Border Target Operating Model: Food and Biosecurity

Dominic Raab Excerpts

Wednesday 13th September 2023 Westminster Hall

[Mrs Elphicke]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. He is incredibly knowledgeable on this issue, as we have just heard, and he is exactly right. We cannot wait any longer. I will be explaining how, at the Dover frontline, we have had a ready-to-go, state-of-the-art facility mothballed for 18 months. It should be put to work straightaway to protect our nation. My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We need to put these facilities and these new measures in place urgently.

What are we finding at the moment? With global food disruption and increased costs of production getting worse because of the war in Ukraine, threats to food safety are on the increase. It is not just food. Farm animals are threatened by the diseases carried in infected meat. We need to be very clear about that. This is not the odd rogue import. Dover Port Health Authority has found it happening on an industrial scale—tonnes of this stuff. It has formally warned the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs about the increased risks and findings.

This meat does not meet our—or even Europe’s—required standards for slaughter, storage or import. It is not just unhealthy, but dangerous. The danger is not just to humans, but to our livestock and therefore to the livelihoods of our farmers and food producers. That is because this rancid, illegal meat can contain live viruses of some of the most serious threats to our animals. As we have heard, diseases such as African swine fever have steadily spread from eastern Europe to Germany and now France. The NFU has said:

“A breakdown in biosecurity is one of the most serious risks we face as a nation.”

I agree with that.

It is welcome that the Government have, at last, published the border target operating model. However, the long delay and continued uncertainty around the new arrangements is worrying. Concerns have been raised with me by Kent-based import-export businesses, national food and drink trade bodies, the British Poultry Council, the NFU and the Dover port health authority. As I mentioned, it is some 18 months now since Dover’s ready-to-go, taxpayer-funded, state-of-the-art post-Brexit facilities were mothballed, awaiting the publication of the proposed target operating model for the border. At the time, the model was expected in some weeks. In the end, it was published just a couple of weeks ago, on 29 August 2023.

Almost a year ago, last October, I led a debate in Westminster Hall on this subject. The then answering Minister said that for traders, the target operating model

“will explain what must be done upstream of the border before goods arrive at it, and what must happen at the border—including border control posts”.—[Official Report, 18 October 2022; Vol. 720, c. 271WH.]

We finally have the border target operating model, but in relation to the short straits, which means the port of Dover and the Eurotunnel, we have no confirmed border control posts even now.

The target operating model says that a decision will be published soon and that facilities will be operational in April 2024. However, as I have outlined, the Dover facility has been ready to go for some 18 months. April 2024 would represent a delay of some two years from when the facility was due to be made live, during which time the operating environment for food and biosecurity has significantly deteriorated, as DEFRA has been told time and again.

Given the importance of these issues, the delay is unacceptable. The state-of-the-art facility at Dover needs to be opened right away. Dover has the expertise needed to secure our borders, but it is not being supported as it should be. Dover needs to be backed in its vital role in keeping our country’s food and farming safe. Government action is needed now to ensure that we are properly protected from dangerous food and diseases coming into the UK. I would be grateful if the Minister could confirm when the new Dover facility, which is so obviously needed, will be opened.

I would like to address why things have taken so long and what needs to happen. There are three issues. The first is the dreaded phrase “cross-governmental working”, which, in layman’s terms, means that no one person is in charge and the buck does not stop anywhere. As I have before, I make the case for a Department for the border to draw together all the border-related functions, as many other countries do, including America and Australia. It would be a single window under a single Department responsible for order at the border. From customs to trade, and from biosecurity to visa entry and migration, there is an urgent need for a single Department in charge of setting policy, overseeing operations and—importantly—taking responsibility for what is happening at our borders.

[Dominic Raab (Esher and Walton) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech, particularly about being joined up. We are talking about the risks, but there are also opportunities for UK businesses. If we get the level playing field right—if we get a post-Brexit regime that not only deals with all the UK concerns and needs but provides a level playing field for businesses here and abroad—it is a great export opportunity for small businesses such as Tozer Seeds in my constituency.

[Mrs Elphicke]

My right hon. Friend is exactly right. If we can get the import border checks right, we will boost our export potential as well, whereas if we have weak import controls we will put at risk the very businesses that should be taking the opportunities provided by our new trading agreements in our post-Brexit world. I thank my right hon. Friend for his intervention.

The need for a single department and a single focus at the border also applies operationally, because accountability matters. It is imperative that Dover continue to be the sole port health authority responsible for the short straits. Anything else would weaken accountability, introduce new risks in our border controls and make our country less safe. Dover is best placed to manage resources between multiple facilities to keep trade moving and manage the ebb and flow of volume traffic movements. It is well used to doing so and is the most cost-effective and sensible option to manage the border. I am aware that Dover port health authority has written to Ministers to express its strong wish to oversee all relevant border control posts for the short straits in order to manage and control the risks. I hope that the Minister can give some update or assurance on that issue tod-ay.

The second issue is that the Government hope to introduce so-called digital borders. Unfortunately, that has not proved possible to achieve quickly, as the Government’s own wonderfully named ecosystem of trust evaluation report, which was published last month, sets out. Let me be very clear. Having digital borders is a very good idea that I am very keen on—later today I will be chairing the all-party parliamentary group on blockchain, and I wholeheartedly agree that the future border is a digital and even a smart one—but there is a problem. At the moment, neither industry nor Government are ready for digital borders. That is made clear by the ecosystem of trust evaluation report in relation to biosecurity and food security. Page 8 of the report says:

“The UK government believes that transforming the border means moving physical processes away from the frontier wherever possible.”

As a border MP, I cannot see any logic in the suggestion that the starting point would be moving checks away from where the goods come in. Checking at point of entry is regarded globally as the gold standard for border control, with very good reason: to stop bootleggers and smugglers and to contain the risk of contamination of the food chain. Those risks are not trivial. The evaluation report makes it crystal clear that digital borders, at this time, will not work. There is no effective substitute for the physical border checks that need to happen. Page 4 of the report says:

“The pilots show us that new models are not yet ready to replace traditional mechanisms of border control.”

The reasons for that are not high-tech. As pages 22 to 24 of the evaluation report set out, they are very basic things like descriptions of the load and weight of a consignment being available only in formats that are not machine-readable by digital border systems or are

“incompatible with government-systems specific risking rules.”

What does that mean? It means that they cannot be read by the IT system, so we cannot have an intelligence-led, risk-weighted approach. We therefore cannot, at this time, have a digital borders programme.

The report says that

“there was no way to replicate identity and physical checks. Defra notes biosecurity assurance capabilities from consortia”—

the pilot partners—

“are limited and do not provide the same level of information/assurance as regular import processes.”

The report also identified gaps, one of which was

“Lack of transmission data (ie likelihood of a disease hazard surviving on a commodity).”

That could mean rancid meat carrying a serious disease, which cannot be found through these digital processes. There is also a lack of “mitigations and prohibitions data”—information about whether there is a disease outbreak or an export ban in the country that the food is coming from. That is a very serious concern that I hope the Minister will address.

For the Food Standards Agency, the information gathered through the digital process was described as being of “little value”. The report concluded that there are serious threats that need to be addressed and that an

“effective import regime is therefore essential to protect domestic food safety and animal and plant health and welfare.”

That brings me to my third and final point. The evaluation report is clear that physical border checks will be needed for the foreseeable future to keep our country safe, and that that is the right and responsible thing to do. Digital borders will come, but not yet.

Much has been made of the costs of making checks at the short straits—we still await the final charging structure, which is expected at some point in autumn 2023—but against them we have to set the cost of doing nothing. We cannot allow toxic food to enter the food chain. We cannot risk disease threatening our national livestock herds. We know how much this costs, because we have been here before. The costs are even set out in the Government’s own report, at page 56: the foot and mouth outbreak in 2001 cost an estimated £8 billion, the horsemeat scandal of 2013 cost £120 million, and ash dieback in 2014 cost £15 billion.

There needs to be a level playing field—that is important. The British Poultry Council has said that its industry is paying £55 million a year to export to the EU, while imports to the UK are free for EU exporters. That is unfair and undermines our British farmers and food producers. DEFRA needs to stand up for our farmers to have a disease-free level playing field with the highest food standards. As we have touched on, if we import from a country that is suffering an outbreak, we can expect that other countries may ban our own produce. That could affect our ability to make the most of the trade agreements we have made, so it is important that that does not happen.

The bottom line when it comes to border security on food and disease is that we must invest to keep our food, our farms and our exports safe and secure. We cannot rely on the EU to check our food for us. We are an independent trading nation, so it is right that we now do this for ourselves. That is the clear lesson from the evidence found at the Dover frontline.

I ask the Minister to join me in thanking the Dover Port Health Authority team, under the leadership of Nadeem Aziz and Lucy Manzano, who is here today, for the work they do every day to protect our country from food and biosecurity risks. They need to be better supported, particularly with the immediate opening of the new Dover facility. I look forward to hearing from the Minister how the Government will keep our country safe and, on Back British Farming Day, keep our farmers and their livestock safe and biosecure.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mark Spencer]

I am very conscious that this is a debate about the Dover straits, and I do not want to be diverted into a debate about the Windsor framework, but I understand the right hon. Gentleman’s passion on the topic. We are setting out how the Windsor framework will operate in the future; as I have said to him, we are very keen to ensure that trade is as free as possible between Northern Ireland and the rest of GB.

Let me return to the controls that we are introducing. On 31 January, we are introducing health certification on imports of medium-risk animal products, plants, plant products, and high-risk food and feed of non-animal origin from the EU. On 30 April 2024, we will introduce the documentary and risk-based identity and physical checks on medium-risk animal products, plants, plant products, and high-risk food and feed of non-animal origin from the EU. We will also begin to simplify imports from non-EU countries. On 31 October 2024, the requirement for safety and security declarations for imports into Great Britain from the EU or from other territories will come into force. Alongside that, we will introduce a reduced dataset for imports, and use of the UK single trade window will remove duplication.

In response to the feedback on the draft TOM, we have also improved the trusted trader offer for animal products, designed a new certification logistics pilot to support movements of goods from hubs in the EU, and provided further information on how we will support importers using groupage models to move sanitary and phytosanitary goods into the UK.

We are confident that the decision to move controls back by three months achieves the right balance between supporting business readiness ahead of the introduction of the controls and mitigating biosecurity risk to the UK. In the meantime, DEFRA has implemented controls on the highest-risk imports of live animals and plants from the EU. We will continue to support and fund port health authorities to manage UK biosecurity, including controls to protect against African swine fever.

As was promised when we published the UK 2025 border strategy in 2020, the TOM introduces a range of technological advances to ensure a fully 21st-century border that facilitates UK trade. The development of a single trade window will make the process for importing to the UK simpler and more streamlined, enabling importers to meet their border obligations by submitting information only once.

Let me turn to the facilities in Kent. To implement the SPS controls regime, we need the right infrastructure, particularly in Kent, where the port of Dover and the Eurotunnel are the main points of entry for the majority of EU SPS imports. Further to the publication of the TOM, and based on data gathered, the Government are reviewing our BCP needs in Kent and reviewing whether two inland BCPs—one at Sevington and one at Bastion Point—are needed to serve the volume of SPS goods transiting the port of Dover and the Eurotunnel. As the infrastructure was constructed for a previous border model, which required more intensive checks, it is only right that the Government review the operating arrangements to ensure that they are proportionate to our needs and are cost-effective for traders using the short straits.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Dover for sharing her views on the matter in such a forceful way. She is a passionate advocate for her constituency, which is important to the UK’s security. As she knows, we will be in touch shortly with a decision on this important matter. I thank her again for securing the debate, and I thank all colleagues who have participated.

[Dominic Raab]

My right hon. Friend is making an important speech about the new regime, and much of it is welcome. He has made the point that pests and disease do enormous harm to crops. Maize crops can suffer losses of up to a fifth from any outbreak of pests or disease. I would be interested to know a bit more about what the Government will do on surveillance, because that is the most important way of preventing diseases from coming into the UK in the first place.

[Mark Spencer]

My right hon. Friend raises an important point: we need to make sure that we are using surveillance. As he will be aware, it is often best not to talk too publicly about the methods we use to protect our borders and detect diseases, but I can give him an assurance that we take the issue very seriously. We use intelligence to detect where the risks will be, but we also have robust regimes in place to make sure that we can pick things up as they come into the country.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Dr Hudson) mentioned, African swine fever is moving across Europe. It is vital for our pig sector that we protect ourselves from the disease entering the UK, which is why we are introducing robust regimes to make sure that we protect our border, back our farmers and back our food production system. Working together, that is what we will do, moving forward.

Sale of Puppies and Kittens

Dominic Raab Excerpts

Thursday 4th September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

I agree, but as the Chair of the Select Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Miss McIntosh), said, legislation on pet shops is already in place. The thrust of this debate is on new legislation, but I say to the Minister that we should better enforce existing legislation, because then we might all get on a lot better.

Poor puppy farms are responsible for many health problems, including infectious diseases such as parvovirus, internal and external parasites and a range of breed-related and inherited diseases such as heart disease, epilepsy and glaucoma. It is crucial that puppy farms are not only properly licensed, but properly scrutinised—the powers are there to scrutinise them—so that we can root out the ones that operate with inappropriate conditions. As I have said, we need to enforce existing legislation better.

Secondly, the breeding of dogs for specific desirable traits can lead to serious genetic health problems as a result of inbreeding and closed gene pools. The body shape of some dog breeds can also cause immense suffering. Under the Animal Welfare Act 2006, it is illegal to beat a dog with a stick, but there is nothing to stop a breeder mating dogs to produce offspring that will then suffer from health problems.

Thirdly, I recommend that all breeders adopt puppy contracts, which are produced by the RSPCA, the British Veterinary Association and the Animal Welfare Foundation. Too often, buyers are not aware of the possible genetic problems related to poor welfare and breeding conditions.

Fourthly, the Animal Health and Welfare Board for England, which was set up by this Government, could be in a perfect position to assist with the welfare of dogs. However, its performance to date has not met the desired level. The board should take a more active interest in the welfare of dogs, which it does not do at the moment. I urge the Government to give it a role in devising light-touch regulation, ideally based on the Dog Advisory Council’s recommendations on regulations under the Animal Welfare Act so that we can see active improvement in the welfare of dogs.

The Dog Advisory Council, under Professor Sheila Crispin’s chairmanship, was funded entirely through the generosity of patrons, principally the Dogs Trust, the RSPCA, the Blue Cross and the PDSA. It operates with a budget of only £25,000, yet the Government give £225,000 to the Farm Animal Welfare Council. There seems to be a slight imbalance within the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs in the treatment of farm animals and companion animals. I hope that the Minister will take those facts back to his Department. If nothing else, we are a nation of animal lovers, and we need to take more seriously the welfare of companion animals such as dogs and cats.

Obviously, it is welcome that micro-chipping will be mandatory from April 2016, but I urge the Minister to bring the date forward. We need a comprehensive list of registered dogs as soon as possible, and I see no reason to delay this for another two years. Currently, more than 100,000 dogs are stolen, abandoned or lost each year. If lost, the owner can suffer huge emotional turmoil. If a dog is abandoned, it is a crime. The urgent introduction of micro-chipping will help us to reduce dramatically the numbers of stray dogs on our streets.

[Mr Dominic Raab (Esher and Walton) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend for so generously giving way. I know that time is running short, but I hope that he will get an extra minute as recompense. I agree with him that this is about the enforcement of existing laws. Is not one of the key issues inspection? What we need are random inspections and a zero-tolerance approach where there are clear breaches of the standards already in place.

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

My hon. Friend is exactly right. We should enforce existing legislation with random inspections so that the owners and operators of puppy farms do not know when the inspectors are coming. That will hopefully ginger them up to improve their standards.

The Minister will also need to address an amendment made to the Deregulation Bill in Committee which seeks to remove the requirement under the Breeding of Dogs Act 1973 for local authorities, when deciding whether to grant a dog breeding licence, to have regard to the need for dog breeding records to be kept in a prescribed form and to specify licence conditions to secure that objective. The Dog Advisory Council has written to the Cabinet Office and DEFRA Ministers asking them to reconsider the decision to repeal the relevant provisions as a matter of urgency, as not to do so would further undermine the effectiveness of the existing legislation.

Madam Deputy Speaker, you have been generous with the time. This is an important debate. I hope the Minister will take away with him the fact that we are a nation of dog lovers. We need to enforce the existing legislation. There is too much cruelty in the dog world in this country.

Flood Insurance

Dominic Raab Excerpts

Tuesday 26th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Dominic Raab (Esher and Walton) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House notes the Environment Agency’s estimate that 570,000 properties in England and Wales are at significant risk of flooding; recognises the efforts of the insurance industry and past and present governments to reach agreement to ensure flood insurance will be made available to all homes and small businesses beyond June 2013; calls on the insurance industry to negotiate in good faith to conclude those arrangements; and further calls on the Government to acknowledge the need to provide some support for those arrangements and ensure that resilience and adaptation to flood risks and other natural hazards are amongst its highest environmental priorities.

May I first thank the Chair of the Backbench Business Committee for granting this debate and the sponsors of the motion, who represent four parties across the House?

Today’s debate comes just three months before the expiry of the statement of principles agreed by the previous Government with the Association of British Insurers. The statement governs the provision of insurance to properties that are at “significant risk” of flooding—that is, properties that have a one in 75 or greater chance of being flooded in any given year. With the deadline for agreement looming, Ministers and the ABI remain deadlocked in negotiations. The House will be only too aware that the consequences of failing to broker a deal would be devastating.

If we were to move to an entirely free market model it is estimated that 1,113 businesses and homes in my constituency alone would face dramatic hikes in their premiums or even a refusal to insure. Nationwide, 215,000 more homes would face annual insurance premiums of more than £750. For owners who could not obtain affordable insurance, the risks are worse still. With a typical flood causing between £20,000 and £40,000 of damage per property, many small businesses and families would face crushing costs. Meanwhile, the Council of Mortgage Lenders warns:

“Uncertainty about the future cost and availability of insurance may affect the ability to sell or obtain a mortgage on a property,”

affecting up to 83,000 homes. Home insurance premiums are already rising as insurers prepare for a worst-case scenario. Constituents in Thames Ditton in my constituency are already reporting steep rises.

We urgently need a new, sustainable, long-term agreement. As far as I am aware, the only proposal on the table is that from the ABI, namely its “Flood Re” insurance scheme.

[Mr Laurence Robertson (Tewkesbury) (Con)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising this very important subject. Does he agree that another factor to consider is the level of excesses that insurance companies charge? If they set the excess at £20,000, the family affected are, in effect, not insured.

[Mr Raab]

I thank my hon. Friend for his timely intervention and I think that he is on point. We need a comprehensive deal covering all aspects of the insurance premium.

[Mr Andrew Smith (Oxford East) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Raab]

I will not, because I need to make progress and, under the strictures of Mr Deputy Speaker, I will need to give way later.

The “Flood Re” insurance scheme would create a non-profit fund to ensure that cover is available for the 2% of homes that are at significant risk of flooding. Like the current system, the model would be based on cross-subsidisation. High-risk home owners would pay higher premiums, subject to a cap, and benefit from a subsidy levied on lower risk properties. Today that subsidy costs the average property owner about £8 a year—that is the proportion of the insurance premium that they pay. Under “Flood Re” that would rise by an estimated £1. Those owning a band A property at significant risk of flooding would see a 15% increase in their premium, rising to 43% for more expensive homes. The point of the scheme, therefore, is to cushion the most vulnerable. In return, the insurance industry wants the Government to strengthen flood defences, provide access to flood risk assessments and enforce planning regulation on floodplains more rigorously.

The parameters of a balanced deal are emerging. Ministers have, understandably, refused to sign any blank cheques, including for bankrolling “Flood Re” or for providing a temporary overdraft facility underwritten by the taxpayer. That would be difficult to justify at any time, but especially with our public finances under such acute strain.

[Mr Smith]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way. I strongly support the motion and congratulate him on securing the debate. Is it not important to bear it in mind that the insurance companies do not have a completely free hand in this, because they are required by state regulators to secure reinsurance on the risk that they take on? Unless there is some Government participation to cap that risk, it will be impossible to get it at an affordable price and the disaster that our constituents are threatened with will happen.

[Mr Raab]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his intervention. He has touched on some of the technical aspects, to which I am sure the Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Richard Benyon), will respond. It is clear that the state needs to be involved in this. This cannot be left solely to a free market. Even a free-market MP like me would accept that.

It would be useful if Ministers could today explain their position on the gist of the “Flood Re” proposal, and any concerns they have now that the taxpayer is not being asked to underwrite the overdraft facility. One key issue is the balance of contributions by those owning properties at higher risk and ordinary insurance holders. Have Ministers considered the composition of the board of governors of the fund, and in particular the number and character of members who are independent of both the Government and the industry? How will the Government retain control and accountability over future increases in either the levy or ordinary premiums? Both aspects are important; it is a question of balance.

The “Flood Re” scheme inevitably invites comparison with models used elsewhere. In the United States, the national flood insurance programme is not funded on the basis of cross-subsidisation, but as a result was left $17 billion in the red after Hurricane Katrina. “Flood Re” as a model would avoid a situation in which the British taxpayer covers all losses the market will not insure—the Dutch Government have such a commitment. The “Flood Re” model is somewhere between the US and Dutch models.

Alternative models have been proposed but are not in the negotiating mix between the ABI and the Government at this stage. One alternative presented by Marsh, the insurance broker, would involve mutualisation of 50% of flood claims among all home owners. That would pass back to home owners or the Government the risk of paying the remaining 50% of flood claims. What view have Ministers taken on that alternative?

More broadly, the negotiations on flood insurance shed broader light on the UK’s wider environmental policy. The risks of flooding, which is effectively what we are debating, prompt a simple question: have we got our environmental priorities right? Met Office data show that four of the five wettest years on record have occurred since 2000. The Government’s chief scientist has warned that

“in quite a short time scale…we are going to have more floods, we are going to have more sea surges and we are going to have more storms”.

Strengthening flood defences should therefore be a top priority—both in its own right as a matter of sound policy, but also to contain the rising insurance premiums that have prompted today’s debate—and yet environmental resilience has been relatively low down the pecking order of UK environmental policy for more than a decade. By way of illustration, the cost to businesses and consumers of the inefficient green subsidies to solar and onshore wind through the renewables obligation will be £2.6 billion this financial year. That is almost as much as DEFRA will spend on flooding and coastal defences over the entire five-year period of this Parliament. Those are skewed priorities. The Government ought to place greater emphasis on adapting to the reality of climate change—the environmental here and now—and spend less time speculating on technological winners that hike energy bills, particularly for the squeezed middle, without substantially decarbonising the UK economy.

That points to a more systemic, bureaucratic problem, namely the lack of policy coherence between the Department of Energy and Climate Change and DEFRA since they were separated in 2008 by the previous Government. Too often, DEFRA feels like DECC’s more realistic but poorer cousin, and yet DEFRA is left to pick up the pieces when an environmental crisis strikes. Have Ministers considered re-merging the two Departments? That would integrate policy and realise at least £1 billion from cutting bureaucracy, which could be used to invest in flood defences as well as to pay off the deficit more quickly.

The state has a role to play in managing acute and severe risks such as flooding. We need the Government to provide the right framework to meet UK energy demands, especially through nuclear power and shale gas; to invest in flood and coastal defences; and to strike the right deal with industry, and soon, to protect small businesses and vulnerable homes from soaring insurance premiums. I commend the motion to the House.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Raab]

I thank the Backbench Committee for this debate, and I thank all hon. Members who have contributed for their excellent speeches. Some of them talked about the local dimension and some mentioned the national implications of these issues. Given the lack of time, I will not go into detail on all of the contributions, but the hon. Member for West Lancashire (Rosie Cooper) talked about the lack of a joined-up approach locally. My hon. Friend the Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Nicola Blackwood) talked about the human dimension to local flood damage and the importance of planning in the mitigation of flood risk.

The hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson), my hon. Friend the Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine (Sir Robert Smith) and the hon. Member for Wansbeck (Ian Lavery) talked about the local aspects of flood insurance.

My hon. Friend the Member for York Outer (Julian Sturdy) made an important point about what local community initiatives can do to reduce flood risk, and my hon. Friend the Member for South East Cornwall (Sheryll Murray) highlighted the human toll across Cornwall. I am sure the whole House joins her in expressing our condolences to the bereaved family of her constituent.

There were other powerful contributions. My hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff North (Jonathan Evans) made a powerful speech on his work with the all-party group. My hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth North (Penny Mordaunt) talked about the problem of planning approvals in the floodplain. Other hon. Members were unable to attend the debate—for example, my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy)—but have expressed support for the motion, and I welcome that.

The shadow Minister gave an important speech. He tracked the recent negotiations with a fine-toothed comb, if, at points, rather selectively. He had rather less to say on the previous Government’s progress, but none the less made some important points.

The Minister described the arduous and urgent negotiations with the ABI and the importance of delivering a legal, workable deal that delivers value for money. I am sure the whole House joins him in wanting to achieve that result. We do not expect him to negotiate in public, but we do need urgently to deliver a new deal on flood insurance. We need to strengthen flood defences, address the planning failures of the past and ensure that UK environmental policies place a greater emphasis on resilience and adaptation in the future. I commend the motion to the House.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House notes the Environment Agency’s estimate that 570,000 properties in England and Wales are at significant risk of flooding; recognises the efforts of the insurance industry and past and present governments to reach agreement to ensure flood insurance will be made available to all homes and small businesses beyond June 2013; calls on the insurance industry to negotiate in good faith to conclude those arrangements; and further calls on the Government to acknowledge the need to provide some support for those arrangements and ensure that resilience and adaptation to flood risks and other natural hazards are amongst its highest environmental priorities.

Oral Answers to Questions

Dominic Raab Excerpts

Thursday 5th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Spelman]

I pay tribute to the hon. Gentleman, who was on the scene on Saturday, and to his local authority, which played a remarkable role in trying to assist his constituents during that extreme weather event. He is right that they are becoming more frequent. After every one of these events, we review the emergency plans to ensure that we improve them all the time. However, the emergency services and the Environment Agency have done an excellent job during all these flooding episodes, of which there are potentially more to come.

[Mr Dominic Raab (Esher and Walton) (Con)]

T6. The public will spend as much on the renewables obligation this year as on flood and coastal defences over four years, yet in my constituency the lower Thames flood risk management strategy risks being undermined by a 27% cut in the Environment Agency’s capital expenditure, given the debt legacy left by the last Government. Will my right hon. Friend take another look with Department of Energy and Climate Change Ministers at the balance between public subsidy for renewables and public investment in resilience? Ultimately, it is the same people paying for both.

[Mrs Spelman]

I am afraid that my hon. Friend has been taken in by the figure used by the Opposition. [Interruption.] It is important to set the record straight. In that comparison, the increase in expenditure made by the last Government the year before the election is being set against our first year in office. Under the correct comparison—the last four years of the Labour Government with four years of this Government—the figure is just 6%. I take seriously the threat in the lower Thames region, and under partnership funding it should be possible to get the flood defences built more readily than they would have been under the previous scheme.

Oral Answers to Questions

Dominic Raab Excerpts

Thursday 24th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Richard Benyon]

That would depend on there being more fish to catch. What we seek to achieve through a proper reform is conservation measures that we can manage much closer to home, which can lead to a recovery in fish stocks and therefore an increased opportunity for our fishing fleet. I want to see a reform of common fisheries policy that means that the sons and grandsons of fishermen can see a future, because they cannot at the moment.

[Mr Dominic Raab (Esher and Walton) (Con)]

Mandatory greening under new CAP reform proposals would remove a fifth of land on higher level stewardship farms from food production. What representations has the Secretary of State made to the EU Agriculture Commissioner about the damaging impact that that would have on food security in this country?

[Mr Paice]

My hon. Friend is right to be concerned about that. As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said earlier, we met the Commissioner only 10 days ago and impressed on him the fact that the proposals were not in accordance with the challenges of global food demands in the coming years. I can assure him that we are not a lone voice. Listening to the voices around the Council table reveals that the vast majority of Ministers are opposed to taking further land out of production.