Winter Floods 2013-14

Debate between Chris Ruane and Rebecca Harris

Thursday 8th January 2015 Westminster Hall

[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.

[Rebecca Harris (Castle Point) (Con)]

On the hon. Gentleman’s point about people being unable to cope with the large excesses that they have been charged, my constituency has had two successive floods and a lot of my residents who were flooded last summer did not make a claim. They paid for it themselves and kept quiet about it because they were concerned that it would affect not only their insurance premiums but the potential sale of their houses in the future.

[Chris Ruane]

I thank the hon. Lady for that intervention. That might be possible if the flood waters just lap over the person’s front garden or run just underneath their floorboards, but it is not possible when they have five feet of water in their house. The floods in my constituency were serious. In St Asaph, a 92-year-old lady died in five and a half feet of water. These are serious issues that require the Government’s serious consideration.

The communities in east Rhyl and St Asaph responded tremendously. One of the few good things to come out of the floods was the community spirit that was engendered. Some individuals were heroes, such as John Wyn Jones. His own property was threatened, but instead of securing his valuables, he was out there on the flood bank warning everyone to get out of their homes. He was washed off the edge of the flood bank into his own estate—thank God it was that way and not into the river—by a one-metre wave.

Among other local residents involved in the aftermath, Colin Marriott has been a fantastic researcher and has challenged the local authority, Natural Resources Wales, the Welsh Government and me with facts and figures, bringing his evidence to bear to ensure that when remedial measures are taken to improve the flood banks in St Asaph, they will be taken correctly. I pay tribute not only to John Wyn Jones and Colin Marriott, but to dozens of other local people in St Asaph who helped during the floods and to the community as a whole, which came together and raised hundreds of thousands of pounds.

The same was true in Rhyl. The town council opened a flood fund and, if I may put it like this, funds came flooding in, to be distributed among people affected. I pay tribute to the mayor of Rhyl, Andy Rutherford, who organised the fund, and to local residents who, again, have been at my heels and at the heels of the local authority, the Welsh Government, the Assembly Member and the councillors. For example, I spoke to Charles Moore on Monday, and he and other residents have been ensuring that we do our jobs. That is why I am in the Chamber today, to do my job representing their views in the Houses of Parliament. What they want to see, however, is not my hot air, or that of Ministers or whoever, but action. The key to that is investment.

Moving on to the points made in recommendations 3, 15 and 16 of the report, which concern river maintenance and natural environmental land management, that is a key to improving flood prevention in an environmentally sensitive and, dare I say, cheap way. I was switched on to this by George Monbiot, in a fantastic article from The Guardian or The Observer. I know that he is not the farmers’ best friend, but what he said in the article about contour planting made sense.

Contour planting is the planting of trees along a contour line of a vale or valley so that when the water falls on a mountainside or hillside and rushes down the slope, it does not go into the river, rivulet or stream and on into the sea, but hits the contour planting of trees or bushes and is then vired underground. George Monbiot, in his article, said that such planting is 67 times more effective in viring water underground than a meadow is. The beauty of such a scheme is that the whole mountainside does not have to be planted; only 5% planting will result in a 30% drop in flooding and in rainwater hitting the rivers further down the valley. Planting the whole mountainside would reduce flooding by 50%, but only 5% planting along a specific contour can achieve massive reductions in flooding in our vales and valleys, such as the Vale of Clwyd.

Contour planting was pioneered by farmers in south Wales, although they were not planning for flooding. The farmers wanted a barrier of trees, shrubs or bushes behind either side of which their sheep or cattle could hide during storms or high winds. They noticed incidentally, however, that flooding was reduced. The idea was therefore pioneered in Wales and we should learn from it. It is a Welsh solution to a UK or even international problem.

I met with the Welsh Minister responsible for flood defences, Carl Sargeant, on Monday, when he visited east and west Rhyl. I mentioned contour planting at a meeting I had secured with him and the Assembly Member, Ann Jones, to discuss the issue in Wales, but it is too important an issue not to have any cross-border co-operation possible between the Minister present in the Chamber and Welsh Ministers. We also need the Environment Agency in England and Natural Resources Wales to co-operate on such schemes, because many Welsh rivers run through England and many English rivers run through Wales. We need a degree of co-operation.

Contour planting definitely needs to be looked at and schemes piloted. There would be an additional benefit for seaside towns with estuaries and rivers in their hinterland. Towns such as Rhyl have failed to achieve the higher European standard for water bathing quality because of the impact of agriculture in the hinterland. I do not want to be too rude, but when horses, cattle and sheep defecate and urinate or whatever, that gets washed down into the river and is smeared along the coast, possibly altering the readings for bathing water quality. If contour planting took place, some of that water would be vired underground and naturally filtered, so that there would be a better chance of seaside towns, many of which are struggling, having better water quality. Many of those towns are there only because of the quality of their water; they were established between the 1850s and 1950s because of the popularity of bathing. If they do not reach the higher standards, the towns will be penalised in economic and tourism terms. Contour planting is a win-win situation and we should at least start to pilot such schemes.

I pay tribute to the Welsh Government Minister, Carl Sargeant, who visited my constituency on Monday. He announced £1.9 million of additional Welsh Government funding for the extension of coastal sea defences in Rhyl. The Welsh Government have already spent £7 million on raising the harbour wall by more than 1 metre. They now hope to extend that by 450 yards towards the town centre. They have also spent £4 million on raising the banks of the River Clwyd. All that is welcome.