Managing Flood Risk

Debate between Crispin Blunt and Barry Gardiner

Monday 3rd March 2014 Commons Chamber

[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.