Water Bill

Debate between Lord Shipley and Baroness Northover

Tuesday 11th February 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Northover]

I hope to get an inspired answer any second in order to be able to tell the noble Lord. If I do not get inspired, I will write to him.

I remind noble Lords that the Environment Agency is already required, under Section 18 of the Flood and Water Management Act, to report on the delivery of the national flood and coastal erosion risk management strategy for England. These reports must include information on all sources of flood risk and coastal erosion, and cover the work of all of the relevant accountable authorities. To reassure the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, the Environment Agency helps to provide the national overview that he seeks.

My noble friend Lord Shipley suggested that we need to know better whether properties built since 2009 are flooding or making others flood. One of the benefits of the memorandum of understanding between the Government and insurers last year, which I will come on to in the next group, is that for the first time we will have access to claims from flooding. This information will be used by the Environment Agency and its equivalents to target flood risk investment and could be used to inform policy development. In this context, I also note what the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, said about his data sets. Clearly, the more information we have, the better. I am sure that those data sets will be of interest both to Defra and to the Environment Agency.

Let me see whether I am inspired by the note I have been handed.

Where the outcome is not known, which is what the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, is talking about, the agency is satisfied that there is no significant difference in the outcomes between those cases reported and those not reported by authorities. I hope that that reassures the noble Lord. It is, of course, important that all these areas continue to be probed, because everybody needs to be reassured that that is, indeed, the case.

Coming back to the assessments that are taking place, high-level reports are produced annually, with more detailed reports provided to coincide with the six-year cycle of the flood risk regulations. Further interim reports may be produced as directed by the Government to support policy decisions such as future government spending reviews. The Government also conduct regular reviews of the effectiveness of policy delivery. For example, a review of the impact of the new partnership approach to flood risk management funding has just concluded. There are also two reviews of flood risk management in progress at the moment and one at a scoping stage. I listened to the comparison by the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, of the situations in Abingdon and Keswick. My noble friend Lord Younger, who was in his place a moment ago, noted this with interest and passed me a very interesting comment, but I hear what the noble Lord said and I will make sure that his suggestion is fed through to the relevant authorities.

Coming back to the general reviews, in addition to those I mentioned, my right honourable friend Oliver Letwin MP is leading a review of the lessons learned from the recent flooding, particularly the tidal surge, and the other review is looking at the resilience of key infrastructure to major coastal flooding. Both of these are expected to complete in the spring. Defra is also scoping an evaluation of the effectiveness of the Flood and Water Management Act 2010, which I hope will reassure my noble friend and which will initially focus on local flood risk management. Under the Act, lead local flood authorities and other risk management authorities have a duty to co-operate with each other, as he noted, to ensure that constructive and active engagement takes place and helps to build local relationships between relevant authorities within and across operational boundaries. We noted what he said about Northumberland and Somerset. Work on this evaluation is anticipated to start later this year. We therefore feel that proposed new paragraphs (b) and (c) of this amendment would duplicate existing planned work.

I hope that my noble friend is reassured by what I have said and that he will be content to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Shipley]

My Lords, I am grateful to all those who have taken part in this debate. I shall just take up one question posed by the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, about whether this concerns only new properties. The amendment refers to new developments but, for the avoidance of any doubt, that includes any building post-2009, not any building purely in the future. I am very grateful for the Minister’s reassurances. We have to think further about what she said, in particular about the role of the Environment Agency as a statutory consultee and the extent to which that might be extended, but I think we could look at that again on Report, when we have had time to consider the points raised in greater detail. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.