Humber Flood Risk Management Strategy

Alan Johnson Excerpts

Tuesday 1st July 2014 Westminster Hall

[Alan Johnson (Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your distinguished chairmanship, Sir Roger, and a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis).

Floods do not recognise constituency boundaries. We Members of Parliament from across Hull, the East Riding and north and north-east Lincolnshire have come together because we are united with the local authorities, the local enterprise partnership and the Environment Agency in our diagnosis of the problem and our analysis of the solution.

The floods of 5 December 2013 were not unfamiliar to Hull. We were hit by devastating rainfall, along with the whole of the East Riding, in June 2007, when the problem came from the sky, not the sea. All the flood defences held and no rivers overflowed. A month’s rainfall fell in a couple of days, affecting 8,600 properties, 20,000 people and 1,300 businesses. What unites the two events? Various figures are thrown about as to whether the probability is one in 100, one in 200 or one in 1,000, but let us take a conservative view. The two events are united by the fact that in both 2007 and 2013 we were told that the chance was one in 100, so in Hull we had two one-in-100 events in seven years. That leads the population, as well as their political representatives, to question the whole basis of what constitutes sufficient flood defences. In 2007, one man died in Hessle in my constituency: he was trapped in a drain while trying to clear a blockage. Thankfully, such a tragedy did not happen again in 2013.

The term “above ordnance datum” is new to me—I hope that I pronounced it correctly—but one thing we discovered in December 2013 was that the defence at Albert dock was for a surge of 5.04 metres above ordnance datum, but it was hit by a surge of 5.8 metres above ordnance datum. The first issue on which I would welcome the Minister’s reassurance is the need to raise the Albert dock defence. None of us disagrees on that. It will be an absolute priority by the end of the year, and it would be good to hear the Minister’s reassurance because it is the most important issue in my constituency.

The right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden is right: the Environment Agency says that it got it wrong on 5 December 2013, in terms of the scale and the timing. It was amazing to see what happened. In my constituency, in the industrial area of Hull, Porter street went from completely dry to absolute deluge in four minutes. The severity of the flood was frightening. It hit a diverse range of businesses. It hit Smith & Nephew, a big, global, international company, which, incidentally, could base its manufacturing sites in other places, including China, if it believes that its business will be affected more regularly. The Indian restaurant on Hessle road was also affected and never reopened. The floods affected all those businesses across the centre of town.

The right hon. Gentleman emphasised this point, and I need to emphasise it, too: the floods were a warning. As the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart) pointed out, if the wind direction had been different, or if the floods had come two hours later at high tide, it would have been a devastating event because that was the highest water level ever seen in Hull—higher than 1953.

The Government publish the national risk register every year, and the last time—the only time since the war—a national emergency was declared in this country was the water surge in 1953. The surge on 5 December 2013 was bigger. The national risk register is of course updated every year, and the 2013 register makes coastal flooding the second biggest risk after a pandemic, which I will address in a second. The register states that 1953 was the only time that a national emergency has been declared anywhere in the UK, and it then states:

“A less serious storm surge of this nature happened in November 2007 without causing damage on the scale of the 1953 emergency.”

We now need to update the register, because a much bigger surge occurred on 5 December 2013. Thankfully, the surge did not cause the death and devastation that was caused in 1953, but it was a close-run thing.

I was Secretary of State for Health when a pandemic hit in 2009, which is not a comfortable place to be because the No. 1 risk on the risk register is—this is a horrendous thought for Government—people being confined to their homes and children being affected in schools. We thought that H1N1 was going to be such a pandemic. As things turned out, it was not, and now we look at that event as a dry run. We know things about Tamiflu and other issues that we did not know before. My message to the Government is that they have to view the tidal surge of 5 December 2013 in a similar way—as a dry run for what could happen if we do not address this issue effectively.

If we are to address the issue effectively, as the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden said, we need to consider the whole area, which is very diverse. Investment is coming into Hull from various quarters, including from Siemens, and Hull will be the city of culture in 2017. Incidentally, Hull is the biggest urban area in Yorkshire—it is the biggest city in Yorkshire if we just take the urban area of 311,000 people—but as I am sure the hon. Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy) will point out, we have places such as the Isle of Axholme, which has 20,000 people living on 21,000 hectares. The Isle of Axholme is one of the most under-populated areas, but in a sense the scale of the threat is like having something that could affect the Somerset levels and Bristol at the same time.

The document we are preparing to put to the Government is headed “Flood defences cost money, no flood defences cost more.” I hope that today’s debate, together with the meeting we are due to have with the Prime Minister next week, will record that the scale of the problem has been shown to be far greater than the defences allow. I am pleased to see my hon. Friend the Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner) on the Opposition Front Bench, because this is not just a Government issue; it is a long-term issue that affects any party that is likely to be in government. All three parties are represented here, and the issue has to be considered on that basis.

The right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden cited a figure of £888 million, which is of course £88 million a year over 10 years. He rightly said that Hull is closer to Rotterdam than to London—Hull may well have been a suburb of Rotterdam a couple of million years ago—so we look to the kinds of defences that we see across in Holland, and we believe that we are nowhere near having defences on such a scale. We are not throwing in requests for billions of pounds, and £88 million a year to bring us up to a one-in-200 defence, given the circumstances, given the national risk register and given what happened on 5 December 2013, must surely be a prudent amount of money for any responsible Government to spend.

--- Later in debate ---

[Martin Vickers (Cleethorpes) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Roger. I, too, congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) on securing the debate, which is vital to all of us here and to the whole Humberside region.

It seems to have been forgotten—as my right hon. Friend pointed out, it was certainly forgotten by the national media at the time—that the tidal surge in December was larger than the one in 1953. Thankfully, as has also been said, it was not as disastrous in terms of loss of life. Clearly, investment in flood defences has been effective, but, due to the weather conditions, we came within a whisker of a major catastrophe, so obviously more needs to be done.

The recent surge did a great deal of damage to the Immingham and Grimsby port complex, which is the largest in the UK: about a quarter of all rail freight moved here starts or ends in Immingham. Much of that freight—coal for power stations, oil and other essential products—is strategically vital. To be precise, the port handles about 55 million tonnes per annum, and approaching 20 million tonnes of oil and 10 million tonnes of coal. The country’s strategic supply of road salt is also stored in Immingham.

Members here are in danger of repeating the same statistics, because we all have the excellent document produced by our local authorities, which lists the seriousness of what could have been. The port director, John Fitzgerald, said that we might have faced major power cuts and food rationing. I invite the Minister to contemplate what the consequences would have been if action had not been taken. The cost to the national economy would have been immense. John Fitzgerald was referring to the fact that although the port was up and running again in just two days, a third, fourth or fifth day could have been extremely serious.

The impact on essential infrastructure, the supplies that pass through the port and the national and local economy could have been major. The port was left without electricity and extensive areas were flooded. The Environment Secretary visited Immingham on the afternoon of Saturday 7 December. With him, we heard at first hand from Associated British Ports and Environment Agency staff about the incidence of flooding, not just in Immingham and Grimsby, but in the villages of Barrow Haven, Goxhill and New Holland. We heard from the dockmaster for Immingham and Grimsby, and it is clear that he made exactly the right decision in opening the Grimsby lock gates at exactly the right moment, which prevented a large area of Grimsby and the north end of Cleethorpes, where thousands of terraced houses are situated, from being overcome.

The Humber flood risk management strategy identifies up to 400,000 people at risk from flooding, and just short of 200,000 of them live in the most deprived 20% of areas in the UK, according to the Government’s own statistics. It is also important to point out, as did my right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire (Sir Greg Knight), that agriculture is a significant industry in the area: there are more than 500,000 hectares of productive land in the Humber estuary, 97% of which is high-grade land. I reiterate the view that I expressed in my Adjournment debate in January, which has been repeated by many others: the experience of the farming community, including the work that they do on local drainage boards and the like, is invaluable in matters of flooding. Although a forum exists for farmers, there is a feeling in the agricultural community that their expertise is not used to best advantage. I urge the Minister to do all he can to put that collective knowledge to the best possible use.

It is not just existing industrial facilities that need protection; the estuary has been described by Ministers as having enormous potential, particularly for the renewables sector. The Government have supported that potential and we have had the investment from Siemens, the creation of the pan-Humber enterprise zone and the reduction of Humber bridge tolls. Only yesterday in Parliament, a special Committee began considering the final stages of the proposed development by Able UK on the south bank, which could bring a further 4,000 jobs to the area.

After the visit by my right hon. Friend the Environment Secretary, the Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Camborne and Redruth (George Eustice), and the Prime Minister’s flood envoy for the region, the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, my hon. Friend the Member for Scarborough and Whitby (Mr Goodwill), also visited the area. The Government certainly have plenty of information and expertise available from the local authority and the Environment Agency. It is clear that the whole estuary needs greater protection.

If we are to provide greater protection, as we must, the Environment Agency must be allowed to consider how best to improve the protection given to strategically important facilities such as the port, as well as to residential properties. In sparsely populated areas, the cost-benefit ratio will always be low, but if one’s house is flooded, that is no comfort whatever. If the Environment Agency or the Government constantly reel out the statistics, it can sound callous and uncaring to people whose homes have been flooded.

The focus of my short contribution has been industry, but my colleagues and I have all had the rather miserable experience of visiting people whose homes have been flooded. It is not just about the immediate impact; many months of misery are involved, and many people forced out of their homes in Barrow Haven and other areas, such as South Ferriby in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy), will remain in temporary accommodation until next year, and perhaps even beyond. That is simply not satisfactory.

[Alan Johnson]

On that point, the hon. Gentleman might like to know that some of the people affected in Hull in 2007 have only recently moved back into their houses. Flooding was followed by secondary flooding. I am sure that that also applies to people on Hessle foreshore in my constituency and in areas all around the patch. Such misery is almost unimaginable.

[Martin Vickers]

The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely correct. It is frightening to consider that people are still suffering in that way after six or seven years. As he also pointed out in his speech, floodwaters do not follow constituency boundaries.

We have been united in our approach to the issue. My right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden spoke about the united approach taken by local authorities. As those of us who live locally know well, the Humber can often divide communities, particularly political communities, but on this occasion we are absolutely united. The Government are putting together longer-term plans, and the figures—between £800 million and £900 million—have been quoted during the debate. I recognise that the Minister is not going to write us a cheque later today—