Winter Floods 2013-14

Debate between Chris Ruane and Dan Rogerson

Thursday 8th January 2015 Westminster Hall

[Chris Ruane (Vale of Clwyd) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. I apologise for the fact that I may have to leave early. I am on the Infrastructure Bill Committee, which sits at 2 o’clock, although I have a little leeway from the Whip.

My constituency was flooded in the winters of 2012 and 2013. In 2012, more than 500 houses were flooded in St Asaph by a combination of three days of heavy rain, river flooding and a high tide. In the winter of 2013, the community of east Rhyl was flooded after 50-foot waves landed in an impoundment area, which subsequently burst and flooded 140 houses. Over the past two or three years, my constituency has had the second highest number of homes flooded in the UK.

This issue is of particular concern to me as the MP, Assembly Member Alun Jones, my local councillors and, most importantly, the residents and constituents of the Vale of Clwyd. I have taken a great interest in this issue since those floods. I have campaigned on it, spoken in Parliament, questioned Ministers through written and oral questions and had productive meetings with the Minister—I thank him for his comprehensive responses. I have had meetings with Welsh Government Ministers, Natural Resources Wales, the local authority and local emergency services about the flooding in my constituency.

I congratulate the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee on its report, and I thank the Government for their response. I will touch on a few of the issues raised by the Committee’s report and the Government’s response. Riparian ownership is a key issue. Knowing who owns what and who is responsible for what can be complex. In the coastal area of my constituency, the railway line runs only metres from the coast, so Network Rail, which cleans the ditches, Natural Resources Wales, Welsh Water, the local authority and local land owners are all involved. It can get complicated and there is often a lot of finger-pointing—people say, “This isn’t our responsibility; it’s their responsibility.” There is a lot of confusion. I welcome the Committee’s recommendations concerning the clarification of riparian ownership and who does what about cleaning and maintaining ditches.

Recommendations 10, 11 and 12 address the allocation of funding, which is a critical issue. As has been said, for every pound invested, £8 will be saved. If somebody said, “If you give me a pound, I’ll give you £8 back”, who in their right mind would not accept such a good deal? In coastal and low-lying communities, that issue is of absolute importance. Investment is crucial for protecting our properties, homes and communities.

To be critical of the Government, they have tried to cloud this issue in a number of ways. The graph of investment for the past 15 years shows a massive increase until 2010, as investment went up to £500 million or £600 million from about £30 million or £40 million. In 2010, a deliberate decision was made to cut back the funding. When questions were asked about the cut-back, the actual inflation rates were not used—I will not call it false accounting—so the Government were painted in a better light than they should have been. The Committee said that the additional funding was not actually additional but reallocated funding—money taken from here to there by sleight of hand. We need more openness and honesty about the funding of flood defences in the UK.

Investment should be increased and, as the Committee said, it should be transparent and open. Predictions should be made so that local authorities, Natural Resources Wales and the Environment Agency in England can rely on the funding and plan for expenditure on flood improvements because they take a long time to come to fruition. A lot of research must be done about the topography, geology and geography of the area and about displacement. If an improvement is made to one area of a coast, we must look at what will happen further down the coast. It takes a lot of time to get the resources and funding together, so long-term financial planning is crucial, and it needs to be improved.

The replacement of the statement of principles—the Flood Re scheme—should have been finished in July 2013. Labour introduced the scheme in 2007 because after the Gloucestershire floods we realised that people needed help. The Government came to power in 2010, and they had three years to replace it. They went right to the wire, and beyond, as the deadline was extended from July 2013 to August 2013.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Dan Rogerson)]

The hon. Gentleman has made a number of points, and I will address as many of them as I can later, but the issue of Flood Re is particularly important. It is a very different system to the statement of principles, which it replaces—and the hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to point out that the previous Government put it in place. But there was nothing in train when the Government came to power to bring forward the Flood Re system, which will be established this year. We have moved a huge distance, and it is a shame that the hon. Gentleman is painting it in a negative light.

[Chris Ruane]

It is not just me who is upset about it, but my constituents. After the 2012 floods in my constituency, I spoke to a young mother in St Asaph, whose insurance increased from £269 to £1,269 per year and whose excess increased from about £500 per incident to about £10,000 per incident. Hopefully, the issue will be settled by next summer. A cap on the flood element of household insurance of approximately £200 for the lowest band will be introduced, and we are grateful for that. However, in the two years since 2012, my constituents have had to pay enormous excesses and they have had enormous increases in their premiums. They are ordinary people—it is not a rich community. In fact, east Rhyl has an elderly population on fixed incomes, who do not have the privilege of being able to reach into their back pockets and stump up the additional amounts that the insurance companies require. The issue should have been settled two years ago and it has not been, although I welcome the fact that it will be.

Flooding

Debate between Chris Ruane and Dan Rogerson

Wednesday 26th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Chris Ruane]

On the matter of improving flood defences. Pitt recommends not building on flood plains, and in 2008-09 we had a 25% reduction in the number of houses built on flood plains. The figures are unavailable for 2012 and 2013. Why?

After dealing with funding, the issue I turn to now is one that was mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn): the importance of not only putting in place these big £7 million concrete defences but looking at softer, more sustainable ways to improve flood defences. I point to an excellent recent article by George Monbiot in The Guardian. There is huffing and puffing in the Chamber, but he made many excellent points, and I flushed out the issues that he addressed with about 20 parliamentary questions. I will come on to some of the answers in a moment.

In the article, Monbiot referred to Pontbren in Wales, where farmers have engaged in linear contour planting of trees, to provide some shade and shelter for their sheep. What they noticed, after they had provided that shelter, is that flooding in the flood plain was down by 29%. Planting trees on just 5% of the hillside led to a 29% reduction in flooding in the flood plain; even if trees were planted on 100% of the hillside, there would only be a 50% reduction in flooding. We need specific targeted measures for such linear contour planting in the catchment areas of our big rivers, and even our little rivers. It would be a sound investment. A line of trees that has been planted is 67 times more effective in getting rainwater into the ground than grass alone.

The funding is there. The funding for the common agricultural policy needs to be looked at. We need to be a strong voice in Europe, arguing that CAP funding can be used for afforestation in upland areas. We are creaming off 10% in England for this purpose, and we should be allowed to use that money to say to farmers and relevant bodies, “Plant these trees in these catchment areas and stop this water coming down and wrecking lives and households.”

This is not just a Welsh Government issue—

[Dan Rogerson]

rose—

[Chris Ruane]

No, I will not give way. I have had meetings with Alun Davies, the Welsh Minister with responsibility for flooding, and I was really pleased with his response. I would like to have a meeting with the Minister, who has responsibility for flooding, and I hope that he will say yes in his winding-up speech to such a meeting. No assessment has been made by his Department of the impact that afforestation has on flooding. The Department for International Development is sending experts out to Nepal to tell people there how to deal with flooding, but it is not sending its advisers 500 yards down the road to DEFRA to tell the officials there how to do it.

This is a serious issue. It has big effects for seaside towns, because the water that is percolating through the Welsh hills is pure and when it ends up on the coast it is not infected with sheep faeces or whatever, and we get clear readings for our mandatory bathing water standards. It is a win-win situation.