Humber Flood Risk Management Strategy

Graham Stuart Excerpts

Tuesday 1st July 2014 Westminster Hall

[Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Roger. Although I have been fortunate enough to secure the debate, the interests of other Members in the Chamber are at least as great as mine, so I will be as brief as I can. I will try to limit my contribution on this important matter to 15 minutes.

On 5 December last year, news around the world was dominated by the death of Nelson Mandela. The death of the greatest statesman in modern history rightly dominated all news coverage, as his achievements and legacy were celebrated. An unfortunate side effect of that was that it almost totally eclipsed one of the most serious tidal flooding events to hit the United Kingdom for more than half a century.

The tidal surge that hit the east coast of England that night was devastating. The floodwater overtopped more than 40 km of flood defences, and the Hull tidal barrier was inches away from being defeated. Had that happened, a significant part of the city would have been flooded, and thousands upon thousands of homes would have been rendered uninhabitable, causing misery for tens of thousands of people. In the event, although that did not happen, more than 1,100 properties in the area were flooded, which was still a miserable consequence for the families and businesses involved. The event was devastating, with the highest water levels ever recorded in the Humber, and we were fortunate that no one was seriously hurt or killed. When there was a similar but lesser tidal surge in 1953, more than 300 people in the east of England died.

For the people most closely affected, the flood has been a living nightmare. Warnings were not given in time, and in some cases alarms sounded only after the floodwater had inundated people’s homes. Across the Humber, most warnings were received only an hour before the waters rose. Those who were affected had no time to prepare and were forced to abandon their homes and their dearest possessions to the elements. They subsequently faced a living hell of temporary accommodation, not knowing when they would be able to move back into their own homes.

In the East Riding alone, 200 homes and nearly 50 business properties were flooded, and 15 miles of roads were submerged, which led to communities in my constituency being completely cut off. Blacktoft, Yokefleet, Saltmarsh and Faxfleet became virtual islands, and residents unsurprisingly felt abandoned and isolated. People in those remote villages were either evacuated while there was time or forced to abandon the ground floor of their own houses. They gathered what they could upstairs, but they were powerless to prevent the torrent of floodwater and debris from entering. For much of the time they were in complete darkness, because the power went as well. Some of them are pensioners, who moved to the area for a quiet and happy retirement only to see everything that they have worked for destroyed.

One respondent to a survey conducted by the local council had been informed that “Blacktoft never floods”, because of the defences, but in this case the defences simply were not good enough. Of course, defences that were perfectly adequate 25 years ago are not necessarily adequate today. In 2012, I asked the then Minister responsible, my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Richard Benyon), how many homes in my constituency were at risk of flooding, and he replied that from 2008 to 2012 the number of properties at risk had increased by 1,000. That illustrates the fact that with sea levels rising, if defences are not improved, that figure is certain to grow.

[Mr Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend rightly paints a picture of the devastation that occurred in December last year. Does he recognise that if the timing had been different by a couple of hours and if the wind direction had been different, the devastating event that we are talking about could have been catastrophic and caused major loss of human life?

[Mr Davis]

I think my hon. Friend has read the next page of my speech, as happens so often. He is absolutely right, and there were a number of coincidences that could be described as fortunate, although it may seem odd to describe the events of December last year as such. Had the tidal surge coincided with the astronomical tide—he is right to say that the difference was two hours—the event would have been much bigger. Had there been the levels of rainfall that we saw in 2007, the Aire, Calder, Ouse, Derwent and Trent rivers, which all feed the Humber, would have been fuller. The Humber would have started from a higher level, and I suspect that the Hull tidal defences would have been overtopped and defeated. If that had happened, we would have seen a similar picture to that in the Somerset levels, where the land was flooded for weeks, if not months afterwards. My hon. Friend is absolutely right to say that had we not been fortunate with the other events besides the tidal surge, we would have faced a much bigger catastrophe, and the events of 5 December could have included fatal incidents. The situation would have been at least as bad as it was in the Somerset levels, but with the difference that there would have been three international ports and a city of 256,000 people in the middle of it all.

The danger is real. As all hon. Members present know, we have had serious flooding in the region twice in less than a decade—in 2007 and 2013—with other serious localised flooding in 2011. The Humber represents the second highest flood risk in the country, behind only the Thames estuary. The national risk register considers tidal flood, which is what we face, to be second in severity only to an influenza pandemic. That is the scale of the threat facing the region.

The economic case for action is clear, given the strategic importance of the region to the rest of the country. Local authorities have worked incredibly well together on the matter, completely ignoring party, regional or geographic differences. Using the Treasury guidelines for such calculations, they have identified £32 billion of potential damage, which includes straightforward damage, lost productivity, increased insurance costs and deterred investment.

The economic value that is at risk includes several industries of significant strategic importance. The Humber is vital to the UK power industry, and the pressure put on the UK power network by a major flood event of the type that is predicted to occur in the next 50 years would be colossal. In addition, 28% of the UK’s oil refining capacity is situated in the Humber floodplain, and the loss of such capacity could not be made up by shifting demand to other plants. That is an important point, because it underpins one of the criteria that the Treasury uses to assess such things. It is often assumed that if an industry is at risk, it can go somewhere else, but that is not the case in the Humber.

Oil and gas terminals in the region process 30% of the country’s gas demands. More than 30% of the UK’s coal and an increasing amount of biomass fuel lands at Humber ports and is transferred to power stations such as Drax, Eggborough and Ferrybridge on road and rail routes that are also at risk from flooding. The chemicals industry in the region is enormous, amounting to more than £6 billion. Altogether, more than 20,000 businesses in the Humber are at risk from flooding, and the area contributes some £15 billion to the nation’s economy.

That all makes the Humber a national strategic asset, and rising sea levels mean that the next flood risk to that asset is not merely some distant probability. It is not something that just might happen. In the next 50 years, if we do not enhance our defences, there will be a costly and probably fatal catastrophe. Given the region’s vulnerability and the number of people under threat, it is past time for action to be taken to deal with the flood risk. By comparison, London, where the Thames floodplain has the highest flood risk in the country, is protected from events on a one-in-1,000-year basis. To achieve that, the Thames flood barrier was built between 1974 and 1982 at a cost of about £534 million, with an additional £100 million of investment around it to make it work. It is hard to assess accurately, but in today’s money that would be equivalent to more than £3 billion.

What we are discussing today would cost a lot of money. For the Humber, we are talking about £888 million, but that would still be significantly less than a third—perhaps less than a quarter—of the spend on the Thames barrier, which I do not think anyone disputes was an absolute necessity and an act of serious foresight by the Government of the day. With those figures in mind, the people of the East Riding, north Lincolnshire and Hull will rightly ask questions if the Government do not take action to improve the region’s defences.

Once it is understood that the Humber represents a national strategic asset, it becomes clear that any system of flood defences must address all risk across the entire estuary. On both banks of the river, the floodplain is very flat, and some of it is even reclaimed land—using for the first time in Britain what were then innovative Dutch techniques, Vermuyden drained Hatfield Chase, which is now in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy). Because the land is so flat and low-lying, it is impossible to separate any part of the defences from another. We cannot ring-fence the major population centres of Hull, Grimsby or Scunthorpe; we must deal with the problem as a single entity.

As Vermuyden’s involvement demonstrates, our area is in many ways as close to Holland as it gets in England. The Dutch do not do flood defences by halves, and neither should we. Perhaps we should reapply the lessons we learned from Vermuyden some centuries ago. To that end, the Environment Agency prepared the Humber flood risk management strategy in 2008 with the aim of improving the defences in the Humber, most of which dated back to the 1950s following the previous flood surge. The surge of last winter showed that the defences were inadequate and gave the agency new information that it is using to inform a comprehensive update to the strategy, with the aim of bringing defences up to such a standard that they could survive not a one-in-1,000-year event, like London, but a one-in-200-year event—that is the colloquialism, but it really means an event the probability of which occurring is 0.5% per annum.

The scheme is ambitious and will require co-operation across local and national Government, across party lines and across the north and south banks of the Humber. Much of that consensus has already been achieved: the agencies, local government, the local enterprise partnership and Members of Parliament have all acted completely without attention to narrow self-interest and with serious concern about the overall interest.

In the next 50 years it is highly likely that we will see a tidal surge event similar in magnitude to the one we experienced last winter, but worse in consequence. Factoring in the possibility of even less favourable conditions and rising sea levels, it is clear that the next major flood event could be devastating. There could be a serious threat to life and more than £32 billion of economic impact. It is not a doomsday event with an outside chance of happening; it is likely to happen at some point in the next half century. We were lucky to escape that outcome last year. If we do not act by implementing the Humber flood risk strategy, there is a serious risk of such a catastrophe being repeated.

Governments of all colours—Tory, Labour, coalition or whatever—find it difficult to take more than a five-year view, for obvious reasons; when it comes to flood defences, it is necessary to take at least a 50-year view, if not a multi-century one. We must start work on a programme that will take at least 10 years to complete. Yes, the numbers are enormous and run into billions of pounds, but the cost of doing nothing would be far greater in the long run. On 5 December 2013 we were given a timely warning—one might say God-given—of the consequences of inaction. We would do well to pay attention to it.

I will not be shocked if the Minister has not turned up with £900 million for us in his back pocket—I will be disappointed, but not shocked. Nevertheless, we must recognise that we are faced with a conjunction of several things: a major risk that we know is going to get worse; a historic demonstration of the harm of that risk if it is ever realised; and a clear strategic asset that is at risk in terms of industry, economy, links to the outside world and, most importantly, the hundreds of thousands of people of the area. Because it will take so long to carry out the necessary improvements and enhancements to the defences, it is vital that the Government take a strategic view in both direction and money.

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[Mr Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Roger, and to follow the excellent speeches made by Members across the Chamber, which have given the Minister and the rest of the Front-Bench team a clear message about the unity of feeling around the Humber. As has been said—it is worth reiterating—that goes across party lines and includes local authorities working together under the industrial leadership of the local enterprise partnership. We are all united in this, alongside the technical input and understanding of the Environment Agency and other agencies.

I take the Minister back to December, when I visited residents of Kilnsea in my constituency, just above Spurn point, and met the chairman of the parish council there in his house, which had recently been refurbished. I saw his devastation and that of his wife, as their brand-new kitchen and recently installed facilities had been wrecked by the overtopping of the nearby bank. To his credit, he was not primarily concerned with his own interests, but was going out to meet other residents. He took me to meet them and their homes had similarly been devastated. Some of those people were less resilient than that couple, because of their age or infirmity. As the Minister will know, the personal impact on people whose homes have been flooded is utterly devastating.

The recent flooding comes just a few years after the 2007 floods. Last Wednesday—25 June—was the anniversary of those floods. They devastated Hull and the East Riding, led to Hornsea in my constituency being cut off, and led to flooding in every area of my constituency and in Hull, with many people being driven out of their homes—not just for months, but in some cases for years. Flooding is personally devastating, and that will always be at the forefront of my mind when I consider this issue.

If I may, I shall echo the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers) around opportunity. We have a fantastic and phenomenal positive opportunity around the Humber. I pay tribute to Lord Haskins, the chairman of the LEP, and others, who are working together to take the area forward. We have lower than average incomes in Yorkshire and the Humber—in fact, they are among the lowest average incomes in England—so we start from a position of having great deprivation and some history of economic failure, relatively speaking, yet a massive opportunity is opening up. We are working on taking that opportunity, cross-party and across authorities.

The Government should take enormous credit for the steps they have taken to help. The halving of the Humber bridge tolls has meant that instead of that bridge acting as a barrier between the two banks of the river—stopping them working together for the economic betterment of the whole area—it is a catalyst. Cross-party, we made representations to the Secretary of State for Transport. He has agreed to the electrification of the line to Hull, which will make a significant difference. Of course, the previous Culture Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Maria Miller), announced that Hull had been made city of culture 2017, and that announcement, too, is having a galvanising effect. From the Prime Minister down and throughout Government, efforts were made to encourage Siemens to sign up to come to Hull and for the supply chain to come to Paull in my constituency, which is immediately east of Hull. That work was also successful.

It was my great pleasure to lead the members of the Education Committee to Hull last Monday and Tuesday, for them to visit schools there and see a real sense of renewal, energy and drive to raise standards. There is a massive opportunity for the area and it is waiting to be grasped.

If I look at clouds on the horizon, I see remarkably few. However, what I do see is the prospect of the chilling impact of the risk of flooding. If manufacturers such as Smith & Nephew, which the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Alan Johnson) mentioned, see that their investment is at risk from a failure to provide suitable protection, they can so easily take that investment elsewhere. That is true of so many of the companies that we have made such an effort to attract to the Humber area, reinforcing the presence of industry there. We have that enormous opportunity and we cannot afford to have it chilled by a failure to take the long-term view of the need for flood protection.

The Government rightly recognise the challenges of climate change. Anyone involved with climate change will know that the risks around it are twofold, or in two areas: the need to mitigate and the need to adapt. It is not enough simply to mitigate; we also need to adapt. I have in front of me the excellent latest science briefing from the Royal Society and the US National Academy of Sciences. It shows the sea level rise record since the beginning of the 20th century, including the acceleration of sea level rise in the last few decades, which is expected to carry on accelerating to the end of this century. Given that, how can we allow the short-term political time frames in which we operate—four or five years to a general election, or between local government elections—to inform our attitude to this subject? The danger is that we will and that we will not take the long-term view, which is so important if we are to get this right.

My message to the Minister is to look at how Government can create the frameworks to ensure that the resource that is required is invested in time to meet the long-term threat, because we recognise that the dynamics of the politics in which we operate on a daily basis are not very good for dealing with long-term threats. Therefore, we need to look hard at how we get a framework in place to ensure that there is an incentive to deal with those long-term threats, and that we deal with them, because although we will strongly make the case today, as we are doing, for the Humber area, the truth is that, nationally, we need to take the risk of flood damage more seriously. That fits entirely with the analysis that the Government have themselves made of the risks around climate change and rising sea levels, yet we do not see a co-ordinated, well thought through, long-term plan to ensure that the correct protections are put in place.

I want to make sure that the Minister is aware that, separately from the Humber efforts, the River Hull advisory board is studying the factors that contribute to flooding in the River Hull valley, which will have a strategic impact on the Humber, too. Across the piece, we are all working as hard as we can to ensure that we have a joined-up approach.

One criticism of the 2008 strategy was that, perhaps because of its funding and the brief it was given, it failed to understand the interconnectedness of city and rural areas, including how rural areas often act as a sponge for the urban areas. As I think my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) said in his opening speech, we cannot view areas of the Humber in isolation. There is no way to ring-fence them, have just a limited spend here or there and somehow protect a particular place. We have to view the area as one joined-up whole.

To return to the issue affecting Kilnsea, the replacement of the bank that was overtopped in December will cost £450,000. The Environment Agency has promised £300,000 and £50,000 has been raised locally, but that leaves the project £100,000 short. The bank is important to defend the residential and business properties of the village, such as that fine purveyor of great ales, the Crown and Anchor pub, and it also plays a vital role in defending the road to Spurn point, which is a popular tourist destination of national significance. Spurn point also plays a phenomenally important role in protecting the Hull ports area. It provides a natural barrier that deflects the longshore drift away from the estuary, thus allowing the estuary to self-clean to an extent.

I must pay tribute to the local internal drainage boards, which do such an excellent job of maintaining inland watercourses. However, I have a point to make about them, which I hope the Minister might take up with the Marine Management Organisation, if he has not done so already: that new, fresh quango no sooner came into being than it slapped a £10,000 bill on my local IDB for carrying out work that, had it been carried out by the Environment Agency, with the same contractors, would have attracted no such bill, which represented more than 10% of the project cost. If we are to have local areas taking responsibility, investing money and making things happen, we need to ensure that large quangos do not come along to give an initial estimate of £3,000, which I think is outrageous, before finally charging £10,000, which truly is outrageous.

One final local point is the Welwick realignment scheme, which is ongoing, although delays are causing increased flood risk. The bank involved needs to be restored, but investment is being held back until the overall realignment scheme is confirmed. Decisions need to be made more quickly and action must be taken so that we have ongoing, sustained and sensible protection from the risk of flood for industry and for residential properties.

Minister, those of us here today will maintain our joint efforts in this regard—not only when we meet the Prime Minister next week, but thereafter. I will finish by referring to an issue that I touched on earlier, which is trying to get a framework in place that means that the MPs for a particular area do not have to make a united effort to get people to see the long-term risk when the technical evidence for that risk already exists. With rising sea levels and the risks of climate change, we need a strategic overview by Government of the risks around flooding. Without that, we are putting our constituents at risk of devastating flooding of their homes, and we are also risking investment in and commercial success for this country. Having made that plea, I shall sit down.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Graham Stuart]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Barry Gardiner]

I am conscious that the Minister needs to speak, so if the hon. Gentleman will forgive me, I will not give way.

Last week, the outgoing head of the Environment Agency used a speech at the RSA—the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce—to call for cross-party consensus of the kind that we have seen this morning. That is what we had with the Pitt review: an approach that focused on building the capacity for strategic intervention. There were 92 recommendations, but only 46 were implemented. That approach, however, saw improvements implemented at Brough, Swinefleet, Burringham, Gunness, Stallingborough and Halton Marshes.

Since 2010 many of the projects named in the Humber flood risk management strategy have become stuck in the pipeline, because Government cuts have closed off, and in some cases indefinitely delayed, the available funding for essential projects. Examples include the Sutton Ings flood alleviation scheme, a sustainable drainage retrofit that would have protected an area of central Hull in which there are 2,982 homes at significant risk of flooding. The Ulceby flood alleviation scheme would have protected an area of Grimsby in which 2,164 homes are at significant risk of flooding. We urgently need to get back to an evidence-based flood management policy that all parties in the House can support. Nothing else will deliver the risk management strategy required for the Humber.

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

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Roger. As is conventional—but I say this in a heartfelt way—I thank the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) for securing the debate, which has given hon. Members across the region and across parties the opportunity to add their voices to a collective strategy at the political level, and to work with the technical expertise and the communities involved to move forward in addressing flood risk in the area.

As the right hon. Gentleman set out, and as others have reminded us, on 5 December 2013 the east coast experienced a very serious tidal surge, causing flooding to communities along the banks of the Humber, and indeed upstream. The defences were overtopped, and there was flooding to more than 1,100 homes and businesses, and 700 hectares of land around the Humber. A number of right hon. and hon. Members have talked about the importance of some of that land. The Government and I very much appreciate the impact that had, and the distress caused to the communities and businesses affected. I sympathise deeply with those whose homes and businesses were flooded. I have seen at first hand the effects of flooding around the country. The hon. Member for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers) mentioned that a number of Ministers have visited his constituency and the surrounding area to look at the impact.

I am grateful to the Environment Agency and all the other risk management authorities in the area, and to the emergency responders, for their excellent work in preparing for—that is important—and managing such events, without which the damage would have been much worse. When the flooding happened, they responded quickly and efficiently, so I particularly thank, as I have done in previous debates, all the professionals and volunteers for the way in which they responded to the exceptional weather.

Twelve thousand warnings were sent directly to homes and businesses, allowing people to prepare. We should not forget that our defences protected 156,000 properties in the area during the surge. The hon. Member for Cleethorpes said that it was difficult for people who have been flooded to hear the Government talking about what has been achieved, but as the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson) pointed out, it is important to send a message to those considering investing, or those who take decisions about levels of insurance premiums, excesses and so on, that defences do protect communities, and that many such defences operated successfully in this instance, as in others.

The 2013 event was of a similar magnitude to—it was slightly greater—the disastrous surge of 1953, in which 24,000 properties flooded and more than 300 people died. Surges such as the ones we saw in 1953 and in December last year will occur again, and it is possible that climate change could make such events more common and more severe. We cannot stop those events from happening, but we can ensure that our planning, preparation and investment in defences protect communities when they do happen. That is an ongoing process that right hon. and hon. Members present are at the heart of, on behalf of their communities.

[Mr Graham Stuart]

Will the Minister give way?

[Dan Rogerson]

I will, although I will not be able to do so often, because I want to get through all the issues.

[Mr Stuart]

I am grateful to the Minister. On the point about putting a strategic framework in place, will he reflect on whether we need to establish, as in Holland, flood protection standards that trigger the resource to deliver the standard, rather than having a certain amount of resource and doing the best possible with that?

[Dan Rogerson]

I will come on to resourcing. The hon. Gentleman has made a point about the approach in another jurisdiction; a number of people referred to Holland—or the Netherlands, as I should properly say.

One example of the ongoing investment I referred to is the £20 million defence improvement project that is under construction to provide better protection in Grimsby. That will be completed in autumn 2015.

I will say a little more in a moment about what is being done in the Humber area, but let me first put this issue in the national context, following on from the comments of the hon. Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner). I have worked with him in Select Committee, and I now face him in debates—he is one of the two Opposition Front-Bench Members his party leader has thoughtfully provided to shadow me, and I am obviously grateful to both of them for the way in which they do that.

Let me reiterate that flood management is a Government priority. We are spending £3.2 billion on flood and coastal erosion management over this Parliament. For the future, we have made a record six-year capital commitment of at least £370 million a year, as the hon. Gentleman said, to improve flood defences, and that will rise to more than £400 million in 2020-21.

With the 2014 autumn statement, we will publish a pipeline—to use the jargon—for flood defence improvement projects for the next six years. That will provide protection for at least 300,000 further households throughout the country, meaning that, by the end of the decade, we will have provided a better level of protection to at least 465,000 households. That is on top of our achievements over this Parliament.

Despite taking a terrible battering this winter, our defences have protected a significant number of properties. About 1.3 million properties and 950 square miles of farmland were protected during that period. In response to the exceptional events of the winter, the Government acted quickly. We not only made an extra £270 million available to repair, restore and maintain critical defences, but made available recovery money for those most seriously affected.

The £270 million of additional funding is being used on the ground now to help the Environment Agency and other risk-management authorities to ensure that important defences are repaired before the coming winter, and are returned to target condition as soon as possible. From time to time, it has been implied that some of these defences will not be there to do the job for which they were originally designed; that is why it is crucial that the money is spent to ensure that they are back up to target condition.

In 2007, the then Government approved the Humber flood risk management strategy, providing the Environment Agency with a strategic business case to invest up to £323 million over a 25-year period up to 2032 on works to manage and reduce tidal flood risk in the area. Although the strategy was led by the Environment Agency, it was developed with, and supported by, other risk-management authorities and key stakeholders in the area. The first programme of improvement schemes started to be delivered in 2009, including schemes at Brough, Swinefleet, Halton Marshes, Stallingborough and Donna Nook. Schemes have since been delivered at Burringham, Gunness, Tetney and Grimsby, and the scheme at Cleethorpes is under construction. Defence improvements are also being planned for Hull.

The right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Alan Johnson) set out the importance of the protection at the Albert dock. The temporary defences are there, so they are in place to increase the level of defence. The work he was concerned about, which will make those defences permanent, will be completed during this financial year. Even if the defences are not made permanent by this winter, the temporary defences are in place, and they will be made permanent. It is important that the right hon. Gentleman raised the issue, given the level of risk. In the time remaining, I want to pick up on a few points.

[Dan Rogerson]

May I respond to the points that have already been made? I apologise to the hon. Gentleman, but there is a great deal to get through.

The right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden mentioned the importance not only of new defences, but of assessing existing defences to see where improvements need to be made. That very much has to be part of the strategy, and he is right to mention the issue. Hull is an example of that process.

The right hon. Gentleman mentioned the effects over the entire estuary. It is possible to ring-fence some of the major population centres. Other Members have referred to the times when farmland can be used as part of a short-term measure to absorb water. Although I accept the point the right hon. Member for East Yorkshire (Sir Greg Knight) made about the importance of farmland to the local economy and to the country’s food security, there are schemes—there is one in Kent—in which farmers have been paid to take flood water as part of a local strategy. Where a case can be made for doing that, it can certainly be part of the solution.

We have put in place the flood recovery fund for farmers, so that they can apply for funds to restore land that has been affected. A number of farmers in the west country have done that, but the money has also been made available to people who were affected by the early December flooding in the region we are talking about. It is important to put on record that that funding was available to help people deal with the shorter-term effects.

I am grateful to the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden and other Members for their recognition of the fact that I do not have a cheque book with me and cannot sign over up to £1 billion of investment today.

[Mr Graham Stuart]

We are disappointed.

[Dan Rogerson]

Although I accept that hon. Members are disappointed to hear that, it is important to note that the work they are doing, along with the technical advice that is being received and the work that all the local authorities are involved in, will make a strong case for a long-term investment plan. The Government will then be able to consider that, along with the most up-to-date information.

The right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle set out events that took place under the Labour Government, which were of huge concern and had a great impact particularly in Hull, although also in the surrounding area. We must always be aware of the severity and the likelihood of such impacts.

On the flood risk to smaller communities, one strength of the Government’s partnership approach is that it has allowed some of the smaller schemes in rural areas to go ahead. We think that up to 25% more schemes will go ahead because of that approach, which has provided an opportunity to raise money locally to partner with Government investment. Some more rural schemes would not necessarily have been scored as highly as some of the bigger schemes, but partnership funding means that they are taking place, and I am aware of many that are going ahead as a result.

The right hon. Gentleman mentioned hypothecation and using the climate change levy and other things. Clearly, it is for Her Majesty’s Treasury to decide how the taxes it receives are spent. The position of successive Governments has been not to focus on hypothecation, but to look at investing in things that are necessary. Members have made the case today for investment in flood defences, and we have heard that very clearly. That is why we are spending more than previous Governments have.

The hon. Member for Cleethorpes set out, as he has done consistently since the flooding took place, the impact on the local economy and the importance of the port in the area he represents. It is crucial that colleagues in all Departments and agencies are involved in our plans and strategies as we move forward—the flood envoy covering the area is a Minister in the Department for Transport—and that we take account of what they can do to secure critical assets and infrastructure.

The hon. Gentleman mentioned local knowledge and what local land managers, farmers and internal drainage boards can offer. The Environment Agency is keen to work with them to make sure it constantly improves provision. Of course, many of the people who work for it also live in the areas affected and have worked there for many years, so the agency has great expertise when looking at local areas.

The hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart) talked movingly about the personal impacts and about how some of the responders—he mentioned a parish council chairman—took action on behalf of their community, even though they themselves were affected. It is important to recognise that. He talked about climate change and the national picture. While the Members gathered here will want to focus on what they want for their area, it is important to ensure that everybody can make their case, because there are many vulnerable areas, including further down the east coast, for example, where people will be looking to take forward schemes. He also mentioned a number of local schemes and described the impacts and the repairs that are under way, and I would be happy to write to him about some of them to make sure that we maintain progress.

The hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North rightly mentioned, as she has done consistently, the importance of making sure there is room for development in areas prone to flood risk. The Government and local authorities want to send a strong message that we want to make these areas resilient and as well-protected as possible. We do not want just to add to flood risk. The Flood Re scheme builds on what was there before, which was set up for properties flooded in 2008. While 2009 remains the cut-off, we are investing in flood defences to protect other areas. That is why it is important we are talking today about protecting areas affected more recently.

The debate has given local Members the opportunity to show that they are working together, working with local communities and local authorities and using the Environment Agency’s expertise to make a case for investment in their area. I am delighted that they have secured a meeting with my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister to take that forward, and that there is an opportunity to work with Departments on community resilience and the resilience of critical infrastructure.