Storm Chandra Flooding

Alison Taylor Excerpts

Wednesday 11th February 2026 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Dyke]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. I wholeheartedly agree. Every flooding incident is different and sometimes it is difficult to dictate where flooding incidents will happen, but there is certainly a lot more we can do. The Minister and I talked about the trigger points with the Environment Agency yesterday, which it has committed to looking at. I also agree that communication with local authorities and a collaborative, joined-up approach should be better.

I also feel that communities should have better real-time information on flooding. There is a really good example of that in the River Cam catchment, where flood monitors have been put on bridges and an app tracks the flow of water so that communities within the catchment are aware of any significant increase in the water levels. I hope that that can be rolled out so that our communities can be better protected and can better protect themselves in these instances of terrific rainfall.

[Alison Taylor (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (Lab)]

The hon. Lady is making an exceptional speech. There was an excellent debate this afternoon in Westminster Hall on tree planting, with thoughtful contributions from a number of Members. Does the hon. Lady agree that tree planting is essential not just to biodiversity, lowering temperatures and carbon capture, but for preventing flooding?

[Sarah Dyke]

In a previous life, before being elected to this House, I was the lead member for climate change and environment on Somerset council. Somerset has a lower-than-average tree canopy cover at 8%, compared with the national average of 14%, so we committed in our 10-year tree strategy to plant more trees. There are lots of community groups doing that across Somerset, including Reimagining the Levels, which brings together volunteer networks to plant trees. I was out on Ham Hill a couple of months ago planting 3,000 trees for exactly that reason: once those trees become established, they can soak in more moisture and play their part in slowing the flow through those catchment areas. I wholeheartedly agree with the hon. Lady.

According to the Environmental Audit Committee’s report into flood resilience,

“the UK is not on track to be fully…flood resilient by the time”

the Flood Re programme ends in 2039. It further states that without clear standards, flood resilience is just

“a vague ambition rather than a deliverable goal.”

I would appreciate the Minister’s comments on what she means when she talks about resilience, especially at community level. Some communities have spent time and money putting in place property-level mitigations but still face flooding. How can they better understand what it means to be flood resilient?

The memories of the devastating 2013-14 floods are still painfully vivid in the minds of those who experienced them. Following those floods, the Environment Agency carried out what was, at the time, the single largest pumping operation ever undertaken in Somerset. Following flooding in January 2023, the EA once again put in place another large temporary pumping operation on the levels and moors.

Woodland Creation

Alison Taylor Excerpts

Wednesday 11th February 2026 Westminster Hall

[Alison Taylor (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Lewell. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes North (Chris Curtis) for securing this worthwhile debate.

Scotland is home to some outstanding examples of both natural and created woodland. In my constituency of Paisley and Renfrewshire North, which is a mix of urban and rural geography, we have the Boden Boo woodland hidden below the Erskine bridge, which spans the River Clyde. I also love to visit the Finlaystone estate with my daughter. It is a vast woodland area on the border of the neighbouring constituency, that of my hon. Friend the Member for Inverclyde and Renfrewshire West (Martin McCluskey), and it sells Christmas trees during the festive period.

Woodland creation brings so many benefits, and I want to bring them to hon. Members’ attention today. We have all recently seen the devastating impact of flooding. In some places, woodlands can help to naturally manage flooding. They help slow down water reaching watercourses and ease the pressure on catchments. Growing trees trap harmful carbon dioxide and at least temporarily reduce the impact of our emissions from fossil fuels. Woodlands can provide a habitat for thousands of native species, from insects to small mammals and birds. They are especially important for pollinators such as bumblebees and butterflies, providing a safe refuge all year round and supporting insects with a reliable food source thanks to a rich diversity of pollen and nectar-producing plants.

There are very few communities around the UK that could not benefit from more woodland, and I am glad to lend my voice in support of long-term, ambitious commitments to woodland creation. Woodland creation is not just an environmental issue; it is about climate delivery, economic resilience, rural jobs and national security. The UK currently imports over 80% of the timber it uses, leaving us exposed to global price volatility and supply shocks.

However, there is a problem with the planting of conifer trees. Since 2010, broadleaf woodland has increased, but conifer woodland has declined in England. Only around 12% of new woodland creation has been conifer—far below the minimum of 30% that is widely cited as necessary for net zero and timber security. That matters because only fast-growing conifers will lock up meaningful volumes of carbon by 2050, and softwood provides the bulk of the timber the UK uses. Home-grown timber is strategically important to national resilience and security. Global supply is tightening and future demand is projected to outstrip supply, increasing international competition for timber.

In my former profession in the property industry, decarbonising construction has been a key priority over the last decade or so. I believe the property industry has leant into the environmental challenges ahead of the curve and used innovation to find solutions. Timber can reduce embodied carbon in buildings by 20% to 60% while storing carbon in long-lived products. Yet only 9% of new homes in England are timber-framed, compared with over 90% in Scotland—a major missed opportunity.

Timber is so important to jobs and growth—a priority of this Labour Government. Expanding productive forestry and domestic processing supports skilled rural employment, strengthens UK supply chains and keeps value in the United Kingdom. Nature and timber are not in conflict. This issue is too often framed as biodiversity versus timber, but the evidence is clear: this is not a binary choice. If we are serious about net zero, we must be serious about woodland creation. That means planting productive conifers as well as native trees. Without home-grown timber, the climate maths, the housing challenge and our economic resilience and national security simply do not add up.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mary Creagh]

We have given some consideration to the question of introducing the lynx. At the moment, they are classed as a dangerous wild animal under the Dangerous Wild Animals Act 1976, and all dangerous wild animals have to be kept in a fenced enclosure. A massive fenced enclosure would be needed for a lynx. At the moment, the policy in the legislation makes it challenging. We need to balance that and work with stakeholders. Like beavers, they are animals that need a range, a habitat and the ability to roam around and breed. The question is: what happens when they breed and produce offspring? One pair of lynxes could end up being eight or 16. What is the management plan going forward? There are certainly some policy wrinkles in that—I will come back to deer, but that would need to be in very large forests with a lot of room to roam.

To go back to Kew Gardens, I had the pleasure of spending an hour with Kevin Martin, who is the head of tree collections at Kew. He has been going over to Kazakhstan in central Asia to collect tree seeds and do research on the seeds of the future and what our changing landscape will mean as we have hotter, drier summers and warmer, wetter winters. I also went out with somebody to look at trees, and we looked at this amazing lime tree with all its heavy nectar. He said to me, “For bees, that is like having a meadow in the sky.” Our city trees and the lime trees that grow along the embankment might be a bit of a nightmare from an allergy and pollen point of view, but for the bees of our capital city, and all our great cities, they are meadows in the sky.

[Alison Taylor]

Does the Minister have any comment on the lack of conifers being planted and the need to have them alongside broadleaf trees?

[Mary Creagh]

We need woodland creation of all types. In 2024, the proportion of conifers being planted went up to 12% of tree planting, from 9% the previous year. We need productive woodlands as part of that. Non-native forests can provide biodiversity benefits and vital seed crops for mammals, red squirrels and birds. We are working towards increasing the rate of conifer planting because, as colleagues have said, its importance to timber in our construction industry cannot be overstated. We aim to publish a new trees action plan in 2026, which will set out how our Government’s £1 billion investment into tree planting and the forestry sector in this Parliament will be used to achieve the new 2030 interim tree cover target and improve the resilience of our trees.

Water Bill

Alison Taylor Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 28th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Alison Taylor (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (Lab)]

I am grateful to my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Norwich South (Clive Lewis) for bringing this important debate to the House. I could definitely hear him on the Back Benches, so I thank him for that.

In Scotland, thanks to a Labour Scottish Executive, water was retained in public hands. While that does not mean that everything is perfect in Scotland, it does provide a good comparison with England and Wales. Since privatisation, water bills in Scotland have been consistently lower than in England, and customer satisfaction is consistently highest for Scottish Water; all other water companies trail behind. My hon. Friend is right that it is time for a national conversation on the future of water management in the United Kingdom. The experience in Scotland and Scottish Water have much to offer in that conversation.

Water companies need to provide clean drinking water and remove and treat our waste at a reasonable cost over a sustained period. Those should be the measures that we use to determine whether a water company is delivering or failing. So much of our water infrastructure was established generations ago, and our demands and expectations have changed over time. It is staggering to think that so much of what we rely on today has largely remained unchanged since it was first laid down. There needs to be sustained investment in replacement and renewal.

I wonder whether the regulation in place has been sufficient to ensure that investment is made. Perhaps the previous Government were less concerned about the right balance between dividends for shareholders and investment in infrastructure, but this Government will need to take action to ensure that the mistakes of the past are not allowed to jeopardise the water system we need now and in the future.

Scotland is endowed with significant water resources, which contribute greatly to the national character and beauty of Scotland. My constituency of Paisley and Renfrewshire North sits on the banks of the River Clyde, which has seen significant improvement in water quality over the past 20 years. That is thanks in no small part to collaboration between the public water company and other agencies. They have co-ordinated their actions and invested in the long-term future of the Clyde catchment, all without the constraints of shareholder funds.

I do not want to pretend that everything in Scotland is always perfect. We have had issues with leakage and some notable uncontrolled discharges in my constituency, particularly in Inchinnan, but managing the water and, importantly, sewage is a complex business that requires long-term planning and investment. Scotland seems to have avoided some of the worst experiences of coastal communities in England, where untreated sewage has been released into water bodies almost daily. The small number of activists have been joined by many thousands more who regularly enjoy our coastal and freshwater environment.

In my role as a member of the Environmental Audit Committee, I was reminded of the source-pathway-receptor model for assessing environmental pollution. Even if the discharge remains the same, if the number of people exposed to it increases, the impact of the discharge increases, so the urgency of remediation increases. That is one factor at play in uncontrolled discharges from treatment works, and it is one reason why some of the practices that might have been appropriate in the past are no longer acceptable.

Like my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich South, I want the water industry to do better and be better. I welcome this debate. It poses many of the important questions that our water companies need to address, and I am sure that the Government will want to make substantial progress in this area in the years ahead. I thank my hon. Friend again for presenting his proposals to the House.

Support for the Scotch Whisky Industry

Alison Taylor Excerpts

Wednesday 12th February 2025 Westminster Hall

[Alison Taylor (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (Lab)]

Thank you for calling me to speak under your chairmanship, Dame Siobhain.

I thank the hon. Member for Moray West, Nairn and Strathspey (Graham Leadbitter) for calling this debate on Government support for the whisky industry, a measure that I warmly support. I have the good fortune to represent some important whisky names located in my constituency of Paisley and Renfrewshire North. Diageo has a major distribution centre, and at Hillington we have a fine example of a modern distillery established by the Glasgow Distillery in 2012, which is going from strength to strength. We have a well-respected and established independent bottler in Douglas Laing & Co, which has more than 70 years in the industry, Russell’s bonded warehouse and, I suspect, more than a few customers of the Scotch whisky industry. So my constituency, like many others in Scotland, has a significant association with whisky, which is a good source of quality employment, a driver of innovation and a source of pleasure.

Whisky is a craft, an industry and an important export; it is symbolic of Scotland’s landscape and beauty. I welcome the recognition that this debate brings, and I pledge to support this vital Scottish industry.