Flooding

Debate between Diana Johnson and Chris Ruane

Wednesday 26th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)]

I am pleased that we have this opportunity to discuss flooding today, because 37,7000 homes in my constituency are at risk. I saw the pain, misery and damage caused by flooding when we were hit in Hull in June 2007. At that time, 8,600 households were affected, and 6,300 people had to move into temporary accommodation, including 1,400 who were accommodated in caravans for months afterwards as their homes were dried out, cleaned up and repaired, often after lengthy dealings with insurers.

I feel very sorry for all those people who are going through the trauma of flooding now. Until people go through it, they do not understand the awfulness of it, and the problems do not end when the floodwaters have receded. The anxiety, distress and depression will carry on for those families for months and years. I have met children who told me that they became anxious when they saw the heavy rain, because they thought that they might have to leave their homes again, or that they would not be able to get to school. I pay tribute to the National Flood Forum for the support that it offers to families after the floodwaters have receded.

We all recognise the importance of investment in flood defences. After the 2007 floods, I remember the Liberal Democrats, who were in control of the council in Hull, complaining that the Labour Government’s increased flood defence spending was not enough. However, it has now been confirmed that flood defence investment has fallen under this Lib Dem-Tory coalition. With estimates for the clear-up and repair costs from the recent flooding running at £1 billion, those cuts look like a classic example of a false economy.

In December 2013, an estimated 260 homes and businesses in Hull were flooded again following the east coast tidal surge. I want to ask the Government some questions about their response to the recent floods, and their provision of discretionary assistance to homes and businesses hit by that flooding. Initially, there seemed to be lots of Cobra meetings but very little action, whereas in June 2007, Hull heard about the extra flood aid in just two weeks and we had an early visit from the Prime Minister as well. After the December east coast tidal surge, it took two months, and the playing fields of Eton to be flooded, before Hull heard about the extra £5,000 help for homes and businesses.

Why does the current support for householders go only to home owners and not to tenants? As I understand it, the money has to be spent on flood resilience measures. Will the Minister explain how that will be checked? Will councils also be able to get money for the properties they own? Can every householder pool money to pay for more substantial flood resilience measures, where a local community wants to do that?

There seemed, again, to be confusion about whether Hull businesses would be covered by the business support scheme and about whether there is a cap on the business support that will be given. The guidance suggests that grants should be about £2,500 and that more than £5,000 should not be given out. Several large manufacturing firms in Hull were flooded, with expensive equipment destroyed. I understand that the council will be allocating the funds, so will it have discretion to offer more help, especially to those types of company that may easily be able to relocate internationally? In addition, why have the Government not applied for European Union assistance for flood-hit communities?

I have been raising and discussing the issue of flood insurance for many years. Last June, the Government finally announced the Flood Re scheme that is to replace the previous Government’s statement of principles. As we know, Flood Re excludes, retrospectively, homes completed since January 2009.

[Chris Ruane]

Does my hon. Friend know why it took three years for this Government to settle the Flood Re scheme?

[Diana Johnson]

I do not know why, but perhaps the Minister will be able to enlighten us. Obviously, the statement of principles ran out last summer and it has had to have a temporary extension until the new Flood Re scheme comes into place in 2015, even though this needed to be sorted out as quickly as possible.

Let me return to the issue of the exclusions. Leaseholders are excluded from the scheme, as are council tenants and small businesses, including people who run a bed and breakfast from their home. Landlords are not covered, even where there is a jointly owned freehold with each flat owner as a leaseholder. It is not clear whether tenants wanting contents insurance will be covered. There is no answer from the Government on the position of home owners or builders who acted in good faith, following all relevant planning guidelines and Environment Agency advice, but find themselves with homes that will now not attract home insurance cover under the Flood Re scheme because they have been built since 2009. Under Flood Re, a home built on 31 December 2008 will be covered whereas a house next door that was built on 1 January 2009 will not be. The scheme seems very arbitrary, and it is also not clear whether Flood Re covers the surface water flooding which we had a problem with in Hull in 2007.

Worse still, one part of the Government does not seem to know what the other part of the Government is doing. The Treasury and the Department for Communities and Local Government are promoting their Help to Buy scheme heavily in Kingswood in my constituency, an area hit by flooding in 2007; large Help to Buy posters are plastered everywhere. The problem is that the Treasury and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs are also signalling that those thousands of new homes being built and sold under their Help to Buy scheme should not have been built in the first place and will not be covered by Flood Re. The Government are getting themselves into real difficulty on this, and the people buying homes under the Help to Buy scheme at the moment will be shocked to know the position the Government are putting them in.

Clearly, there are some flood-risk areas where building should not happen—areas where there is coastal erosion and outlying areas that will not be helped by flood defence infrastructure.