Flooding

Christian Matheson Excerpts

Monday 7th December 2015 Commons Chamber

[Elizabeth Truss]

I agree with my hon. Friend’s tribute to the fantastic emergency service and Environment Agency staff who have been working round the clock to support people in the area. Our six-year programme will mean that an additional 420,000 acres of farmland will be protected. In the specific case of the flooding in the north over the weekend, we will look at what more can be done to help farmers.

[Christian Matheson (City of Chester) (Lab)]

Over the weekend and this morning I have been in contact with my hon. Friend the Member for Workington (Sue Hayman), who remains in her constituency, and she has given me some thoughts on the situation in that part of Cumbria. She is extremely grateful, as are her constituents, for the response of the emergency services. There is concern that an unintended consequence of reductions in front-line services, as well as cuts to local authorities and the Environment Agency, is that those emergency responses may not be possible in future. Will the Government give some thought to whether cutting local authority and Environment Agency budgets might damage the ability to respond to these events in future?

[Elizabeth Truss]

The response efforts over the weekend and the preparations put in place by the Environment Agency, the emergency services and Army personnel have been fantastic. They have been working their socks off on the ground to protect people, and we are all very grateful for what they have done. My role is to make sure that we are co-ordinating those efforts and giving the local teams all the support they need. On Saturday and Sunday I spoke to the gold command to ask whether they needed any additional support and resources, and whether all those resources have been made available. Of course, we will continue to monitor the situation to make sure that the resources are available on the ground.