Flooding (Somerset Levels)

Ian Liddell-Grainger Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd January 2014 Westminster Hall

[Mr Ian Liddell-Grainger (Bridgwater and West Somerset) (Con)]

I am delighted to be under your chairmanship once again, Mr Turner. I am also delighted to see my hon. Friends the Members for Taunton Deane (Mr Browne), for Wells (Tessa Munt) and for Somerton and Frome (Mr Heath) in Westminster Hall to take part in this debate about the serious flooding in Somerset.

I have stood in this place and made many similar speeches before. I have criticised the Environment Agency annually because the flooding in our area has become an almost annual crisis—and here we are again, mopping up after the latest deluge, listening to the same lame excuses and hoping that there will finally be some sensible action. I have to tell this House that many of my constituents are not as restrained as I am, and who can blame them, or anyone else across Somerset, for feeling like that? In my constituency alone, 17,000 acres of land on the Somerset levels are now under water: homes are uninhabitable, farms are unworkable and jobs are being expensively destroyed. A huge area of Somerset is now drowning under water that should have been prevented from getting to where it is now.

What went wrong? Was it climate change or incompetence? Let me read an extract from a constituent’s e-mail:

“As I write, the village of Moorland is slowly flooding. Earlier today the Environment Agency brought in additional pumps at Northmoor. But local farmers begged for pumping to start in earnest ten days before Christmas. However, the response was just too slow”.

These floods were predictable and predicted—the Met Office knew that it was going to rain, and anyone in Somerset with half an ounce of common sense or a bit of seaweed would also have realised it—but the Environment Agency apparently failed to cotton on. In spite of its highly paid bosses and a huge team of experts it missed that fact.

The Environment Agency is one of the most expensive quangos in this country. It employs more people than the Canadian environment agency, and the number of people employed by the environment agencies of Denmark, France, Germany, Sweden and Austria put together do not match the number of people that our agency employs. Many of those countries have far longer coastlines and in some cases far bigger populations than we do, but their environment agencies cost a great deal less and do a better job than ours. Why are we spending £1 billion a year on the Environment Agency? Are we seriously getting value for that money?

On the Somerset levels, people are scared and angry—very angry. My local council in Sedgemoor is angry, and I am sure the same is true in Taunton Deane and Mendip. These floods shut off our major roads; the resulting detours add many miles to our journeys, which consequently cost us more. The roads that have flooded have sunk 12% in Sedgmoor. That is not a freak act of nature; it is unforgiveable negligence. Nineteen years ago, the two main rivers that run through Sedgmoor were regularly dredged by the old river boards. Dredging was expensive, dirty and repetitive, but it was a job that everybody realised had to done, because rivers on low-lying land silt up if they are not dredged. That is common sense.

Once upon a time, Sedgmoor was probably part of the Bristol channel, until the Romans arrived and dug ditches. It took Dutch engineers to tame the levels in the 17th century. They understood the consequences of doing nothing, as much of their own country is below sea level. It is well worth dwelling on that fact: over Christmas and in the ghastly wet days that followed, almost the same amount of rain that flooded my constituency fell in the Netherlands, but there were no floods in the Netherlands, because in Holland they dredge, they prepare and they protect. They plan for the worst and rarely suffer a problem.

One of the benefits of regular dredging is that the riverbanks are built up at the same time. It is a double whammy—ask any Dutch hydrologist. However, 18 years ago the Environment Agency was created and it made a policy U-turn that took everybody completely by surprise, and we have all been suffering from it ever since. Regular dredging of the Parrett and the Tone came to an abrupt end, and the agency decided that the future lay in managing any floods that might result. The agency bears huge responsibility for all the problems that have happened. The Parrett and the Tone are now so silted up that in some places they no longer act as rivers at all.

[Mr Jeremy Browne (Taunton Deane) (LD)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate today. In my conversations with residents, business people and farmers on the levels, they raise three points with me. One is about whole-river catchment and additional house building in Taunton, and whether that is having an effect on flooding, including making it more rapid. Another issue is pumping, and my hon. Friend has already touched on that, but I would be grateful if he expanded even further on the main issue—the No. 1 priority for people on the levels—which is dredging. I am told that the Tone and the Parrett are operating at only about 60% of their capacity, due to their silting up. Everybody who I speak to on the levels is convinced that dredging is the No. 1 action that needs to be taken to try to prevent this terrible flooding problem in the future.

[Mr Liddell-Grainger]

rose—

[Tessa Munt (Wells) (LD)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Mr Liddell-Grainger]

Of course I give way to my hon. Friend.

[Tessa Munt]

I would like to add a plea for the Axe and the Brue to be dredged, because they are also in need of dredging, and the level of flooding caused by those rivers is extremely worrying for my constituents. So it is not only the Tone and the Parrett that need dredging but the Axe and the Brue.

[Mr Liddell-Grainger]

My hon. Friends are both absolutely right. This is a ridiculous situation. All our rivers need to be dredged, and I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Wells has done an enormous amount for the Brue and the Axe, as indeed my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton Deane has for the rivers in his area. He is absolutely right that we are 40% below capacity. If we took an empty Coke bottle and filled 40% of it with sand, we would not get the Coke in the bottle. It is ridiculous to be told otherwise. I see on the BBC website that the Environment Agency says our comments are “too simplistic”. Is the agency now insulting the people of Somerset? I think it is.

The dramatic effect became visible in summer floods two years ago. The rivers could not drain water away because of the volume of water pumped into them, which happened precisely because, as my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton Deane says, the capacity of both the Tone and the Parrett is so greatly reduced. The Environment Agency was attempting to push water into an outlet that was already completely full. The agency was also having great difficulty pushing water because many of the pumps being used were more than 40 years old and—as we have now discovered—they had not been properly maintained. In case anyone was wondering, the responsibility for maintaining pumps is the Environment Agency’s, nobody else’s.

I am afraid that the people at the agency are what we call serial offenders. They stick to an agenda that seems to allow them to do exactly what they want. The agency’s own literature is full of vague phrases and get-out clauses. No. 1 is:

“We will continue to maintain defences where there is an economic case to reduce the risk from flooding to people and property.”

What do they mean by the words:

“where there is an economic case”?

Who decides that? No. 2 is:

“We will continue to maintain defences that are required to protect internationally designated environmental features from the damaging effect of flooding, for example Sites of Special Scientific Interest.”

That is a big clue. The agency will go out of its way to protect “internationally designated environmental features”, but not our farms or our people. No. 3 is:

“We will consider maintaining defences that do not fit categories 1 and 2 above”—

this is absolutely true—

“but where work is justified due to legal commitments or where stopping maintenance would cause an unacceptable flood risk.”

Note that the agency will only “consider” maintaining defences; it does not promise to do anything at all. No. 4 is:

“We will, following consultation, consider stopping maintenance of defences that do not fit the above three categories. We will work supportively with interested parties to explore options in such circumstances.”

So the agency admits that it may stop maintaining some defences altogether, which is precisely what it did in 1995, as soon as it was established. We have been struggling with those daft decisions ever since.

The Environment Agency believes that the levels should be allowed to return to the swampy wilderness that they were in the middle ages, and all in the name of “managed flood risk”. The most it is prepared to do is to dig out teeny-weeny bits of two rivers—“pinch points”, as it calls them. One of them, at Burrowbridge in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton Deane, is not capable of being dug out. The agency promised to do the work last year. It started—guess what?—in October and it is not even halfway through the work. The price of this unfinished business alone is put at roughly £4 million. Obviously, that is a great deal of money. I have no idea whether or not the agency is telling the truth about the figures; we are taking the best guesstimate we can.

The Environment Agency’s argument throughout the past 19 years is that dredging is uneconomic—tell that to the locals—but when Northmoor and Currymoor were allowed to sink beneath the flood waters last year, I can tell this House that the real cost to the local economy was in the region of £10 million.

[Mr Jeremy Browne]

I support my hon. Friend’s last point on the economic analysis of the cost of flooding. I have first-hand experience of speaking to people who live on the levels in my constituency. They are unable to get their children to school, they are unable to get to work, and local businesses such as pubs lose a large amount of their custom during the busy new year period. That is hugely detrimental to people living in that part of Somerset, and it needs to be factored in to any cost-benefit analysis of dredging.

[Mr Liddell-Grainger]

I thank my hon. Friend. He puts the situation in a beautiful nutshell. That is delightfully put.

We are suffering because of inadequacy and absolute ineptitude. Why should people not get to work? People in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome are carrying out their bins in boats, which is farcical in the 21st century. I know you would not put up with that on the Isle of Wight, Mr Turner, and neither should we. You have a bigger island than we have.

The previous chief executive of the Environment Agency, Barbara Young, or Baroness Young of Old Scone as she is now, once admitted that she would like to place limpet mines on all the old pumping stations just to get rid of them. She preached the gospel of sustainability, and she said that the only long-term solution would be to open the flood banks and let the waters spill over the flood plains wherever the rain or tides dictate. What has changed? Lady Young has gone, but her director of operations, Paul Leinster, adopted most of her dotty ideas and took her £200,000 a year job—nice if you can get it.

Today on the levels, the Environment Agency spends far more money creating floods than averting them. Right now the agency is pioneering an extravagant, ridiculous scheme to flood the Steart peninsula near the Hinkley Point nuclear power station, which we in Somerset know about, in order to create a “wonderful” habitat for wildlife. The agency will also prove to the nosey parkers in Brussels that we are doing all we can to meet EU objectives to make life more comfortable for reed warblers. That is of course a load of nonsense, absolute rubbish and a waste of money. The agency is spending £31 million digging holes on Steart. I am all in favour of our feathered friends—I should be—but I have missed something. Is a new European directive likely to put birds before people? I am beginning to wonder.

Poor people are being baled out of their homes in Northmoor, Moorland and across Somerset, and my hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome will say a few words about that in a minute. The Environment Agency has a woeful track record of being led by wets, do-gooders and twitchers. Lady Young with her limpet mines was once chairman of English Nature and chief executive of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. Tweet, tweet.

The noble Lord Smith of Finsbury, Chris Smith as he was when he was Labour, remains chairman of the Environment Agency until July 2014. He is a typically wishy-washy man and a townie. He is a man who described last year’s flooding as being caused by the “wrong type of rain” when he stood in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton Deane. The Environment Agency wants us to believe that it is far too expensive to dredge rivers, which is rubbish. If those people really cared about the environment, they would know that failure to dredge completely upsets the ecology of the whole area and the very wildlife that they religiously want to protect.

So what are we going to do in Somerset? Wait until Lord Smith pulls his finger out of the dyke, metaphorically speaking? I am afraid that we have had enough. We are not going to put up with it, year in and year out. Flooding is not a once-in-100-years event now; it is happening every year. The Royal Bath and West show and Michael Eavis of Glastonbury festival fame have started rattling tins to try to raise £2 million towards dredging. That money is gratefully received, and they are doing a good job, as my colleagues in Somerset know. Perhaps Her Majesty’s Government would care to give as generously, or at least lean or sit heavily on the Environment Agency to give seriously. Perhaps the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government could sit on the Environment Agency.

It is always being said that the Environment Agency is broken, but it is still the biggest quango on the planet as far as I am concerned. The fundraisers are already talking to the Dutch. There is a wonderful machine used in East Anglia which has been brilliant, and I am going to go to see it in action—I am arranging to see Dutch engineers to support the task, and I will speak to my Somerset colleagues about it. The task is not difficult or impossible. We can do it on a much bigger scale in different areas. I am meeting members of the Dutch Parliament in Strasbourg next week at the Council of Europe to talk about what they can do to help us to get the Environment Agency to change its mind.

The Environment Agency has failed us once again, and I am absolutely sure that the Minister and the whole Government want the organisation to be slimmed down and to make it work better and more efficiently. Now is the time for action. Will the Minister please tell us what we want to hear? The people of Somerset not only deserve this; they need it. Get the rivers dredged and give us hope.

--- Later in debate ---

[Brandon Lewis]

I am sure that my hon. Friend will be putting that point to the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

I want to say a little bit about the Bellwin scheme, which has been supporting affected areas since we activated it in December. As most local authorities are fully aware, it is a means by which the Government can reimburse a local authority for its immediate and uninsurable costs associated with responding to an emergency or disaster in its area. Bellwin is a well recognised and respected funding scheme. Local authorities have one month from the end of an incident to notify the Department that they intend to apply for activation of the Bellwin scheme. So far, 37 authorities have given us notification. The colleagues of my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgwater and West Somerset at Somerset county council have already registered an interest to apply for Bellwin support in respect of the current flooding.

Due to the way the Somerset levels and moors are managed, they are designed to flood, which results in the entire area effectively still remaining a response phase to the recent flooding—as I said, a major incident has been declared today—and will remain so for some weeks. I recognise, however, that the recent flooding in some villages is worse than that seen in 2012. The full extent of the flooding may not be realised until the levels and moors are fully pumped out. My chief fire and rescue advisor has offered additional pumping capability and the use of local fire and rescue services’ high-volume pumps to support the local Environment Agency efforts in returning the levels to a safer capacity for this time of year. They have further supported Somerset county council by providing a fire boat and crew, to be used as ferry service for the residents of the cut-off villages to enable them safely to obtain necessary supplies, and this will remain in place.

I have been advised that the local Environment Agency took action to mobilise pumping appliances in advance along the River Parrett. This was following the numerous contingency plans that have been put in place since the 2012 floods. In recognition of the serious impact that the flooding is having in Somerset, the Environment Agency is mobilising an additional 20 temporary pumps, increasing its pumping capacity by 150% and making it probably the single biggest pump mobilisation in the country. The agency has also brought in extra manpower from around the country to support what has been a 24/7 incident response for some weeks.

Since the summer flooding of 2012, the Environment Agency has been working with several local organisations and communities to consider how best to manage future flood risk in the levels area. Members have made their views clear on that today, and I will ensure that comments are fed back to the Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the hon. Member for North Cornwall (Dan Rogerson). A local task force, comprising locals, partners and communities, has been established to develop a clear, long-term vision for the future of the Somerset levels and moors. The task force will be funded by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, local authorities and local environmental groups with expert support from both the Environment Agency and Natural England.

On dredging, which was mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgwater and West Somerset in particular, the Environment Agency is working closely with local partners to develop options to improve the situation on the levels.

[Mr Liddell-Grainger]

I am sorry to intervene here, but I never hesitate to correct a Minister. I know that he is working from what material he has, but that is absolute rubbish. The Environment Agency is not working with locals and certainly has not been in touch with Members from Somerset, and I am not aware that my right hon. Friend the Member for Yeovil (Mr Laws) has had any more success than us. That is absolutely not the case at all. I am sorry to have to correct the Minister.

[Brandon Lewis]

It is a point well made. If my hon. Friend’s understanding is that the Environment Agency is not meeting locals, I will certainly feed that through to DEFRA Ministers to ensure that they instruct the Environment Agency to talk to locals about what they are doing and how they are doing it in order to get things moving in a way that is satisfactory for everyone. Ultimately, we want to ensure that residents, on whose behalf hon. Members have spoken so passionately today, are properly protected.

[Brandon Lewis]

The hon. Gentleman makes a fair point. He read my mind because I was going to say that the matter will depend on the economic case according to existing policy. I will ensure that the Secretary of State knows hon. Members’ views on the criteria. The Department will look at the matter, and I expect hon. Members to continue to quiz us and to make the case for Somerset.

As I said, I was pleased to be able to announce on Friday the extra support we are giving to local authorities on top of the Bellwin scheme. There will be a clear expectation for results to be achieved with the extra funds. Local authorities will have a key role in identifying priorities for assistance, working closely with communities and businesses to enable that to happen, using the re-prioritisation of existing budgets that we announced. My officials are working to finalise arrangements for allocating the money and will be writing to chief executives very shortly to outline exactly what the application process will be.

In closing, I turn specifically to the role of local authorities, which are often subject to a tough line from hon. Members and residents about what they do not do. This afternoon, hon. Members have recognised that local authorities have worked really hard and have provided superb support for the communities, pressing the case to make sure that people have the right support in the tragic situations in which they find themselves. The Bellwin scheme is there to provide extra support, as will the money we announced on Friday. Flooding is devastating for those affected, and I am grateful to have had the opportunity to set out what the Government are doing and to support the work of the emergency services, local authorities and voluntary groups.

[Mr Liddell-Grainger]

Many council leaders are watching our debate, and information has been sent through to us. Could the Minister convene a meeting of the leaders of the affected councils—Taunton Deane, Sedgmoor, Mendip, South Somerset and West Somerset—to talk about the matter in greater detail? Perhaps he will think about that.

[Brandon Lewis]

I would be happy to do that. This week, we are writing to every local authority in the country that has been affected by flooding to invite them to send representatives in relevant and logical groups to talk to me about the issues. Those letters may already be on their way to chief executive and leaders. I will ensure that the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs takes note of what has been said today that is relevant to that Department.

I again congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate that makes clear the case for the people of Somerset.