Flooding (Steart)

Debate between Ian Liddell-Grainger and Charlotte Leslie

Wednesday 12th January 2011 Westminster Hall

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

I am very grateful that I have the chance to debate the issue of flooding on the Steart peninsula in the Bridgwater and West Somerset constituency. If hon. Members fail to recognise the name, they should fear not: Steart is a small, flat place at the mouth of the River Parrett, where the river trickles into the Bristol channel. They should remember the name; I promise that at the close of this short debate, Steart will be engraved indelibly on all our hearts.

We are talking about 1,000 hectares of land, much of which is below high-water level at spring tide. That is, and always has been, the nature of this extreme corner of the Somerset levels. The village of Steart is near the tip of the peninsula, less than a mile and a half east of the villages of Stockland Bristol, Combwich and Otterhampton. The seaward fringe is generally higher than it is inland, and has a gravel and sand formation, which is possibly the old barrier beach. The Romans, believe it or not, did a pretty good job of preventing the sea from stealing the land.

Records show that the Steart coastline and the River Parrett have often changed position. Nature has been playing a muddy game of musical chairs for hundreds of years, and in the 1700s the Steart peninsula was cut off from the mainland altogether. Even today, the Parrett’s low water channel regularly shifts. Steart’s defences now rely on what was built back in the 1950s. A lot of money was spent and the system creaks, but it works. The defences still, of course, need maintaining, and this is where the story comes of age.

The people now paid to maintain flood defences for Steart are in that all-singing, all-dancing quango the Environment Agency. Hon. Members will gather that I am not a great fan of the body. It employs thoroughly decent and talented people locally, with whom I believe I have a good relationship, but the top tiers at head office have begun to believe their own glowing publicity, and all too often come across as a bunch of cocksure know-it-alls.

With permission, I shall read the opening statement of a consultation document on the Steart peninsula that the agency published last year. I am sure that the Minister would like to hear this—it sounds like a glossy TV advert. It ought to be read by an oily voiced actor, with uplifting music in the background, but I am afraid that hon. Members will just have to use their imagination:

“We are The Environment Agency.”—

pause for a drum roll, followed by close-up shots of smiling families gazing up at the agency’s queasy green logo—

“It’s our job to look after your environment and make it a better place—for you, and for future generations.”

In case this is all too emotional, I shall of course pass tissues around to the ladies.

“Your environment is the air you breathe, the water you drink and the ground you walk on.”

Someone must have been paid to write this patronising drivel—I do not know who.

“Working with business, Government and society as a whole, we are making your environment cleaner and healthier…The Environment Agency. Out there, making your environment a better place.”

Terrifying. They could have fooled the people of Steart, and me!

The Environment Agency’s name is, literally, mud in my neck of the woods. Just before Christmas, it bunged in a planning application to build an experimental flood bank on the Steart peninsula. Putting in a planning application just before Christmas is rather reminiscent of a Chancellor publishing his Budget by means of a written question on a Friday afternoon—we have had experience of that. The Environment Agency was trying to slip something nasty under the radar. Apparently, it wants to test a long-term idea for a huge permanent structure to see if it would work. One would think that, with all its boasts of making the world a better place, it would have actually done some scientific work, and at least calculated the risks in a laboratory. Bridge builders do not build experimental bridges across rivers just to see if they will work. But, we should never forget that the Environment Agency loves spending money—our money.

The agency’s long-term dream is to spend £28 million of taxpayers’ money, sinking it all into a scheme that will not protect Steart from the sea at all. That amount would buy the new hospital that we desperately need, and have been waiting for, in Bridgwater, or it could be used to complete the two schools in my constituency on which the Government have pulled the plug. But the Environment Agency wants us to earmark that sort of big money to sink the Steart peninsula for ever, and for an extravagant, cockeyed reason it now wants to indulge in a trial run.

I must quote what the agency wrote in support of its application—it is absolutely marvellous:

“We have carried out an initial site investigation,”—

Hallelujah!—

“which has shown that the foundation soils are weak and highly compressible, making ground conditions less than ideal for a simple embankment construction. In order to progress the design, it is necessary to obtain more information”.

It has been looking at this for only 20 years. It wants to build an embankment 150 metres long, four metres high and 53 metres wide, just to check whether it works. Either that is lunacy, or those responsible come from Essex. Hon. Members will appreciate my constituents’ fury. My constituents know the place and actually live there, unlike most of those in the Environment Agency. They understand the challenge of farming the land and, I am afraid, the real hazards of the incoming sea. This so-called temporary embankment will actually increase the risk of flooding, but I reckon that that is what the Environment Agency wants anyway. The truth about the agency’s real ambition is buried in its consultation document, some sickly bits of which I have quoted. Wading through the twaddle, we get to the nub:

“There is a significant need for additional intertidal habitat on the Severn Estuary to meet the Environment Agency's international obligations and offset losses due to coastal squeeze.”

“Coastal squeeze” is a great phrase—it sounds like a dodgy woman.

A bit of the document is not in plain English, so I will try to make it easier for everyone to understand—my apologies, of course, to hon. Members. The Environment Agency is running scared of Europe; I hope that the Minister is not. One does not have to be a geographer to know that Brussels is a long way from the briny. But, surprise surprise, the busy bureaucrats have come up with a plan to interfere with everyone who lives by the sea. The Commissioners are also extremely partial to sea birds. They have invented a policy that basically says, “Let nature do its worst. It doesn’t matter. Come on, Noah—where are you? Every flood is good news for the buff-breasted sandpiper.” I have severe doubts about the sanity of this so-called European obligation. I am also slightly dubious about this love affair with sea birds. It is extremely rare to see any sort of bird in Europe. Europeans tend to shoot everything that flies, and then eat it. It is much better for them if a long-billed dowitcher turns up in a pâté served in Brussels at €150 a plate. However, these days even the most craven Eurocrat bird-killer has to pretend that they love birds, and to watch them fly.

So, we have now been lumbered with a law, and the Minister will, no doubt, have carefully worded responses that say what a good thing it is—that the law is marvellous and right. Given, dare I say it, the Minister’s Eurosceptic credentials—I know him well—I will raise my eyebrows in disbelief if that is what happens during his speech, as, I suspect, might his colleagues. The wretched rules make it almost impossible for the Environment Agency to defend our country from floods—so what is the point of it? If the agency decides to build new defences in one part of the country, it has to take them away from another. Guess what? The agency has identified the Steart peninsula as just the sort of place where no one will notice. Well, they might have not noticed so far, but they jolly well will now.

The whole proposal is complete nonsense. The agency is trying to convince us that spending £28 million on a bird sanctuary will be cheaper and more effective than maintaining the existing flood defences. It did not do economics. That fatuous argument is plain wrong and totally dishonest. The agency’s consultation document offers three alternatives: first, do nothing and wait for the tide to come in—like a civil servant; secondly, do the bare minimum and hope that the tide does not come in; and thirdly, do something drastic and flood the whole place deliberately. The agency really gets excited when it comes to “drastic” action—it loves that word. There are pages and pages in its consultation document about the alleged advantages of letting the sea take over:

“Creating wetland habitats will provide benefits, not only for people who live on the peninsula and visitors but also for birds, fish and other wildlife. The natural, open landscape will be very different to the present farmland and will reflect the peninsula's character before it was reclaimed during historic times.”

Those who wrote those last words obviously went to a very dodgy secondary school. We do not have to read between the lines to be sure of one thing: the Environment Agency is absolutely determined to flood Steart and, disgracefully, it has held that view for years. It conducted costly consultation back in 2002, before the Minister was even elected to Parliament. Guess what, it came up with a scheme to create an elaborate wetland habitat. Does that ring any bells? I am sure it does. But one thing stood in its way—it could not raise the readies.

Six years later the pathetic plan was back on the agenda, this time because the Bristol Port Company—this gets better—wanted to extend the Avonmouth container terminal so that even bigger ships can crash into it. One might think that that had nothing to do with Steart down the road, except for those inflexible European rules, which put birds above people. Suddenly, abracadabra, the Bristol Port Company remembered its mates at the Environment Agency, and settled on Steart.

[Charlotte Leslie (Bristol North West) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend for bringing this matter to the Chamber on behalf of his constituents and the habitat. He has concerns about the plans for Steart, but does he appreciate that Bristol Port Company’s plans for deep sea containers will provide 500 direct jobs and over 1,000 indirect jobs in transport and logistics, and will put the UK on a completely different footing when it comes to imports and exports? The port has said that it will work specifically with local people, and that its plans are separate from those of the Environment Agency.

[Mr Liddell-Grainger]

That is the most weaselly thing I have ever heard from a port company—not from my hon. Friend who speaks with the best direction from her constituents. Fine. I am speaking for mine. Why do I care if a company claims a benefit for Bristol? What difference does that make to me? Some weaselly woman turned up to tell me what is happening, saying, “Don’t worry. Your little people will be okay. We are going to flood your area. We won’t give you anything for it, but it will be good, although we won’t allow visitors.” Come on. Bristol Port Company is dodgy. It is much better at complaining about pylons in front of the chief executive’s house than about container ports. I do not need a lecture.

We all thought that we had got rid of it, but next week it will be back in earnest. The Bristol Port Company will roll into the village of Otterhampton a week today with the first of a series of public meetings to tell the locals about its exciting plans or—dare I say it?—push them to accept its exciting plans, whatever form they may take. It is in league with the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and, guess what, another totally useless quango, Natural England, our friends. I am delighted to say—I thank the Minister for this—that the Government will clip its ridiculous wings as soon as possible.

Unfortunately, wing clipping may be too late for Steart. The Environment Agency has submitted its planning application for that huge tidal flood bank. The Bristol Port Company intends to apply for planning permission to flood an enormous chunk of land on the other side of the road near Steart later this year. All that Steart will get out of that is a pile of bird droppings and an invasion of twitchers.