Business of the House

Ian Liddell-Grainger Excerpts

Thursday 16th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Many right hon. and hon. Members are seeking to catch my eye, but there is a statement to follow and then Backbench Business Committee business, so there is a premium on brevity from Back Bench and Front Bench alike.

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

My right hon. Friend is aware—I have banged on about this enough times—of problems with flooding in my constituency, but we now have a new precedent. The Environment Agency has decided to spend £28 million flooding farmland in order to tick a box for Europe. It is nothing to do with this country; it comes from a European directive. There is now an entire village of people worried that they will be cut off and will have to be removed if the plan fails. This is not the first such case, but things are now getting extremely serious, so may I ask for Government time in which to debate what the Environment Agency is doing?

[Sir George Young]

Of course I understand the seriousness to which my hon. Friend refers and the anxiety in the village concerned. He will have an opportunity on Tuesday to raise the matter in the last debate of the year, but in the meantime, I will draw the matter to the attention of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and see whether any action can be taken at ministerial level to allay the concerns that he has expressed.