Managing Flood Risk

Debate between Geoffrey Clifton-Brown and Barry Gardiner

Monday 3rd March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Barry Gardiner]

I am sorry; the Minister is wrong on that point. The 290 projects that I referred to are those that were shovel-ready and scheduled within that four-year period; the 996 projects are the ones that were not. Significantly, 13 of those schemes were in the north-east Thames valley, where more than 350 homes have been flooded, and 67 of them were in the south-west, where 100 homes have been flooded.

My right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition made the further point at Prime Minister’s questions that the EA is planning to make 550 flood defence posts redundant. I specifically questioned the Minister in the Westminster Hall debate last week on whether those redundancies will go ahead. He was pressed for time in his summing up and was unable to explain how he considered that the EA could give people the sort of assistance that we have seen over the past two months and to which many hon. Members have paid tribute this afternoon, and I join them in doing so. How will the EA do that with 550 fewer staff? Today, I ask him to tell the House what roles the people in those posts currently perform. Are some of them the people who actually manage the flows of water in the waterways, by monitoring and operating the sluice gates, the weirs, the locks and the pumps? Do they include the people who survey and assess the condition of flood defences. Do they include the people who prepare the maintenance schedules for those defences? Do they include any of the people who have been helped with the clear-up operations? What is of enormous concern is that those skills and expertise might be lost with these redundancies, with the corresponding loss of service and safety to the public in the future.

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Barry Gardiner]

I am afraid that I cannot give way because I have to give the Minister time to respond. I have given way quite a lot.

Now the Government have set out their forward projects for capital, by saying that they will spend £370 million a year in 2015-16 and every year through to 2021. The Minister needs to be open with the House today about what percentage of that money in each year will be used for new build flood defences and what will be used for major capital repairs and maintenance. The Committee on Climate Change has been astute in analysing the figure of 165,000 properties that the Secretary of State told our Select Committee were “better protected” in the current spending period when he gave evidence to us last year. It warns that flood risk will actually reduce only for a proportion of the 165,000 properties. Many capital schemes are simply replacing or refurbishing existing defences on a like-for-like basis and to the same crest height. With climate change, many of those homes will be less well protected than when the defences were originally built. The defence may have been repaired, but the risk that it will be overtopped as a result of climate change has increased. Far too many homes and properties are still at risk because the defences that we have are less effective than they once were because of the increased frequency and severity of extreme weather.

As my right hon. Friend the shadow Chancellor pointed out in his op-ed for The Daily Telegraph just over a week ago:

“Investment in flood defences is now £500 million below what is needed and this risks £3 billion in avoidable flood damage”.

The point that he makes is as simple as it is clear:

“we need to make long term decisions now that can save money in the future”.

He has promised that our zero-based review of public spending must not only eliminate waste and inefficiencies but

“prioritise preventative spending that can save money in the long-term.”

That is the sort of commitment that people get when they have a Chancellor who understands the science of climate change, rather than one whose guru is the chief climate change denier in the other place.

As my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition said on Wednesday last week, the assessment of how much to invest in flood defence depends significantly on an assessment of the risks posed by man-made climate change. If we are properly to protect the British people against the threat of flooding, we cannot have doubt and confusion within the Government on climate change. But doubt and confusion are what we have from the two Secretaries of State in charge of protecting our homes, infrastructure and industry. The Environment Secretary’s unscientific opinions on climate change and his refusal to be briefed by his chief scientist on the subject are a matter of public record, as is his decision to downgrade flood defence as a priority. The link is clear.

The confusion reached a new height last Wednesday when the Communities Secretary, given the opportunity to show some scientific understanding and rigour, chose instead to cite Lord Lawson. The noble Lord’s dangerous, unscientific opinions on climate science are well known and have no place in the Government, let alone in the answers from a Secretary of State with responsibility for flooding. The fact that the Prime Minister has refused to distance himself from those comments shows that the Government cannot be trusted to get this right. The Met Office has been very clear that such extreme weather events as we have seen are only likely to become more severe and more frequent.

Is the Environment Secretary still refusing to entertain a briefing from his chief scientist on climate science? Will the Minister at least put his own opinion on the record? Does he accept the climate change risk analysis prepared by his officials, which estimates that 1 million properties may be at serious risk of flooding by 2020? Up from the current figure of 370,000, that 1 million estimate includes 800,000 homes. If so, will he tell us whether his Department’s flood insurance proposal—Flood Re—takes account of those additional properties? The Committee on Climate Change adaptation sub-committee has warned that it does not.

The Minister will know that Lord Krebs, as chair of the adaptation sub-committee of the Committee on Climate Change, wrote to the Secretary of State in January and made it clear that the committee was available to the Department to ensure that sound science was the basis for all the Government’s long-term funding decisions on flood defences. Will the Secretary of State accept that offer?

I wish to identify one of the most fundamental recommendations made by the Select Committee in its excellent report. The Committee stated:

“We regret that the current regulatory framework does not permit innovative investment in natural flood defences by water companies and expect Ofwat’s next Price Review to rectify this.”

All too often, we reach for concrete and steel solutions to the problem of flooding instead of looking at soft, green infrastructural approaches. There are notable exceptions, and Wessex Water, for example, operates a catchment management system that pays landowners to manage the uplands in a benign way that retains water and purifies it, instead of allowing contaminated water in need of treatment to run swiftly down the catchment. Land management plays a vital role. The retention of flood water upstream through woodland and ground cover in the uplands is every bit as important as dredging in the lower levels of the catchment. Landowners always seek to dredge the river as it passes through their land. That is the quickest way to try to ensure that their own land is not flooded and the problem is passed downstream. This approach was contained in the Pitt review under recommendation 27. When will this most important element of flood risk management, adverted to in the Select Committee report, be implemented?

UK Trade and Investment

Debate between Geoffrey Clifton-Brown and Barry Gardiner

Thursday 15th March 2012 Westminster Hall

[Barry Gardiner]

The hon. Gentleman makes an absolutely perfect point. I am very happy to acknowledge it and support exactly what he says. UKTI should not simply be looking at the present, and it should not simply be looking at the short to medium term. It should have a strategic overview of where the UK’s trade and investment interests lie into the foreseeable future—that is absolutely right.

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that if we get one thing out of this debate, it is that UKTI needs to be encouraged to benchmark itself against the very best similar organisations in the world? With great respect to my hon. Friend the Member for South Thanet (Laura Sandys), let us not benchmark against the French—we will get into the same problems that they have—but go to Asia and look at Singapore and Hong Kong to see what they are doing for their countries.

[Barry Gardiner]

I think that I should just take interventions and not make my speech, because every one of them is excellent. The hon. Member for The Cotswolds is right. I disagreed with him on his earlier points about RDAs, but on this point I agree: benchmarking and international comparators are essential if we are to see what we are doing. Also, there must be much closer scrutiny, performance management and benchmarking within UKTI to ensure that we are delivering what we promised. I will mention accountability in that sense later.

--- Later in debate ---

[Barry Gardiner]

The hon. Gentleman is right. Indeed, for precisely those reasons, I set up the all-party parliamentary group on UK-India trade and investment a number of years ago, to take advantage of the constituency links that he and the hon. Member for South Thanet have mentioned. We must capitalise on these things. They are the stuff of which business is made. Business is made not simply by good products and good marketing, but by people and contacts and by people who are able to go out and get business and do the deal. Someone might have the best product in the world, but if they do not have such a relationship, things will not happen. That is the hallmark of successful business.

In my constituency, more than 130 languages are spoken in our schools, and in one school, in a class of 29 children, 21 different first languages are spoken. Coming from such a constituency, I echo the sentiments expressed by the hon. Member for Enfield North (Nick de Bois). It is upon the experience, contacts and family connections of my constituents and, I presume, his that we must build a much stronger trade relationship.

This question must be asked of UKTI: why are emerging markets not at the forefront of British investment now? It should be UKTI’s role to facilitate investment abroad. The statistics reflect UK companies investing where it is easy, not where they can maximise return and not with an eye to future market share. That has a knock-on impact for British trade generally. The UK’s share of global exports has fallen from 5.3% in 2000 to 4.1% in 2010—a long-term trend of decline, I agree, since the 1950s. In the same decade, however, German exports grew from 8.9% to 9.3%. Meanwhile, our goods exports have grown by only 1% per annum, compared with 3% in the US and 5% in Germany.

A report conducted by Ernst and Young for the CBI noted:

“UK outflows are concentrated on the EU and the US, with negligible investment going to high-growth economies.”

The failure properly to engage with emerging markets is, however, not limited to the BRICs. There are no stated bilateral trade targets for Egypt or South Korea, despite both countries being designated as high-growth markets in UKTI’s current five-year strategy. There are also no stated bilateral trade targets for Bangladesh, Indonesia or the Philippines.

Although it is, of course, unfair to blame all those things on UKTI, they serve to underline the organisation’s inefficiencies. UKTI has masked its weaknesses through a lack of accountability. The figures provided in its own reports show little consistency, and there is a great deal of obfuscation regarding the allocation of resources and staff. There is also little or no clear delineation of duties or responsibilities between UKTI, the Foreign Office, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and the Treasury. The result is an overlap in what the various Departments do and, I assume, a duplication of effort. That lack of organisational clarity gives way to inefficiencies and a failure properly to undertake functions.

The evidence from business—I stress that it comes from business—is that UKTI is not an unuseful organisation, but it could do much more. In a survey conducted by the National Audit Office, 30% of respondents mentioned receiving some benefit from UKTI, but 40% indicated they had received no benefit at all. In a survey of exporters conducted by the CBI, only 12.8% of respondents described UKTI as excellent, while the verdict of 15.4% of respondents was that it was unsuitable or poor, and many organisations, of course, did not respond at all.

UKTI claims that for every pound invested in it, £22 is returned to the British economy—I am not indulging in flights of fantasy—but in UKTI’s own survey of British exporters working through UKTI, 46% of respondents indicated they would have achieved the same outcome without using UKTI. Let us not come out with silly statistics showing that for every pound that goes into UKTI, £22 comes back to the British economy, when UKTI’s own survey tells us that most people think they would have achieved exactly the same result without using UKTI. We have to be honest with ourselves if we are to make a proper analysis of the organisation and put those defects rights.

There is a dearth of credible financial and structural information available on UKTI. The National Audit Office stated that UKTI cannot measure its effectiveness or account for its expenditures because of a lack of accurate information. Our own National Audit office is saying that. The Government allocated an additional £45 million to UKTI in 2011, and it is most concerning that we are pouring money into a body that, according to the National Audit Office, has no oversight or accountability.

Evidence from within British industries has highlighted the failure of UKTI’s approach. Eight of UKTI’s 10 board members have no background in business, thus undermining the organisation’s ability effectively to identify investment opportunities and support inward and outward investors. Again, I refer to Ernst and Young’s CBI report, which states:

“more could be done to link UKTI and embassy staff to the plethora of trade associations operating in local markets.”

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

The hon. Gentleman has hit on a vital point. Will he consider the scheme originated by Lord Heseltine to encourage more members of UKTI to go on secondments in industry, and vice versa? In fact, we should do more of that throughout the civil service, so that it has the ethos of trade within it.

[Barry Gardiner]

I am always happy to listen to a freeman of the city of Liverpool, as I understand the noble Lord now is. Of course secondments and exchanges, such as those that the hon. Gentleman mentions, are sensible and important, but it would be better for people to have real commercial experience in the first place. That goes back to the remark the hon. Member for South Thanet made in opening the debate: however intelligent someone is, a first in classics from Oxbridge does not qualify them to do business or run UKTI. We have some brilliant civil servants, but if they do not have hands-on experience of running a business, filling in VAT forms, hiring and firing people or doing all the things that the Minister, the hon. Lady and I have done, they will find it difficult to get down to enabling others to do them.

The testimony of ADS, which represents the UK aerospace, defence, security and space industries, is particularly telling. Despite UKTI’s defence and security sector being larger than all its other sectors combined, ADS has observed that there needs to be a reorientation towards the BRIC countries and an increase in the number of sector specialists. The City of London corporation raised similar concerns over its UKTI sector. It identified a

“reduced...capacity limiting ability to support the delivery of overseas initiatives”

and commented:

“reduced resources for UKTI are having a detrimental impact on the effectiveness of UKTI in encouraging inward investment”.

Such comments provide valuable feedback from service users; this is not about Her Majesty’s Opposition or Back Benchers quibbling and cavilling. We are simply highlighting what service users are saying, not because we wish to embarrass UKTI, talk down British industry or undermine the Government and the Minister, but because we share the concern that Britain is not punching at the weight that it should be—or, far less, above it.

All institutions, but particularly Government institutions, should be accountable, and the debate has given us a valuable opportunity to highlight UKTI’s role, so I pay tribute to the hon. Member for South Thanet for her inspiration in initiating it. Our intention has been to provide constructive criticism and to create wider awareness in Parliament of UKTI’s role in promoting UK trade and investment. Evidence from industry and recent experience are instructive. It is clear that we must redouble our efforts to attract investment and ensure that UKTI is properly funded, fully accountable and working effectively.