Environmental Challenges (Somerset)

Debate between Ian Liddell-Grainger and Jeremy Browne

Wednesday 22nd October 2014 Westminster Hall

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

I am delighted to be able to take part in this debate and to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Weir. I am grateful to have another chance to debate the situation in Somerset and some of the environmental challenges we face. Given the catch-all title of this debate, several Departments may be interested in what I have to say.

My county, and my constituency in particular, have faced extraordinary environmental challenges during the past year. If there was an award for facing down environmental challenges, the Somerset levels would win hands down. This time last year, no public body in Britain was prepared to take the idea of severe flooding seriously. We were told that it could not possibly happen, and anyone who said otherwise was branded a doom-monger.

However, local people and farmers who had looked after the land for generations voiced concern about how little had been done in recent years to dredge the rivers and prevent them from silting up. Those people knew what could happen if it rained too hard and too long. They had witnessed the decline of regular maintenance of the pumps and pumping stations, and they had watched the withdrawal of equipment. For anyone who lives at or near sea level, such observations are second nature. Farmers on the Somerset levels well understand the delicate balance of nature. Unfortunately, severe rain and unprecedented flooding were required for the world to wake up to what had not been done—to the clogged up river beds that could not take the flow, the inadequate pumps that could not move the water and the penny-pinching, ostrich-like mentality of the Environment Agency.

I am not here to seek recrimination. I have come to know and admire many of the Environment Agency’s people on the ground, who have done wonders since the crisis began. I also believe that there is a new attitude at the top, led by the Prime Minister, since the appointment of a new and completely non-political chairman. So much has happened since the waters began to rise, and so many lives have been affected. There are so many tales of courage and fortitude, and so many millions of pounds have been spent on putting the mess right. As my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton Deane (Mr Browne) knows, we have all grown a little bit wiser because of these events. What a terrible shame that wisdom arrived after the event. I believe that the biggest environmental challenge is to ensure that such disasters do not happen again.

I intend to concentrate my remarks on those essentials. One of the most positive lessons from the whole experience has been the way in which local authorities have worked rapidly and in co-operation with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the Environment Agency to produce a 20-year flood plan. I can assure hon. Members that obtaining that agreement was no picnic, but the urgency and importance of the task concentrated everybody’s minds. The plan forms the basis for what is now being done and what remains to be done to safeguard the whole area for the future.

The Prime Minister donned his wellies and came with me across the levels on three occasions, not only to show solidarity but to make a promise. He said that whatever it cost, we had to fix the problem. We all knew that it would not be cheap, and with hindsight we realise that there is no such thing as a blank cheque; we live in the real world. The Prime Minister’s intervention set the wheels turning an awful lot faster, however. Slowly but surely, the dredging programme has been agreed on as part of the 20-year flood plan, and it is being implemented. Somerset is getting there at last.

Not everything has been plain sailing. Six months after the launch of a £10 million compensation scheme for farmers, only £4 million of payments have been approved and less than £1 million has been paid out. That may be partly because some of the farmers have been far too busy looking after their animals and land to do all the paperwork, but the process of making applications is riddled with red tape.

For example, my constituent Mr James Winslade, a farmer whose cows famously had to be rescued from the floodwater, should finally receive a cheque this week for £5,000. That is part of a payment for grass seed to replant his fields at Moorland, which is right in the heart of the flood zone. The vast majority of Mr Winslade’s farm—810 acres of land—was completely waterlogged for weeks. Like other applicants, he had to send DEFRA detailed maps showing the precise fields involved, which he did, but DEFRA wanted more imagery, in the form of aerial photographs, to prove that his fields were actually flooded.

I invite the Under-Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, my hon. Friend the Member for Hastings and Rye (Amber Rudd)—I am delighted to see her in her place—to do some research, because she will find that there are hundreds of aerial photographs of the exact area taken throughout the time of the flooding. The area resembles a huge lake that stretches for miles. The only safe way to travel was by boat—I have actually paddled across parts of Moorland in a canoe. When DEFRA officials were finally satisfied with the pictures, they demanded additional proof that my constituent had planted the grass seed. Is it any wonder that many farmers are still waiting and are extremely peeved about that penny-pinching process?

During a recent visit to the area, the new Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, my right hon. Friend the Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss), made it abundantly clear that much of that frustration was caused by bureaucracy imposed by EU rules—no surprise there. It is high time that we extended our list of things to renegotiate with Brussels to include loony farming regulations. I pay tribute to the new Secretary of State, who came into her post at a difficult time. She has been to Somerset twice since her appointment, and she has quickly grasped the problems and challenges that we face. She knows full well that there are concerns about the speed of the Whitehall decision process.

The Secretary of State also knows that an essential part of the flood action plan is the creation of a viable Somerset rivers board, which should involve all the local councils in affected areas. The new body would call the shots when it comes to dredging and maintenance. It would be funded partly by the Environment Agency, from which it will take a lead on what it should do. That could be slightly awkward, but I believe that any such difficulties can be overcome.

I warned at the outset that my remarks might involve several different Departments, and now it is the turn of the Department for Communities and Local Government to prick up its ears. That branch of Whitehall seems to be saying that a rivers board for Somerset, run by councils, is a good idea provided councils pay for it. That was not what the Prime Minister had in mind when he offered to pay whatever it cost to fix things. The Department’s attitude has an element of logic, because if Somerset were to get preferential treatment from Whitehall, every other local authority that ever had a flood would want exactly the same. That is understandable; it is human nature.

It is, however, unrealistic to believe that Somerset councils can afford to do everything that they need to do from the word go. The obvious way to pay for everything would be to raise council tax. According to some estimates, council tax could go up 20%, which would be the kiss of death. We simply could not get that through anywhere in the country.

There is, however, a sensible solution. If the councils were given a few years’ breathing space to allow them to save money for the rivers board, and if the law was tweaked to permit them to levy a special tax to pay for future flood prevention, the only thing missing would be a grant to tide them over during the transition. That is more or less the argument being made by most of the councils involved. We are, as anyone would expect, anxiously awaiting some signal to indicate what is in Whitehall’s mind. The answer may involve intervention from the Treasury, which is yet another Department that I should have put on standby for this little debate. Any indication that the Minister can give will be helpful, given the complexity of the situation.

I do not want the valuable work on the formation of a Somerset rivers board to go to waste for a lack of answers, and I am worried that we may struggle to keep all the councils on board unless we get a clear sense of direction soon. In my view, it would be extremely short-sighted of, say, Taunton Deane borough council to consider opting out of membership of the new rivers board simply because it cannot yet see a viable plan to pay for it. As my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton Deane knows, Taunton was flooded badly in November 2012. I do not see how, in the name of common sense, the council can contemplate quitting the rivers board now. If the River Tone overflows again, local people will never forgive the council. I hope that councils will stick together, but there is a growing sense of urgency about the matter.

It is also critical to get a clear thumbs-up from the Government about the most important element of the flood plan, which is the construction of a barrage at Bridgwater to stop silt being washed back inland by the tides. The need for the barrage has been accepted, but it involves a lot of money. Here we are, fast approaching what promises to be yet hard winter, without the answers in place.

Like it or not, we are all subject to the ravages of the weather, but are we the hapless victims of climate change, and is the Climate Change Act 2008 the right way to deal with it? Those questions have been topically highlighted recently by my right hon. Friend the Member for North Shropshire (Mr Paterson), who wants the 2008 Act to be scrapped. His recent experience as the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs during the flood crisis makes that all the more relevant, as he came down many times to visit and help us.

My constituency already has far too many applications for ugly, useless and oversized wind turbines, and Somerset is in danger of being overrun by, dare I say it, solar panel farms. Their collective contribution to reducing carbon emissions is, I am afraid, small, and their collective cost, in terms of subsidies and European grants, is large. Their ability to keep the lights on, depending on the sun or the wind, is probably a no-no in the long term.

I am delighted to learn that the new Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs intends to scrap EU payments to landowners who use solar panels on productive areas of land. Let us grow food and stop paying for panels. I am delighted that the tide is beginning to turn against such stupidities in many areas of our political lives. If we spent less time slavishly following the flawed edicts of Brussels, we would have ample funds to finance the common-sense solutions that we all know we need in order to fix our flooding problems. We still have environmental challenges in Somerset, and the solution has to be found now; it does not need to be so elusive. I would welcome the Minister’s views on that.

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

I am extremely grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way and I congratulate him on securing this important debate. I sense that he is drawing to the end of his remarks, so I invite him to develop the theme of the barrage. The Chancellor will soon be making his autumn statement—autumn gets later and later, but it still happens before Christmas, so the autumn statement is imminent, happening just over a month from now. Would it not be ideal if he were in a position to announce the Government’s intention to go ahead with the building of the barrage?

[Mr Liddell-Grainger]

I gratefully thank my hon. Friend, who has helped immeasurably, because the barrage is in fact in Bridgwater, not Taunton Deane. His point is exactly right. Both the former Secretary of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for North Shropshire, and the present Secretary of State have made it clear to the Environment Agency that plans for the funding need to be in place to make absolutely sure that they go into the autumn statement—which I believe will be on 3 December 2014—so that we can get the money to get this done.

My hon. Friend the Member for Taunton Deane knows this far too well—a lot of his constituency was also flooded—but if we did not build the barrage, we would never be forgiven for creating the problems and the mess again. The barrage will be a surge barrier that stops 60% of the mud that comes all the way up the river to Taunton Deane, which is a distance in the region of 10 miles. The barrage would therefore reduce the silting and the need to dredge, which means that we could continue pumping. We were not able to pump in his constituency or in most of the levels because our water levels were too high. The barrage would give us an opportunity not only to combat climate change, which the Minister will tell us about in a minute, but to address the practicalities of everyone’s daily lives. I look forward to hearing her remarks.

Flooding (Somerset Levels)

Debate between Ian Liddell-Grainger and Jeremy Browne

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—

--- Later in debate ---

[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.