Flooding: Bedfordshire

Emma Hardy Excerpts

Wednesday 16th October 2024 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Emma Hardy)]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and it is a pleasure to see you in the Chair. I thank the hon. Member for Mid Bedfordshire (Blake Stephenson) for securing the debate on this important matter, and everyone who has contributed to the discussion.

I start by sincerely expressing my sympathy with all the individuals whose homes and businesses have been impacted by flooding. I may have previously shared with the House the impact on me when, in 2007, the city that I represent was flooded. It is a story for another day, but I was teaching at the time, and when the floodwater came in we had to evacuate. Flooding has a devastating impact on people for a long time afterwards, including on their mental health, so I am very sympathetic to the hon. Gentleman as a victim of flooding himself. I realise it is not easy at all.

As the hon. Gentleman mentioned, more than 1,000 properties were flooded following recent heavy rain across central and southern England. The effects were felt particularly in communities in Bedfordshire, Northamptonshire, Oxfordshire, Shropshire, Buckinghamshire and north-west London, but more than 22,000 properties were protected by existing flood defences. As he said, I visited the Leighton Buzzard area in Bedfordshire on 26 September to meet volunteers and local residents and see at first hand the impact of the flooding there.

I know many people are now facing months of disruption and upset. I was particularly struck by one of the ladies I met, who was in tears when I went into her home. She showed me what had been her beautiful home, in which she had lived for over 20 years and on which she had spent a lot of time, and how it had just been ruined by the floodwater coming in, which she found absolutely devastating. The hon. Gentleman is right to point out how this impacts on vulnerable people. I heard stories of an elderly lady having to be rescued and taken away from her home. I absolutely pay tribute to Humberside fire and rescue service. Sorry, not just Humberside— I am so used to saying that—but all the fire and rescue services for their work in rescuing people.

I also thank the hon. Gentleman for joining the call that we had with the Environment Agency, which is something new that I have tried since becoming a Minister. It would simply be impossible for me to visit everywhere, so I want to find other ways to be as open and accessible as possible, which is why we tried this call. We had about 50 Members of Parliament on the call, and it was a way for hon. Members to get information directly from the Environment Agency, so I am grateful that he joined it.

[Sir John Hayes]

The Minister and I worked together when she was on this side of the House, so I know she is true to her word. My hon. Friend the Member for Mid Bedfordshire (Blake Stephenson)—very nobly, I thought—suggested that we ought to have a meeting about IDBs. This is a critically important issue for many parts of the country, and I am sure that a small delegation of colleagues could, in the spirit that the Minister has just described, have a very productive discussion. Would she agree to that?

[Emma Hardy]

The right hon. Gentleman is so difficult to say no to. How infuriating—I have experienced this before. Yes, we will. That will be fine. I will be attending the internal drainage board conference, so after I have met people there, I am happy to meet a delegation to talk about IDBs. I can already hear my private office saying, “You’ve agreed to another meeting, Minister”, and telling me off.

[Tessa Munt (Wells and Mendip Hills) (LD)]

I was part of the call to which the Minister referred on 30 September. I am an MP in Somerset, and we requested a meeting. We have the benefit of the Somerset Rivers Authority, which I believe is unique in the country. We need to wrestle with how we enable the Environment Agency, the internal drainage board, the council, the rivers authority, and every other agency to address the problem of flooding for people in Somerset as well. Will she please ensure that her officials make that meeting happen?

[Emma Hardy]

Absolutely. As the hon. Lady will be aware, the flooding happened during recess and we have been back just one week. It is all noted down, and if I make a promise I stick to it, so we will have that.

There was also innovation in the incident response from the Environment Agency—I found this quite interesting, but that is perhaps my inner geek coming out. It launched drone flights over the flooded area to assess and monitor where had been flooded, and looked for where there were blockages and fallen trees in some of the waterways. It was then able to send people out to remove them. I thought that was a clever way of covering as much area as possible, especially in large rural areas, to see where it needed to solve a problem.

I reiterate the Government’s thanks to the Environment Agency local responders and many others who worked tirelessly to help communities across the country deal with the local floods. I also pay tribute to our farmers, as this is the worst two years in a row of harvest that they have faced, and I realise the impact that that has had on the mental health of many of them. I accept the frustration around the farming flood recovery fund, and I am afraid I will have to give an equally frustrating answer, which is that until the Budget is announced, there is not much more I can say on that matter, although I realise that that will not offer people the reassurance they want at the moment.

Where I can offer reassurance is that I know the National Farmers Union was keen to consider how the formula is calculated when it comes to assessing where flood defences are built. At the moment is based on the number of properties protected. I want to look at that formula—I know that has been called for over a long time—to see whether it is still the formula that we need, and I have committed to doing that with the NFU.

I pay tribute to a few of the volunteer groups I met in Bedfordshire, including the Bedfordshire local emergency volunteers executive committee, and particularly a lady called June Tobin, and Graham Mountford, who were fantastic. It was brilliant to see how well the volunteer organisations are embedded in the emergency response by the Bedfordshire local resilience forum. I was also impressed by the work of AMYA and what it is doing to get young people involved in volunteering. Many young people were volunteering at Meadow Way community centre, especially two impressive young teenage girls who told me that they wanted to come and help in the community. They were there making tea and coffee for everybody, and I thought that they deserved a special mention in my speech. I am sure the hon. Member for Mid Bedfordshire also found many wonderful examples of people helping.

As has been mentioned, it is Flood Action Week—what a week to be talking about flooding. If you will indulge me for a moment, Madam Deputy Speaker, I wish to reiterate a few safety messages around Flood Action Week. We are urging the public to know and understand their flood risk, and to please sign up for flood alerts. If there is one thing each Member of Parliament can do it is encourage our constituents to sign up for flood alerts. If people have the time, that means they can get prepared. We would also like people to look at preparing a flood kit, and have medication and essentials if they are going to be away from home or asked to evacuate at short notice, as well as thinking about what will happen with pets. The Environment Agency has extensive guidance on what we can do to try to improve our flood resilience.

There was an event today, which I hope many Members were able to attend—the Environment Agency and Flood Re’s parliamentary drop-in. If people were unable to attend, I am sure they can email out the information for Members to communicate to constituents.

I reassure the hon. Member that flooding is one of DEFRA’s five key priorities. The honest truth is that we have inherited flood defences at their worst since 2010. The condition rating of key flood defences in England is at 92%. That is the lowest it has been in 14 years, which is clearly concerning as we go into another wet winter, as has been mentioned. Because of that, we have been moved £36 million extra to the urgent repair of some of those flood defences, and we also have mobile assets— have 275 mobile pumps and 25 km of mobile flood defences. By using knowledge around long-term forecasts, we want to get those mobile resources into the areas required, but the situation is definitely far from ideal. The previous Government’s flood investment programme was unfortunately behind schedule and over budget. I am urgently reviewing it to ensure we have a flood programme that is fit for purpose, and as has been mentioned, I have been looking at how the formula works.

The hon. Member mentioned one of my favourite words, which is SUDS, or sustainable urban drainage systems—only people with this level of geekery get excited about that—as well as schedule 3 of the Flood and Water Management Act 2010. I am pleased he pointed out that it dates from 2010 has still not been enacted. It is important that we look at sustainable urban drainage. As he mentioned, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government is doing a review of how the whole planning system works, and it will come as no surprise to him that I am pushing from the DEFRA end of things on how we can ensure that the homes we build are flood-proof now and in the future and, importantly, do not contribute or add to flood risk within an area. Those are two important issues.

The priority for the hon. Member is his constituency, but we must bear in mind that water is a tricky thing that does not obey constituency or national borders. Therefore, as has been pointed out, if we want to tackle flooding, sometimes the answer is literally further upstream. I enjoyed hearing him mention natural flood management solutions, which are another thing I get excited about. We have a nature crisis, so if we can deliver something that not only delivers protection from flooding but increases nature, is that not a wonderful thing to do? I am a huge fan. I do not think the answer to everything should always be more concrete, although at times of course we need those hard flood defences. It is important to look at a catchment-based approach to how we handle this, where we can look at slowing the flow in some areas or moving water out more quickly in others.

The hon. Member also mentioned the A421. I was stuck on that road as well. After visiting the flooded area in Leighton Buzzard, I realised I could not get a lift back to London, because Euston station was shut. I ended up trying to get a lift from someone up to Peterborough to make my way back up to Hull, and I was stuck on a diversion from the A421. I feel his pain as a fellow victim of that particular closed road.

The Environment Agency estimates that £3.5 million will be invested in Bedfordshire to increase flood resilience. As the hon. Member rightly said, for many areas surface water is the problem, so many of the schemes provided will be small-scale surface water solutions. [Interruption.] Am I getting the nod to hurry up? Okay, I will speed on. We can continue much of this discussion at a later date.

To conclude, I reiterate that this Government will act to ensure that people are better protected from flooding in the first place. We are determined to turbocharge the delivery and repair of flood defences, to improve drainage systems and to develop natural flood management solutions. We are investing more than £1.25 billion this year to scale up national resilience through building new and improving existing flood defences. The Government are reviewing the existing programme to get it back on track, after the pace slowed due to the impacts of inflation and delays in the supply chain.

The flood resilience taskforce, which we set up and which has already met, includes the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, the Home Office, the Cabinet Office, the Environment Agency, the Met Office, local resilience forums, the mayoral office, emergency responders and the National Farmers Union. It will meet again in January. Emergency services, the EA, local authorities, voluntary organisations and Departments stand ready to support affected communities in any future flooding. Flooding is personal and a priority for me, and I will work tirelessly to make our communities more resilient to flooding.

Question put and agreed to.