Flooding

Debate between Fiona Bruce and Laurence Robertson

Tuesday 6th February 2024 Westminster Hall

[Mr Robertson]

Absolutely. That is right. Business rates are one of those strange things; businesses pay without having made a profit. It is an unusual tax, so I certainly think that a lot of thought should be given to that. I also agree that businesses have to be looked at individually, as households should be looked at individually.

When flooding looks likely, many people who are registered are warned about the problems that are coming, so that they can make preparations, if possible. One of the actions they can take is to place sandbags around their properties. Sandbags are usually available from the local council, but sometimes there is an inadequate supply; the bags might not be filled with sand when people pick them up, so people have to effectively construct their own protective sandbags. The problem with that is that time is of the essence, and not everybody has the capability to do that—old people and vulnerable people, for example, are unable to do that for themselves—so they require help.

Unfortunately, many of those who have been flooded feel somewhat left on their own to fight against nature. They do not feel that everything that could be done has been done; they understand that they live in flood-risk areas, but they would like to receive a little more help. Of course, the Government and the Environment Agency have plans in place to help, and while macro-strategies are fine and necessary, micromanagement is sometimes needed so that households do not feel left out or ignored. We have the Environment Agency, the borough councils, the county councils and various other organisations that have been referred to, but perhaps we need a clearer steer on who is responsible for what.

I mentioned that there is a certain inevitability that flooding will take place in some areas, but in my area, it is felt that we make things much worse through excessive building. As I said, Tewkesbury town sits at the confluence of two rivers, and other rivers are nearby, so the water table is quite often very high, which makes flooding more likely. The more fields that are there for the water to rest on, the less likely it is that homes and business will be flooded. Conversely, when those fields are built on, the water has fewer places to go and to rest. In other words, fields are prevented from doing their job by being built on, yet I am informed that Tewkesbury Borough Council—in an area that floods so badly—is the fastest growing area of England outside London for development. In fact, in recent years, my constituency has had four times the constituency average for house building. That is not 10% or 15% as much; it is four times as much. While I am pleased to see businesses expanding and more people coming to live in the area, and while I recognise the need for housing, I wonder whether we can cope with all that growth in one area. Flooding around the town of Tewkesbury, and at Sandhurst, Longford and other areas, would tend to suggest that the problem has been made worse by the building that has taken place.

[Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is referring to exactly the situation in my constituency, where there has been a very high level of new build over recent years, so we have seen increasing flooding. In particular, a constituent of mine who lives adjacent to a new build seems unable to prove exactly why he is suffering that flooding, and yet this new build has occurred. Does my hon. Friend agree that it is absolutely critical that a local authority, particularly one that has granted permission for that new build, should have clearer responsibilities as the lead local flood authority to help constituents in that distressing situation to resolve the problem?

[Mr Robertson]

I agree with my hon. Friend, and I am very glad she made that point—there certainly should be that responsibility for the infrastructure. Building is sometimes allowed on appeal, which makes it even worse; where is the line of responsibility then? The Environment Agency has responsibility for drawing up maps and identifying flood plains, but that system is not working and has not worked for a long time, mainly because the system does not take water displacement into account. In other words, it is not just about whether the new houses that are being built flood, but whether building on those fields will cause other properties to flood. As well as deploying property flood resilience measures, which we should, there should be a detailed consideration of whether sustainable urban drainage systems, for example, work, and if they do, at what threshold they should become mandatory for developers.

School Funding

Debate between Fiona Bruce and Laurence Robertson

Monday 4th March 2019 Westminster Hall

[Mr Laurence Robertson (Tewkesbury) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir David. When I was first elected to the House almost 22 years ago, the problem in Gloucestershire was that we were underfunded due to something called the area cost adjustment. It has taken a long time to start to correct that, as this Government have done. We lost out not just to inner-city areas, which received a lot more money per pupil, but to other rural areas that got much more than Gloucestershire did.

I was very pleased that this Government agreed to set up the national funding formula. That was good news, but we need to start to see the fairness of the formula coming through a bit more quickly. If we continue at a very slow pace—let us say that it takes 20 years for there to be an equalisation of funding per pupil—three or four generations of pupils will lose out. I say to the Minister, “Well done so far, but perhaps we need it to happen a little bit quicker than it is happening at the moment.”

[Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that we have the wrong Minister responding to this debate? That is in no way a personal criticism of him—quite the opposite. I believe that he and his colleagues in the Department for Education are listening, but they can allocate only the funding they are provided by the Treasury. Is it not the Chancellor who should be answering our requests for more funding for our constituencies? Should not our key request to the Minister be to ask him to take back to the Chancellor our calls for more funding for our constituencies?

UK Nationals Imprisoned Abroad

Debate between Fiona Bruce and Laurence Robertson

Tuesday 20th December 2016 Westminster Hall

[Fiona Bruce]

I was going to observe later in my speech that I had the privilege of visiting Ethiopia as a member of the Select Committee on International Development in 2013 to look at UK aid projects there.

[Mr Laurence Robertson]

It is my understanding that no UK aid actually goes to Governments these days. Certainly, it does not go to the Ethiopian Government. I think that it goes much further down the line.

[Fiona Bruce]

It is now often the case that aid is not paid bilaterally to many countries. None the less, UK aid money is being spent in Ethiopia, as has been indicated by my hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham (Dr Mathias).