Managing Flood Risk

Crispin Blunt Excerpts

Monday 3rd March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Richard Benyon). I agree with his advice to listen to experts; we have just had the privilege of listening to his expertise from his undersung time as Minister with responsibility for these issues.

I speak as one whose home has flooded; what I bring to the debate is the ability to speak as someone who has had that misfortune. I am slightly confused about the number of people who have been flooded in this round of utterly dreadful weather. The number of people flooded in Kent and Surrey around the Christmas period appears to be 7,500. Now we are being told that the number is about 7,000 for the whole country, although many hundreds of homes in various constituencies have been flooded since then. Will the Minister give us the numbers and say on what basis a comparison is being made between the 55,000 who were flooded in 2007 and the number who have been flooded this time?

The central point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury was that a great number of people owe the security of their homes to the measures that have been taken since 2007, and he was correct. Given how awful the weather has been, we should reflect that things could have been a great deal worse. In common with what other Members have seen, my experience of having been flooded has been that friends and neighbours have been absolutely terrific in rallying round. I am grateful to my immediate neighbours for the help that they afforded me and my family on Christmas eve and subsequently.

I also want to commend—I declare an interest, of course, as a flood victim—the exemplary behaviour of the insurance industry in my case and all the others I have seen. It appears to have stepped up to the plate and done what it was supposed to do. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull East (Karl Turner) says from a sedentary position that it has not. Obviously, I would want to see that evidence and look forward to him making it clear. All I can do is reflect on my own experience and other reported cases. It is very easy to bash the insurance industry, but according to the evidence available to me it seems to be doing everything it should in the current circumstances.

I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury on the Flood Re legislation. I note that the Select Committee’s report states that there should be a requirement to detail exactly how the scheme will work, but I assure my hon. Friend that it has been an absolute lifeline for people in my position that the value of our principal asset has not been utterly destroyed. Many thousands of people are immensely grateful for the work he has done in bringing that scheme to the starting gate.

I also want to place on record my thanks to the Government for the measures they have taken during the course of this crisis. The £5,000 grant to make my house, along with all the other houses that have been flooded, more resilient is immensely sensible. I want to take some measures, but they are plainly not insured so the insurance company will not be able to address them. The grant is, therefore, of immense help. I am certain that my reaction will be mirrored by everyone else who has been flooded. It is a really sensible, helpful proposal by the Government. From what I have seen of how people can apply for the scheme, it is being managed appropriately. Council tax relief for people who are no longer able to occupy their homes is also entirely reasonable.

I want to make two central points, one of which picks up on those made by the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas). She spoke of the need for us as a country to invest sensibly in flood protection and I agree entirely with her. The Pitt review was right and the scale of our investment in flood defence needs, to be frank, a step change. It has been said that an increase of £20 million a year is needed over the course of 25 years to get to the right level. Given how fast the climate seems to be changing, however, I do not think that is enough. We need to get to the level of expenditure envisaged by the Pitt review rather quicker than the 25 years he recommended when he wrote the report. That seems to be self-evident.

As a number of hon. Members have suggested, this is a sensible investment measure because it will result in huge savings. We ought to look at the expected 8:1 return currently being examined by the Environment Agency with regard to investment schemes and the cost-benefit analysis. That does not seem right to me.

I agree with the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion on some matters on which we have co-operated, but I am afraid that I buy Lord Lawson’s general approach. There is a limited amount that the United Kingdom can do on its own to address global climate change. We have to try to carry the other nations of the world with us in order to do what we can to try to improve the climate, but I agree with his general proposition that limiting our ability to grow our economy and to have the wealth to create the protection schemes would be the wrong approach. If we hobble our economy by trying to reduce climate change through occasionally economically illiterate energy schemes, we will simply not be able to afford flood defences or have the money to defend ourselves against the consequences. It is also highly unlikely—we would be extremely lucky if this happened—that we would be able to carry the Indians, the Chinese and the rest of the world with us towards the standards we will deliver in Europe.

[Caroline Lucas]

It is precisely the people who seem to think that investing in the green economy is somehow a distraction from getting out of our economic difficulties who are economically illiterate. If we put resources into the green economy—insulating every home and properly investing in renewable energies—it will be good for the economy. The green economy is the one bit of the economy that is doing pretty well, so it is a false dichotomy.

[Mr Blunt]

It is not, if Governments of all hues are tempted to decide which particular subsidy they give to which particular scheme, regardless of their environmental merits in continuing to reduce greenhouse gases. That is what we have seen: when we are in positions of Executive authority, we are all tempted to have our pet schemes to deliver. We should always look to reduce the totality of our contribution to carbon change, consistent with what can be delivered around the rest of the world, so that the whole world acts together. We should not unfairly handicap ourselves, but try to carry the rest of the world with us, and allow the market to make a sensible decision about how we address humanity’s contribution to climate change.

In his extremely good speech, my hon. Friend the Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous) elucidated all the very sensible measures that ought to be taken by any community facing flood risk. I can only commend his speech to other hon. Members and to all those interested in this field.

From my experience, I know that the only way my home can be protected is if the schemes happening around Gatwick airport, the area from which the water comes down the River Mole to me, are decent floodwater storage schemes. They need to be properly designed by the Environment Agency to ensure that the water is stored and not simply poured off the second runway—God help us if we get it—and sent downstream to flood communities living below Gatwick.

I know that the Environment Agency has taken a kicking from many quarters, but I must say that from what I have seen it appears to be the best reservoir—that is the right term—of expertise for our country. We should support and use it, and I commend the work of the officials I have met. I am delighted to see my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury nodding: if he is nodding, I am pretty satisfied that that judgment is right.

Having declared my interest, I conclude by thanking the Government for the way in which they have managed the crisis over the past two or three months. The proposals that they have put in place, which are inevitably for the short and medium-term, are what I would expect the Cobra co-ordinating mechanism to do in the circumstances. However, there is a long-term issue to address: the scale of our country’s investment in flood defence is not adequate, as was identified between 2007 and 2009, and I suggest that we need to address it faster than we currently propose to do.

--- Later in debate ---

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

What a serious and well-informed debate this is, and what a serious and well-informed speech the hon. Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston) has just made. This has been an excellent debate and I pay tribute to many Members for their contributions, including the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas).

I echo the remarks made by the hon. Member for Totnes about fishermen and the fishing communities. She made a very important point. We often think about farming communities and businesses, but overlook what is happening in the fishing communities. That point was also made in the good debate that we had in Westminster Hall on Wednesday morning, but it was good that the hon. Lady made it again here today.

The hon. Member for Newbury (Richard Benyon) made some excellent points about land management and, as is his wont, spoke powerfully about dredging. I also pay tribute to the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart) who spoke powerfully about climate change and the recent report, the launch of which he had attended.

It is a rare occasion indeed when one can know with certainty in advance of a debate in this Chamber that there will be absolute unity among all three parties and that the Minister and the shadow Minister will agree with the Chair of the Select Committee and each other about matters under discussion. Today we have what may in other circumstances be called a prenuptial agreement. Before the Minister—and indeed his colleague, the Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the hon. Member for Camborne and Redruth (George Eustice)—and I were appointed to our current roles, we sat under the watchful eye of the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Miss McIntosh) who introduced this debate most excellently as Chair of the Select Committee. It is the report of that Select Committee that we all discussed, agreed and signed up to.

The question is whether Ministers have effectively translated the views and recommendations of the Select Committee, which we know they believed and accepted before they submitted to the yolk of ministerial office, into effective departmental policy. Have they followed through on what they actually think and have they done what they said was needed? Well, they have not. Here is what the Ministers both know and believe, as set out in the Select Committee report:

“Funding has not kept pace in recent years with an increased risk of flooding from more frequent severe weather events, and the relatively modest additional sums to be provided up to 2020 will not be sufficient to plug the funding gap.”

They signed up to that in the light of the disastrous decision to cut the flood defence budget in 2010. The Labour Government had left a budget of £670 million. After the election, the coalition partners agreed to reduce that current 2010-11 budget to just £573 million.

[Mr Blunt]

Labour may have left a budget, but the problem is it did not leave any money.

[Barry Gardiner]

I pay tribute to the hon. Gentleman for his remarks, because he speaks from personal experience. None the less, the Prime Minister is saying now that money is no object. Many people who have been affected by the floods may feel that it would have been better to say that that money should have been spent not on clearing up the mess but on preventing the flooding from being so devastating in the first place by ensuring that the defences were in place.

[Mr Blunt]

The point is that it is pretty remarkable that the Government, faced with the financial circumstances of 2010, managed to sustain capital expenditure on flood defences. Having experienced the pressures inside Government, and seen what was being demanded of other Departments, I think that that was a fairly remarkable achievement.

[Barry Gardiner]

I have to say to the hon. Gentleman that the figures belie that. In 2011-12, there was a budget of £573 million; in 2012-13, £576 million; and in 2013-14, £577 million. The budget for 2014-15 is £615 million. Over the four-year spending period, the Government have allocated just £2.34 billion to flood defences, compared with £2.37 billion over the previous spending period. Those figures are not the ones that the Prime Minister used two weeks ago at Prime Minister’s questions, but they are the ones set out clearly by the independent Committee on Climate Change in its policy note on 21 January, used by the House of Commons Library in its briefing on flood defence spending and set out by the UK Statistics Authority just six days ago. They can even be corroborated on the website of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs in the correction it had to put out after the Secretary of State and the Prime Minister both “mis-spoke”. As the UK Statistics Authority reported last week, the flood defence budget has seen a real-terms cut of £247 million in this spending period. The Committee was absolutely clear about the risk from the reduction of flood defence funds. Last October, in their official response to the report, the Government said:

“In the context of the wider need to pay down the deficit, we believe this is an excellent outcome and demonstrates the priority this Government attaches to managing flood risk.”

Well, yes, it certainly does.