upton-Upon-Severn, Kempsey, Uckinghall, Powick and Pershore. His predecessor was kind enough to allocate money from the frequently flooded communities fund to the project in Severn Stoke and Tenbury Wells. Will he work with me and the Environment Agency to ensure that those two important schemes are delivered during his tenure?

[Robbie Moore]

I want to use this opportunity to pay tribute to the previous flooding Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton Deane (Rebecca Pow), who did tremendous work in this role. She worked hard to ensure that the frequent flood schemes were put in place as quickly as possible. My hon. Friend the Member for West Worcestershire (Harriett Baldwin) has worked very proactively to ensure that her residents are best protected from the implications of flooding. I am more than happy to meet her to work at speed to make sure that our households and businesses are as well protected as possible.

Flooding: River Severn Catchment Area

Harriett Baldwin Excerpts

Wednesday 13th December 2023 Commons Chamber

[Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend for securing this important Adjournment debate. My constituency contains the River Severn catchment, the River Teme and the River Avon, so it is also prone to flooding. Does he agree that it is wonderful that the Environment Agency has delivered schemes in Upton upon Severn, Pershore, Uckinghall, Kempsey and Powick? Does he also agree that it would be good if the Environment Agency would complete the schemes it is working on in Tenbury Wells and in Severn Stoke?

[Daniel Kawczynski]

I am happy to echo those sentiments, with the Minister listening and making notes. I also pay tribute to my hon. Friend for the constructive way in which she has worked with me and others on the River Severn caucus. I wish her every success with getting those flood defences completed.

Although the flood defences that my hon. Friend refers to are essential—they are critical in the short-term to medium-term—there is also a long-term objective of managing the River Severn holistically. Hitherto, we have had the idea of building small flood barriers. They are important, but inevitably they push the problem further downstream; that is counter-intuitive to a certain degree, because we are protecting ourselves and making it more difficult for the community further downstream. Later in my speech, I will explain how, now that we have left the common agricultural policy, we want to start to manage this river holistically.

I pay tribute to Mark Barrow of the River Severn Partnership and to the Environment Agency, whose new chief executive, Mr Duffy, I met recently. As a result of our work, we have presented a business case to the Minister for flooding, the Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton Deane (Rebecca Pow). I am grateful to her, because she has visited my constituency twice in the past year. At my invitation, she has come to Shrewsbury, sat with the officials of the River Severn Partnership and been presented with the business case that we are now sharing with the Government on how we intend to manage the River Severn. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for all her work, as well as her determination and ability to visit my constituency to hear our proposals at first hand. Following those discussions, the then DEFRA Secretary of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey), visited Shrewsbury earlier this year at my invitation. She was presented with the business case that has now gone to Government and she was impressed with what she saw.

Finally, as I mentioned, I invited the chief executive of the Environment Agency, Mr Duffy, to visit Shrewsbury two months ago, which he did, and he was presented with the proposals as well. Those proposals have been developed through a collaboration between the caucus of 38 Conservative MPs whose constituencies the river flows through. As I said to the Chancellor, “You have heard of the blue Danube—well, this is the blue Severn”, because 38 of us Tory MPs have the river flowing through our constituencies. I presented the proposals to Mr Duffy and he understood the importance of the plans.

We presented the plans to the Chancellor at a meeting of the River Severn caucus last month, and I know some of his senior special advisers and assistants are currently examining the business model in order to understand its economic impact on the midlands. We hope and expect the Chancellor to have positive things to say to us in the spring Budget.

I also raised the matter at Prime Minister’s questions today. The Prime Minister kindly recognised the many dealings I had with him when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer. He promised that the new Chancellor will look at the proposals and stated that the Government have already given an extra £6 billion for flood defences. I recognise that and thank the Government for allocating an extra £6 billion of taxpayers’ money to flood defences. However, the situation is grave across the whole of the United Kingdom and I have heard that a lot of that money has been spent in London. Protecting our capital city is obviously a priority, but I would argue that £6 billion is a drop in the ocean, if you would pardon the pun, Mr Deputy Speaker, compared to what is required.

We are not prepared to go to DEFRA to ask for a piece of that £6 billion. We want to go directly to the Chancellor, give him a business case and a business plan, and explain that if £500 million is invested today, there will be an economic uplift in the west midlands, which is the industrial heartland of England, of over £100 million gross value added. That is what is in the business case that has gone to the Chancellor.

I am proud to have campaigned for Brexit, but I am even prouder that my constituents in Shrewsbury voted for Brexit. One clear benefit of leaving the European Union is that we no longer have to comply with the ghastly common agricultural policy, which was difficult for us to benefit from and almost designed to be unconducive to English farming practices. Now that we are no longer part of the common agricultural policy, we can, for the first time, pay and incentivise farmers and landowners to hold on to water. That was not allowed under the common agricultural policy. Now that we have left, for the first time we can go to farmers and say, “If you want to be part of a major solution to flooding, we can incentivise you financially to hold on to that water and manage that water during extreme times of flooding.” We can also pay landowners for helping to be part of that solution.

I have had two very productive discussions with two Secretaries of State for Wales. I think you were once a shadow Secretary of State for Wales, Mr Deputy Speaker, and you were brilliant. You will know, from having held that position, the extraordinary interdependence that we have in western England with our neighbours in Wales. We are all part of the same Union, and, of course, this solution to managing Britain’s longest river can be achieved only if we have collaboration and co-operation from our partners across the border. Having represented a constituency on the English-Welsh border, I am acutely aware of the need to have schemes that enhance and promote the interdependence of both of our countries, as we share this one island together.

I am very grateful for the close support from my neighbour, my right hon. Friend the Member for Montgomeryshire (Craig Williams), who is the Prime Minister’s Parliamentary Private Secretary. We collaborate on many things, but he has already stated to his local press that he supports these plans. A counter-intuitive person would say, “No, I am not interested. That’s your problem. You deal with it” but he has said that he understands how some of his landowners and farmers could benefit enormously from financial payments if they were part of the solution. He understands the potential of the vast economic investment in his constituency, particularly at a difficult time for farmers and agriculture.

Shropshire Council has taken the lead with the River Severn Partnership. I chair a caucus of 38 Conservative MPs who have this river flowing through their constituencies. We are approaching—I say this unequivocally—a general election. Every year, Mr Blair and John Prescott came to Shrewsbury. In 1999, they ostensibly walked around Shrewsbury, saying, “Don’t worry, folks, we are going to protect you.” Well, we had a flood barrier, which protects a car park and 38 houses and that was the extent of the help that we got from Mr Blair and Mr Prescott. We cannot have just little sticking plasters on this problem, bearing in mind that this situation will only get worse—I think, Mr Deputy Speaker, that you and I can agree on that. Given climate change and the number of months and days of floods that we are experiencing, this situation will get increasingly worse for our children and our grandchildren. If we can invest today in an innovative, progressive and modern way of holistically managing rivers, that will be not just a prototype for other parts of the United Kingdom, but, potentially, a massive British export worldwide. Think about the suffering and the misery in Bangladesh. Think about all the millions of people around the world who face economic hardship and sometimes death as a result of these rivers spilling over. If we can invest in this technology of managing rivers, it could be of huge benefit not only to our exports, but to our international development aid programme.

Finally, with £500 million—that is what is in the business case—we can show an uplift of more than £100 billion for the west midlands economy. I am not begging for £500 million; I am saying to the Chancellor, “This is the return on investment that you will get if you invest in this scheme.” I know how difficult the public finances are at the moment, which is why I am so proud of the way in which we have presented the plans.

I am grateful for the constructive dialogue that I have had with the Minister. I welcome him to his position, and I know that he will do a superb job. We need his support. I have sent his officials copies of the business case that has been presented to the Chancellor of the Exchequer. I am asking for the Minister’s understanding of our proposals, and for him to lobby the Chancellor with me ahead of the spring Budget. I am sure he will agree that the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs will need more than £6 billion in the years to come to manage flooding.

Finally, let me tell the House about my constituent Mr Bob Ashton of Cambrian House, an apartment building that floods almost annually. He has taken me to see it, and the residents themselves have built flood defences to protect the entire building; a sort of electronic shield goes up to protect it. That is a very innovative way of trying to protect a whole apartment building, and I pay tribute to Mr Ashton and his fellow residents for their innovation. They live in Coton Hill in Shrewsbury. I must declare an interest, because I too live in Coton Hill, an area of my constituency that floods annually.

I go to see businesses in Shrewsbury not just when they are flooding, but 30 businesses tell me their takings during the floods and in the weeks after them, and they are significantly down even two weeks after the flooding has subsided. As we know, the media are brilliant at highlighting when Shrewsbury is under water, but they are not so interested in broadcasting that the floods have subsided and we are back to normal.

Flooding is the single biggest barrier to Shrewsbury’s economic development. We have more listed buildings—Edwardian, Elizabethan and Georgian—than any other town in England. We are so proud of our architectural beauty. Charles Darwin was born in Shrewsbury. We are a very historic town and we are very proud of our town, but, as I say, the flooding is causing horrendous problems for my citizens, adversely affecting people’s ability to get insurance for their properties and putting tourists off coming to our town when they see the consequences of it.

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for allowing me to speak on a subject that I feel so passionately about. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response.

Food Price Inflation

Harriett Baldwin Excerpts

Thursday 23rd March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mark Spencer]

So the hon. Gentleman says, but there are an extra 10,000 visas available should the industry request it and require it. That request has not come to the Government, because we still have enough people in the supply chain with the 45,000 visas that are available. We continue to work and co-operate with retailers, processors and the food sector on continuing to supply good-quality food to our consumers.

[Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)]

Yesterday’s inflation numbers were a sobering reminder of how terrible a tax inflation is on our economy. It is a tax that harms everyone, but it harms the poorest most. Does the Minister agree that, while Government fiscal policy this year needs to help in terms of halving inflation, the primary responsibility for getting inflation under control has been set in a remit letter given to the independent Bank of England? It is the Bank’s job to make sure that inflation gets back in its box.

[Mark Spencer]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for her work chairing the Treasury Committee and holding the Treasury to account. She will be aware that the Prime Minister’s priority is to get inflation back under control and get it down. We will continue to work across Government to make sure that that happens, and we do recognise the challenge that this brings to consumers and to our constituents.

Government Food Strategy

Harriett Baldwin Excerpts

Monday 13th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[George Eustice]

We have to be mindful of some of the unintended consequences if we load too many of these things on to the universal credit system. As Members will know, one of the principles behind universal credit is its gradual, tapered withdrawal. If we have cliff-edge entitlements of that sort, that starts to undermine the principle that sits behind universal credit. Nevertheless, we recognise the value of free school meals—that is why we have always had them and why some changes were made permanent on 24 March. We are also more widely recognising the impact on households of the increase in energy costs, and that is why the Chancellor announced that package of measures two weeks ago.

[Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)]

I warmly welcome the spotlight that the strategy shines on the wonderful food produced in West Worcestershire and across the whole United Kingdom. I also welcome the fact that unemployment in this country is at an historic low. In welcoming the extra 10,000 seasonal agricultural workers that have been announced today, will the Secretary of State elaborate on the advice that he received that meant that this year, with our strong labour market, he did not accept the request from farmers to go as high as 90,000 visas?

[George Eustice]

My hon. Friend does indeed represent an important part of our country for horticulture—in fact, I spent a summer working on an apple orchard at Bransford in her constituency. On her question about the evidence that we have, we work closely with the operators running the seasonal agricultural workers scheme. As I said, we are approaching 28,000 visas issued or people already here. The judgment is that for the top fruit season, which is predominantly what they will be recruiting for later this year, a further 10,000 will be sufficient. The truth is that the total number of people who do seasonal agricultural work in the UK is estimated to be between 60,000 and 70,000. We think it is still the case that close to half of that number are coming as settled EU citizens or are people who are here, with the other half being carried by the scheme. That will change over the years, but for the current year, we think that 40,000 is sufficient.

Oral Answers to Questions

Harriett Baldwin Excerpts

Thursday 9th December 2021 Commons Chamber

[George Eustice]

We set out, through our schedule at the World Trade Organisation, the so-called aggregate market support that is available for these things, and that does not provide any particular constraint. Agriculture policy is devolved and so it is for each part of the UK to decide what policy works best for its own part of the UK.

[Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)]

T3. On behalf of the small cider producers in West Worcestershire, may I thank the Secretary of State for the representations that he has made to the Chancellor about the taxation regime? Is he also making representations on behalf of the larger, more traditional cider makers with the stronger ciders who may be adversely affected by the tax changes?

[George Eustice]

I am aware that my hon. Friend lives in a part of the country, and represents a constituency, famous for its ciders. I would be more than happy to meet with her and any of those businesses to discuss any particular concerns that they have, although she will understand that alcohol duties are very much a matter for the Treasury.

Oral Answers to Questions

Harriett Baldwin Excerpts

Thursday 21st January 2021 Commons Chamber

[George Eustice]

My hon. Friend raises an important point. Cereals, such as those are grown in my hon. Friend’s constituency, are an important source of healthy food. Breakfast cereals will be captured by DHSC’s policy only if they are classified as high in salt, fat or sugar, and the nutrient profiling model used by Public Health England accounts for the nutritional benefits of cereals, fruits and nuts. I suggest that he raises his concerns with the Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, my hon. Friend the Member for Bury St Edmunds (Jo Churchill), but I would also be willing to engage in that discussion, given the particular concerns that he raised.

[Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)]

What steps he is taking to increase tree planting.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Rebecca Pow)]

We committed in our manifesto to increasing planting across the UK to 30,000 hectares, and we are working with the devolved Administrations to deliver that. We announced a £640 million nature for climate fund, a lot of which will contribute towards the tree planting, together with our green recovery challenge fund, and the skills required to plant these trees and look after them will all be part and parcel of this. We will be publishing our tree strategy with all the details later in the spring.

[Harriett Baldwin]

As communities along the River Severn catchment are facing flooding once again, I thank the Minister for all she has done to fund a hardening of flood defences along the River Severn. Will she say how tree planting is also effective at reducing the amount of floodwater that goes through the catchment and reducing the speed?

[Rebecca Pow]

I thank my hon. Friend very much for that question, and of course our sympathies go to anyone who has been flooded overnight. With the Environment Agency, we have a very big project on to oversee all that. We are absolutely committed to better protecting the country from flooding, and I thank her for her comments about what is happening in the Severn valley. Natural flood management, including tree planting, cannot solve the issues of conventional flooding, but it is part and parcel of the whole plan—the holistic plan—for dealing with flooding on a much wider and more comprehensive scale. Proposals to do that include flood-risk management options, which will include tree planting, improve water quality and enhance the environment. It will be an integrated approach and I very much look forward to hearing more about the plans for the Severn valley, which I know she is hugely behind.

Oral Answers to Questions

Harriett Baldwin Excerpts

Thursday 15th October 2020 Commons Chamber

The Secretary of State was asked—

[Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)]

What steps he is taking to increase tree planting in England.

[Jane Stevenson (Wolverhampton North East) (Con)]

What steps he is taking to increase tree planting in England.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Rebecca Pow)]

We are committed to increasing tree planting throughout the UK to 30,000 hectares per year by 2025, and we are working with the devolved Administrations on that, too. We have announced a nature for climate fund to increase planting in England, and we recently consulted on the new England tree strategy.

[Harriett Baldwin]

Across the valley of the River Severn, the River Teme and the River Avon we are grateful for the support we are getting to improve our flood defences. Will the Minister tell the House how tree planting can improve flood resilience across river catchments?

[Rebecca Pow]

My hon. Friend raises an important point. Our new £640 million nature for climate fund will do a lot to drive up tree planting. We will also do a lot of planting with the emphasis on river corridors and floodplains and on nature-based solutions, working with the Environment Agency. In that way, we aim to slow the flow, control flooding and increase tree planting. Lots of plans are in place, and I hope my hon. Friend’s constituency will benefit.

Oral Answers to Questions

Harriett Baldwin Excerpts

Thursday 10th September 2020 Commons Chamber

[George Eustice]

I am happy to meet my hon. Friend to discuss this issue in more detail. We now have in place the groceries code adjudicator, which regulates the types of contracts that supermarkets can put in place and precludes certain practices, but through the Agriculture Bill, we can go further and stipulate further requirements in contracts in future.

[Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)]

What steps he is taking to increase flood defences.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Rebecca Pow)]

This Government are investing a record £5.2 billion to deliver around 2,000 new flood defence projects to better protect 336,000 properties in England by 2027. Up to £170 million is also being invested to accelerate work on flood defence schemes that will soon begin construction, and I am very pleased to say that, largely thanks to my hon. Friend’s great campaigning efforts from the Back Benches, Tenbury Wells will receive £4.9 million in economic recovery grant to enable the completion of the scheme she has been championing and to better protect 570 jobs, 80 businesses and 82 properties.

[Harriett Baldwin]

I thank the Minister personally and the Secretary of State for all they did to ensure that funding will deliver a scheme for Tenbury Wells. May I ask her to encourage from the Dispatch Box the Environment Agency to crack on and get a socially distanced consultation under way on its preferred design?

Flood Defences: Tenbury Wells

Harriett Baldwin Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)]

Thank you very much, Madam Deputy Speaker, and thank you for allowing this twice-postponed debate to be held on flood defences for Tenbury Wells. We have just gone through the driest May on record and the pandemic is taking so much of the country’s bandwidth, so it is hard to believe that less than four months ago, we suffered some of the worst flooding in recent years in the Severn valley and elsewhere. We were very badly affected by Storm Ciara and Storm Dennis, and many people, homes and businesses were and indeed still are affected.

In West Worcestershire, we have the confluence of the River Severn, the River Teme and the River Avon, so we are used to regular winter flooding. After particularly bad floods in the summer of 2007, I started campaigns to build more flood defences in our area. Since 2010, we have had seven new flood defence schemes built with the help of the excellent team at the Environment Agency. Those schemes are in Uckinghall, Pershore, Powick and Kempsey, with two schemes in Upton-upon-Severn. The seventh, a community-based scheme, is in Callow End. Throughout the regular winter floods that have continued to affect the area, these flood defences have proved their worth time and again, and protected many homes on many occasions. The Upton-upon-Severn permanent flood defences alone have been called into service over 30 times and have allowed the town’s shops and pubs to remain open for residents at almost all normal times. The cumulative amount spent on these schemes has been over £9 million. They have largely been funded by the local flood levy budgets, with the flood wall in Upton-upon-Severn calling on about £4 million of the billions in capital spend on flood defences in this country in the last decade.

I am pleased that, since the February floods, the Environment Agency has committed to reviewing the Powick flood defences, as they were overtopped then. It would be good to see whether they can be raised without having a detrimental effect elsewhere. However, I will not stop campaigning until two further schemes are built in West Worcestershire. One is a bund in Severn Stoke, which is progressing well and has reached the planning permission stage. The cost is significantly lower than at Tenbury Wells and has been further reduced through the local supply of the material needed to build the bund. That leaves the final scheme—the big challenge —at Tenbury Wells. I am delighted to see my hon. Friend the Member for North Herefordshire (Bill Wiggin), who was the Member for Tenbury Wells at the time of the 2007 floods, here to support my request today.

Tenbury Wells is a wonderful market town on the River Teme. A market has been held there since 1249. The town has always been prone to flooding. The current bridge was built in 1795 by Thomas Telford, after the older one was washed away. The town is built on a flood plain and water can rush down incredibly quickly from the hills in Wales and Shropshire. The Kyre brook also flows right through the town and can fill up very quickly.

After the 1947 floods, which are still the worst on record, plans were drawn up to protect the town with flood defences, which would have cost less than £200,000, albeit in 1947 money, which I believe would be worth about £2.4 million today. Sadly, that scheme never went ahead.

During the three summer floods in 2007, the town’s toilets were washed away. They have since been replaced by an award-winning scheme, and a lot of further work has been done, with individual property-level protection, new culverts and some work on the drainage. The Environment Agency is making sure that the Kyre brook vegetation is regularly cut back and has recently drawn up a feasible and deliverable scheme for a full flood defence around the town. I know that exhibits are not allowed in the Chamber, Madam Deputy Speaker, but I have with me a copy of what the Environment Agency has drawn up.

[Bill Wiggin (North Herefordshire) (Con)]

I would like briefly to share with the House the misery caused by the flooding in 2007, when the residents of Tenbury Wells were hit three times by something that was evil in its outcome. I thank my hon. Friend for her excellent campaigning and wish her every success and more power to her elbow in a wonderful place that has suffered so badly.

[Harriett Baldwin]

I very much appreciate my hon. Friend and neighbour’s support for the campaign.

The Tenbury Wells scheme is feasible and deliverable, incorporating some wall around the church and a bund around the burgage and in other key places. Under the existing cost-benefit rules, the scheme would attract only about £1 million of flood defence grant in aid. Sadly, it was not built in time for the floods that struck this February, which were the worst for 13 years. The community did a remarkable job. They helped everyone affected, as did the local councils—the town, district and county councils—the local emergency services and the highways and waste collection teams. They were all outstanding, but the fact remains that 190 homes and businesses were again damaged and many closed, including the newly opened post office. As there was no time to repair the flood damage before the lockdown started, some people have had to spend the lockdown in flood-damaged homes. Central parts of the community’s fabric were also badly damaged, including the famous Chinese gothic pump rooms where the town council meets, the town’s swimming pool and the beautiful Tenbury Regal Theatre. In fact, the only thing that was not damaged was the amazing, resilient spirit of the town.

So we need to act. This wonderful market town serves a rural area for miles in every direction. It cannot help the fact that hundreds of years ago it grew up on a floodplain. If we want Tenbury Wells to thrive for hundreds of years to come—and we do—it needs a permanent flood defence. The temporary barriers that are deployed in Bewdley will not suit Tenbury Wells because the flood waters rise too suddenly and unpredictably. The Environment Agency says in its own report that the variable terrain, combined with the flood depth and the length of barrier required, mean that temporary barriers would not provide an effective or robust solution. Of course, the cost has risen to nearer £5 million, although I am sure that, just as in Severn Stoke and Callow End, local farmers and builders would be happy to help to bring down the cost of the booms. Because Tenbury Wells is a small town of fewer than 4,000 inhabitants, it will never meet the national formula, which puts so much weight on houses protected. It is a formula that cannot capture the key role that this market town plays in the much wider area around it.

So Minister, let us agree a plan of action tonight. The Environment Agency should start a consultation on its already drawn-up plans. They have been widely welcomed, but there are those whose objections and suggestions must be heard. And let us do it in a socially distant way—remotely, even: by post and internet if need be. I also welcome the interest shown in the scheme by the Woodland Trust, which has some good ideas about building leaky dams at the source of the Teme and planting trees along the catchment—the kind of natural upstream solutions that will be the kind of public goods that the Agriculture Bill will enable farmers to be paid for. The evidence is that, while these measures will not stop the flooding, they can reduce the peak of flood events by about 20%, although they would clearly only complement a permanent flood defence.

Let us bring together all the sources of funding: the county council capital budget, the local flood resilience levy fund and the £120 million in capital announced for schemes that do not meet the formula. I would welcome some clarification from the Minister this evening on how to bid for that fund. This is something that the town itself would be prepared to contribute to, and the Heritage Lottery Fund is going to be approached to help to protect the town’s heritage. There will be section 106 money from the new housing in the town and, of course, that help in kind from local farmers and builders. The Environment Agency does a wonderful job of supporting this process, and then we can put the scheme in for planning permission—this year, I hope. Once that process is complete, I believe that it is ambitious but feasible for the scheme to be shovel-ready next year. So Minister, I urge you to ask your officials—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Order. I cannot let the hon. Lady do that twice. I have let her do it once. We have a lot of new Members who, during this unusual time, seem to think that the normal procedures, courtesies and rules should be flouted, but the hon. Lady knows how to behave in the Chamber. She cannot address the Minister directly. She knows she cannot do that, and I implore her please to get it right so that I can use her as an example for Members who do not behave so well.

[Harriett Baldwin]

Thank you so much for that guidance, Madam Deputy Speaker. As you will recall, it has been some time since I held an Adjournment debate and I am grateful for the refresher course on etiquette. Through you, Madam Deputy Speaker, I urge the Minister to ask her officials to back this plan, and to back a solution that has eluded all her ministerial predecessors so that she can make her illustrious mark on the hundreds of years of history of this wonderful market town. Then, whether it is at a future mistletoe festival, Applefest celebration or Tenbury agricultural show, you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and through you the Minister will be given a garlanded welcome for the rest of your lives, whenever you choose to visit the beautiful town of Tenbury Wells.

River Severn Flooding

Harriett Baldwin Excerpts

Wednesday 11th March 2020 Westminster Hall

[Daniel Kawczynski]

My hon. Friend raises a pivotal issue. The irony is that many parts of our country are badly economically hit because of a lack of water. In this day and age, we ought to be able to devise a system whereby we can properly manage water and ensure that it can be better utilised for areas lacking it while protecting our constituencies.

[Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)]

I, too, congratulate my hon. Friend on his proposal and I support it from Worcestershire. Does he accept that it is also important to look at the tributaries of the River Severn, such as the River Teme, which affected Tenbury Wells on this occasion, and the River Avon, which flows into the Severn.

[Daniel Kawczynski]

I am very conscious of that and I hope that the Minister will take that point on board in her response.

I want to give the Minister as much time as possible to respond. I repeat that the River Severn is 220 miles long. It is the longest river in the United Kingdom. The River Severn basin has an area of almost 4,500 square miles that spans the English-Welsh border and runs across the west midlands before entering the sea at the Bristol channel. About 117,000 households, and more than 10,000 businesses, are considered to be within flood zones from the River Severn and its tributaries. The economic impact of the devastation that our businesses have been through is massive. In my constituency alone, there has been more than £1 million of damage and costs.

I am grateful to have had the chance to raise the issue. When I went to see the clear-up in my constituency, I do not think it is an exaggeration to say that I saw an extraordinary Dunkirk spirit. People of all ages came together and gave up their time to help their fellow residents and businesses. We had a “buy local” campaign over the weekend in Shrewsbury to encourage people to use the businesses that were adversely affected. The Minister knows how strongly we feel about the issue. The time has come for the Government to act on managing the River Severn.