Flooding

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Monday 24th February 2020 Commons Chamber

[George Eustice]

I am conscious of the point that my hon. Friend makes, and indeed that was made to me by residents when I visited York with the hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) at the weekend. For houses built in recent years, we have known about potential flood risk, and that should have been factored in in the planning system. So it would be rather extraordinary for there to be modern-built houses where the risk is so high that they cannot get insurance.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

A quarter of all the families who were affected across the whole of the United Kingdom were in one local authority in Wales, Rhondda Cynon Taf, including my own patch. Many of those people, in very poor communities, have no insurance because they have to choose between putting food on the table and paying the insurance bill, so they have lost literally every single thing that they had. We have a massive bill for the local authority of more than £30 million just to put the culverts right, to dredge the rivers and to sort out the bridges that have fallen into the rivers. That is twice the capital funding allocation for the whole council for a year. We need money from the Government. We do not want talk of mutual aid; we need money and we need it now.

[George Eustice]

The hon. Gentleman will be aware that flooding and response to floods is a devolved matter and therefore in the first instance is a matter for the Welsh Government, but I am aware that he and others have raised some concerns about funding, and of course if the Welsh Government were to approach my colleagues in the Wales Office that is something that could be considered.