Oral Answers to Questions

Caroline Spelman Excerpts

Thursday 9th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Karl Turner (Kingston upon Hull East) (Lab)]

18. Which planned flood defence schemes will not proceed as a result of her Department’s planned reduction in expenditure on flood defences.

[The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Mrs Caroline Spelman)]

I am sorry to have to tell the House some sad news. A member of Environment Agency staff was tragically killed yesterday in an accident. I hope the whole House will join me in extending our condolences to his family at this difficult time.

No schemes have been cancelled as a result of the spending review. Schemes already under construction or under contract will be completed. The Department has launched a consultation on how national funding should be allocated to flood protection schemes in future.

[Toby Perkins]

May I associate myself with the Secretary of State’s remarks a moment ago?

In Chesterfield in 2007, more than 500 homes were flooded and it was expected, from DEFRA’s previous statement, that 145,000 homes across the country would be removed from flood risk by 2011. I understand that the date has now been moved back to 2015. Does the Secretary of State recognise that the reduction in funding for flood defences and the removal of those homes from that earlier expectation flies in the face of the comments that she and her party made in opposition?

[Mrs Spelman]

With respect, I think the hon. Gentleman is confused about the figures. The Chancellor in fact gave the figure of 145,000 homes as a minimum to be protected during the spending review period—there was never any suggestion that that would happen by 2011.

I know that the hon. Gentleman has constituents in Chesterfield who are flood-affected. The Environment Agency is currently proceeding with the Avenue coking works remediation project, which is under construction. That should help to provide protection to more than 100 properties in his constituency.

[Karl Turner]

One key recommendation of the Pitt review was that the Government should increase spending on flood defences by more than inflation year on year. With the Government’s 27% cuts to flood defence budgets, have they turned their backs on communities such as mine in Hull East, which is still suffering very badly from the effects of the 2007 floods?

[Mrs Spelman]

Sir Michael Pitt’s review, which was commissioned by the hon. Gentleman’s party when it was in government, says that we

“should not simply assume that the costs of flood risk management will be met centrally…The Government should develop a scheme which allows and encourages local communities to invest in flood risk management”

schemes. The Government have launched a consultation on payment for outcomes, which will help to provide more flood defences to more communities in future.

[Miss Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

May I join the Secretary of State in expressing my condolences to the family of the Environment Agency member of staff who tragically lost his life? I pay tribute to all those who put themselves in harm’s way in the event of floods. All who serve on the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee would like to record our appreciation of their work.

I congratulate the Secretary of State on protecting capital expenditure. However, I am concerned to ensure that work will continue on maintaining watercourses and that more work will be done, because that too can protect from floods. May I draw her attention to the fact that the statement of principles may well not be reviewed in 2013? Is she alarmed by that development?

[Mrs Spelman]

My hon. Friend is right, as Chair of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, to record the Committee’s sympathy for the EA staff member.

DEFRA is expected to spend £2.1 billion over the period of the spending review on flooding—half will go on maintenance, and the other half on capital—so I am confident that we can maintain our flood defences. The Association of British Insurers has warmly welcomed the proposals under the payment for outcomes scheme. That will assist us in renegotiating the statement of principles.

[Anne Marie Morris (Newton Abbot) (Con)]

I have mentioned the Teignmouth flood defence scheme to the ministerial team on a number of occasions. May we have an update? Will funding be made available for those very important works?

[Mrs Spelman]

I cannot comment on individual projects ahead of Environment Agency decisions, which it has said it will make after the end of the consultation period on payment for outcomes, which concludes on 16 February. However, my hon. Friend’s concern about flooding in her constituency is taken very seriously by all of us.

[Mr Jamie Reed (Copeland) (Lab)]

All on this side of the House share the condolences expressed by the Secretary of State for the Environment Agency worker who sadly lost their life.

I am afraid that the confusion mentioned by the Secretary of State is on the Government’s part. DEFRA’s 2009 report stated that 145,000 homes would be protected from flooding by March 2011. They have abandoned that aim because of huge cuts to the EA’s flood defence budget—27% next year—and instead now hope to protect the same number of homes by 2015, two years after the current agreement with the insurance industry expires. That deliberate choice to delay will cause widespread anxiety and uncertainty for homeowners, businesses and local authorities up and down the country. The Government should now be honest with the country: either they know which flood defence schemes will be abandoned and are aware of the consequences of those cuts, or the cuts are indiscriminate, and the consequences are not understood. Does the Secretary of State know which schemes will be abandoned—yes or no?

[Mrs Spelman]

I just said in answer to the previous question that the Environment Agency would make decisions on all pending schemes after the close of the consultation on 16 February. As regards the figure that Opposition Members keep quoting, at no point has the figure of 145,000 properties receiving more protection ever been attributed to a time any sooner than 2015, the end of the spending review period. It would be inappropriate to compare spending levels with those of the previous Government, because Labour has failed to say how it would have accommodated the 50% cut in capital that the previous Chancellor had committed it to.

[Mark Pritchard (The Wrekin) (Con)]

4. If she will bring forward proposals to prohibit the sale of primates as pets.

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[Stephen Gilbert (St Austell and Newquay) (LD)]

7. What progress her Department has made on implementation of the recommendations of the Pitt review on lessons learned from the 2007 floods on levels of flood protection for homes.

[The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Mrs Caroline Spelman)]

Good progress has been made on taking forward the Pitt review recommendations. We are implementing the Flood and Water Management Act 2010 and have recently launched a consultation on our national strategy. We published the national flood emergency framework in July, and held a response exercise last month to launch preparations for Exercise Watermark, which will test responses to severe wide-area flooding in March next year.

[Stephen Gilbert]

I welcome the Secretary of State’s reply and was delighted to welcome her to Cornwall so that she could see for herself the recent flooding in my constituency and that of my hon. Friend the Member for South East Cornwall (Sheryll Murray). One of the lessons we have learned is that the Met Office gave a warning at 10.30 pm of an 80% chance of flooding some six hours before homes were affected and businesses destroyed, but that warning was never passed on to residents. Will she agree to meet me to discuss how we can improve early warnings?

[Mrs Spelman]

I commend my hon. Friend’s work in helping with the ongoing recovery in his constituency. I am sure that hon. Members will appreciate that it is hard to predict surface water flooding events. In the afternoon of that event, there was only a 20% risk of severe flooding, but by 10.30 pm, when most people are in bed and asleep, it had increased to an 80% risk. One lesson learned from previous flooding incidents is that flood wardens, who can knock on doors and alert, in particular, vulnerable members of the community of the increased risk, can assist a community’s resilience.

[Lisa Nandy (Wigan) (Lab)]

Simon Douglas, the director of AA Insurance, was quoted in the Evening Standard as saying that “inadequate spending” on flood defences would

“leave thousands of homes uninsurable and thus un-mortgageable.”

What help will the Government offer to the thousands of people who will find themselves in that situation?

[Mrs Spelman]

I refer the hon. Lady to my earlier answer about the warm welcome that the Association of British Insurers has given to the payment for outcomes approach, which, as the ABI chairman made clear, is what Pitt called for, what the ABI has been calling for and what the communities that would like to build greater resilience have also been calling for. I am sure that it will assist those at risk of flooding.

[Susan Elan Jones (Clwyd South) (Lab)]

8. When she plans to publish a rural impact assessment in respect of the comprehensive spending review.

[The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Mrs Caroline Spelman)]

My Department is the rural champion in government, and we are working with other Departments as they develop their policies following the spending review. Those policies are the responsibility of individual Departments, but DEFRA will work with them to inform a policy statement in the new year, setting out this Government’s commitment to rural people, and our approach to promoting and supporting their needs.

[Susan Elan Jones]

I am grateful to the Secretary of State for her answer, but will she home in a little and give me one concrete example of something that DEFRA has done in this area?

[Mrs Spelman]

DEFRA is continually active in rural-proofing all policy that comes through, and hon. Members who have served in government will know that any Cabinet Minister has that function within their Department through DEFRA. The allocations have not yet been made, so the individual working out of the spending allocations has not been achieved. Let us consider, for example, the impact that DEFRA has had, working with the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, in achieving a roll-of out superfast broadband in four rural pilot areas.

[Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)]

The Department is facing deep cuts—34% in capital and 28%, I think, in current costs—thanks to the appalling profligacy of the previous Government. Does the Secretary of State agree that vital to our countryside is the maintenance of environmental schemes on our farms? We have got to preserve biodiversity and a higher level of environmental conditions in our countryside. I hope that she will be able to reassure the House today that despite the cuts, she will be determined to ensure that that still happens.

[Mrs Spelman]

I am delighted to be able to draw my hon. Friend’s attention to the fact that we anticipate an 80% increase in higher level stewardship schemes, notwithstanding the need for DEFRA to make a contribution to addressing the budget deficit that we inherited from the previous Government.

[Mr William Bain (Glasgow North East) (Lab)]

We had expected the publication of the rural impact assessment, but I am afraid that all we got was more weak excuses for the Secretary of State’s failure to produce it. If she is having trouble completing her own assessment, will she at least back the findings of last month’s report on rural poverty by the Commission for Rural Communities—soon to be scrapped by her Department—which found a lack of proper business support provided to farmers by the Government, poorer access to welfare services in the countryside and a quarter of farming households living below the poverty line, under the first Government since 1926 to try to remove employment protection from agricultural workers? Is not the reality that this is a spending review that slashes investment from rural bus services and social housing, from a Government who are indifferent to the greater inequality that their policies will cause in rural Britain?

[Mrs Spelman]

Oh dear. I think that constitutes a serious own-goal. The hon. Gentleman should surely be aware that the data that the Commission for Rural Communities was using to make its assessment relate to the period when his party was in government.

[Mr Gray]

Get back to jockland.

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[John Robertson (Glasgow North West) (Lab)]

10. What representations she has received on her Department's plans for its project to plant 1 million trees in the next four years.

[The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Mrs Caroline Spelman)]

Thus far, DEFRA has received around 100 e-mails from local authorities and community groups seeking information on or expressing an interest in the big tree plant campaign and a small number of letters from other individuals and organisations.

[John Robertson]

How much of the money received through privatisation will be spent in the areas of planted trees? How much of it will be spent north of the border, particularly in Glasgow?

[Mrs Spelman]

With respect, the question is about the big tree plant campaign, a partnership campaign that DEFRA will support with £4 million of public money. The campaign is being run in conjunction with a large number of partners and charities, including Groundwork, Keep Britain Tidy, the Tree Council and the National Forest Company. In every sense, it is a big society campaign.

[Sir Peter Soulsby (Leicester South) (Lab)]

Two hundred and fifty thousand a year sounds like a lot of trees, but not when compared with the estimated 250 million trees—1,000 times as many—owned by the Forestry Commission in England, much of which the Government are intent on selling off and putting at risk. Will the Secretary of State tell us what she will say to the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, who is actively campaigning against proposals to dispose of a similar proportion of Forestry Commission land in Scotland—a sale of trees that Lib Dems have described as “hugely flawed” and as a “money-making scam”?

[Mrs Spelman]

Let me say a couple of things in response to that. With the 250,000 trees a year planted as part of the big tree plant campaign, the challenge is that the majority will be in urban areas, particularly in deprived communities, so significant plantings in those areas will benefit those communities. As for the Forestry Commission, I suggest that the hon. Gentleman, rather than reading the newspapers as a guide to Government policy, should adopt the better-informed approach of waiting for the launch of the consultation proposals, which I have discussed closely and successfully with the Chief Secretary to the Treasury.

[Peter Aldous (Waveney) (Con)]

11. What recent discussions her Department has had on reform of the common fisheries policy; and if she will make a statement.

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[Andrew Rosindell (Romford) (Con)]

12. What recent steps her Department has taken to maintain the level of biodiversity.

[The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Mrs Caroline Spelman)]

We will act on agreements reached at the successful biodiversity conference in Nagoya through a new biodiversity strategy for England, which will be published alongside the natural environment White Paper in the spring.

[Andrew Rosindell]

Will the Secretary of State outline the Government’s policies on the protection of biodiversity in our 16 British overseas territories? In particular, will she tell us what the Government are doing to protect the biodiversity of the Henderson island, one of the Pitcairn Islands, where an appalling rat infestation has caused 25,000 chicks to be killed every year?

[Mrs Spelman]

I think that everyone in the House is well aware of my hon. Friend’s concern about, and interest in, the overseas territories. I am delighted to be able to tell him that while attending the biodiversity conference, and the day before, I was able to announce additional spending under the Darwin initiative and, specifically, help with the protection of the Henderson petrel.

[Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)]

13. What representations she has received on the proposed provision of a super-dairy in Lincolnshire by Nocton Dairies; and if she will make a statement.

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[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

T1. If she will make a statement on her departmental responsibilities.

[The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Mrs Caroline Spelman)]

I commend the work of those who volunteered their services during the extreme weather, particularly our farmers. I am sure that hon. Members on both sides of the House will agree that they provided a valuable service to many communities—from clearing snow to transporting midwives. That is a great example of the big society.

[Andrew Selous]

Will my right hon. Friend give the House a rough idea of the cost of food imported into the country that we are able, and have the capacity, to grow?

[Mrs Spelman]

In 2009 the UK imported indigenous food—food that could be grown in season in the UK—with a total value of approximately £15 billion. Total imports of food, feed and drink in the same period were valued at £32.5 billion.

[Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)]

The right hon. Lady’s colleague the Minister of State, who has responsibility for forestry, wrote to all MPs in October saying that he would consult the public on the sale of England’s forests before the end of the year. We now hear that he has postponed that consultation until the new year—yet in a parliamentary answer to me he revealed that he is busy meeting forestry companies on this very issue. When will the public get their say on the future of England’s forests?

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[Mary Macleod (Brentford and Isleworth) (Con)]

T3. Green spaces and trees are vital in our cities, and I am fortunate that my constituency has many beautiful parks, including Dukes meadows, Gunnersbury park, Osterley park, Boston Manor park, Syon park and Hounslow heath. Can my right hon. Friend tell me what plans the Department has to plant many more trees across the city of London?

[Mrs Spelman]

I invite my hon. Friend, and encourage her constituents, to participate in the big tree plant campaign, which was launched at the beginning of December and will continue, and for which there are publicly available funds. We will do this in partnership with a number of charities, and I imagine that they have members in her constituency. In participating, she will demonstrate the effectiveness of this big society approach.

[Jim Sheridan (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (Lab)]

T7. This Con-Dem Government propose to abolish the Agricultural Wages Board—a proposal that even Mrs Thatcher refused to implement. The Prime Minister suggests that because of the minimum wage the AWB is just a quango, but that “quango” covers workers’ wages, holidays, sick pay, overtime, standby arrangements and even bereavement leave. Does the Secretary of State agree that it is just a quango?

[Simon Hughes (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (LD)]

T4. Following the successful Nagoya conference on biodiversity and against the background of the current very important climate change conference in Cancun, can the Secretary of State tell us how she intends to take forward the protection of biodiversity, both in this country and internationally?

[Mrs Spelman]

As I said in response to an earlier question, the new biodiversity strategy for England will be published alongside the natural environment White Paper in the spring, to which we have had an astonishingly high number of contributions from the public: there have been in excess of 15,000.

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

T10. Given the Minister’s acknowledgement on Second Reading of the Sustainable Livestock Bill of the serious nature of the deforestation caused by the production of soy for livestock feed, what position will the Government take on reform of the common agricultural policy to reduce UK imports of soy?