Managing Flood Risk

Adam Afriyie Excerpts

Monday 3rd March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

I agree with my hon. Friend that whether or not climate change is taking place and is caused by human activity, there is no doubt that we are getting an increased number of events with increased rain intensity, and we must therefore have better defences against flooding. There is no reason in the 21st-century why we cannot have sewerage systems that cope with such events. In particular, as I shall come on to say, we need sewerage systems that will cope with new development, which often adds to existing problems.

There is a perception that the residents of the Cotswolds, who live 100 miles away from London but who are still in the Thames Water area, are getting a very poor deal. It is outrageous that all Thames Water customers will be charged an additional £70 to £80 a year for at least 10 years to pay for the huge Thames tideway tunnel, when we in the Cotswolds cannot get the increased investment we need to deal with sewage flooding. The regulator Ofwat has to look at that. The time for talking in the Cotswolds is over. Thames Water has had more than enough time to carry out all its design work. We need more sewerage investment.

Equally, we need the Environment Agency to take the lead in planning how to deal with catchment areas. An exchange took place with the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas). The answer is not just dredging, but considering the whole catchment area using all the keys in our locker to deal with the problem. That is what I am asking the EA to do in my constituency. For at least three years, it has been talking about coming up with an upper River Churn catchment area plan, but I have still yet to see that plan. Not only do we need to see adequate investment from the EA to deal with river flooding problems, we need to encourage Thames Water to invest adequately to tackle sewerage problems.

On new developments, we have, unfortunately, seen a rash of developers in my constituency. I accept that we all need new houses because the population is rising, but we need—I say this most emphatically to my hon. Friend on the Front Bench—new houses in the right areas. If we build houses on floodplains we cannot complain when we get subsequent problems. In South Cerney, for example, a recently passed new development is right next door to an estate that has had sewerage flooding problems. How daft is that? Fairford and Lechlade have each seen new developments passed for developments to be built on the floodplain. That is also daft.

We need to examine the system we have at the moment. The Environment Agency is a statutory consultee for large investment, but it has to take into account only one-in-100-year events when considering whether a development on a floodplain is viable. That is completely unrealistic and should rapidly be brought down to a design phase of one-in-25-year events. The statutory water undertaker, Thames Water, is not even a statutory consultee; it is consulted by the local planning authority often only as a matter of principle. Even then, all it has to do is to say that the sewerage system is capable of being connected to the new development, not whether the new development will make existing sewage flooding worse or whether the sewer needs upgrading. This is a legal grey area. Thames Water has been taken to court several times for trying to exceed its powers. I say to my hon. Friend the Minister: for goodness’ sake let us look at this and try to get the legal framework correct.

An even more important aspect of the planning system is drainage: sustainable drainage systems. We are building up for ourselves a huge and unknown liability from the lack of proper design of drainage systems. Currently, the local planning authority monitors the drainage system for a new development. Developers, with plenty of funds behind them, employ clever drainage engineers who take their percolation tests in the summer when everything is nice and dry—when, of course, the drainage works properly—instead of being made to take them in the winter when the water table is high. They then ask the developer for a section 106 payment. Often, that payment is inadequate. Under the Water Bill, as my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton knows, SUDS will have to be licensed by the county council. Until that happens, we have a huge and unknown liability from SUDS, which are often completely inadequate and designed for one-in-100-year events. I say again that they should be designed for one-in-25-year events. We should not be building willy-nilly on the floodplain without thinking seriously about what we are doing.

A lot of my constituents have difficulty getting insurance. The new Government Flood Re system will not cover houses built after 2009, so, in relation to all recent applications where houses have been built on the floodplain, we are creating a problem for ourselves. They will undoubtedly flood at some stage, yet the owners of those houses will not be able to get flood insurance.

I welcome the Government’s efforts to ensure that everyone who buys a house on a floodplain is aware of having done so, but it is one thing for people to be aware of it during the sunny summer months when they buy their houses, and a completely different thing for them to be aware of it in the winter, when the rain falls in bucketfuls.

[Adam Afriyie (Windsor) (Con)]

Like my hon. Friend’s constituency, mine has been pretty much under water. Does he agree that if we go ahead with many of the proposed flood alleviation schemes—the bigger schemes that are intended for the future, such as the extension of the Jubilee river all the way down to the Thames—far more land will come back into use, and we shall need better planning control to ensure that the flood meadows are not removed from the current system?

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

My hon. Friend is entirely right. If we concrete over vast areas, particularly on the floodplains, they will no longer be able to absorb water, which is what they were designed to do in the first place. In many instances, they were designed specifically as flood meadows. Worse still, in the event of heavy rainfall they will empty the water into the catchment very quickly. That is what has caused flooding downstream.

I suggest to the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion that we should consider the catchment areas as a whole, and decide how best to deal with what are to remain floodplains. In my constituency there is a scheme enabling water above Cirencester to be impounded so that it can be gently released when the rainfall has subsided. We should be doing much more of that sort of thing, because it is much cheaper than building expensive houses and then having to provide flood defences retrospectively.

Let me say to my hon. Friend the Minister that, while I commend what the Government have done, we need to look carefully at investment, particularly investment by the water undertakers. It is not a question of public funding; it is simply a question of equity between the profits that are given to shareholders and the profits that are reinvested in sewerage systems. I repeat that it is outrageous that Thames Water is being allowed to charge my constituents between £70 and £80 a year for the Thames tideway tunnel when they are not benefiting from the investment in sewerage flooding systems that they justly deserve.

Let us, for goodness’ sake, look at the planning system. Let us not keep building on the floodplains, because doing so is creating a great many uncertain liabilities for the future.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Liddell-Grainger]

My hon. Friend knows better than I do—he is a Somerset man; I am a usurper from Scotland—that this is an absolute tale of disgrace and woe. It is appalling, and not just one Government are involved; it goes back through many Governments, and it has been an absolute disaster. But he is right: we must sort out the pumps, the rhynes—ditches—the bunds and the dams. We must do this now. Unless this happens quickly, we will be back here, probably next year, with the Opposition asking, “What on earth did you get wrong?” It happened last year; it happened in 2000; it will happen again.

The most difficult thing that we must face is that, basically, everyone thought that Somerset was shut. We had half-term; tourism died completely. That affected the west country because everyone thought that the railway was shut and no one could get through. Therefore, we ended up costing the economy millions.

[Adam Afriyie]

My hon. Friend is making an impassioned speech, after a brisk rush from the train. Things are the same in my constituency; local businesses have been shut down. Some of the longer-term flood defences—the long-term plan to make our country more secure—would actually save the economy money. Perhaps not in the first five or 10 years, but over a 20-year time frame. If the Treasury put the money into schemes such as the lower Thames alleviation scheme, the money would be returned in savings from flood insurance, from businesses not closing and from savings across the economy overall.

[Mr Liddell-Grainger]

I could not agree more with my hon. Friend. His area has a slightly different type of flooding. We are almost unique. We have massive amounts of land to play with. We can put in the bunds, the pumps and all the rest. Unfortunately, there are buildings right up to the Thames, so there must be a different solution, on which I am sure that my hon. Friend is already making pretty good representations to the Minister, and he will continue to do so.

My hon. Friend’s fundamental point is right: flooding has cost this country millions in the past few months. We cannot ignore that. The Treasury must say what is the cost to the sixth-largest economy in the world of what we have lost. If we can write off the whole of half-term, what will things be like at Easter? We will not have the water cleared by Easter, and the railway will not be open by then. We will still face fundamental problems in Somerset. That will knock on to Devon and certainly Cornwall. Where will we be?

We must sort this out. Therefore, my right hon. Friend the Chancellor must take the brakes off. Allow us to put in our reports—on Thursday in our case, and I am sure soon after in the case of the Thames and many other rivers. The Vale of York needs to be looked after. If we do not get it right, we will be sitting here again discussing the same thing, and that is not acceptable.