Flooding (West Cumbria)

Debate between Jamie Reed and Jim Sheridan

Wednesday 17th November 2010 Westminster Hall

[Mr Reed]

Before my hon. Friend moves on too much further, we do not yet know the cost of the Cumbria floods. I believe that the insurance adjustments are about £200 million so far—I repeat, so far. The RSPCA undertook a fundamental role in protecting livestock. Has he spoken to any farmers—I know that he has spent a great deal of time with them over the past year—who need feed for their herds and cattle about the role of the RSPCA and how much money it may have saved them?

[Jim Sheridan (in the Chair)]

Order. Could I ask Members who make contributions to speak into the microphone, so that the Hansard reporters can pick up what they say?

[Tony Cunningham]

Thank you, Mr Sheridan. I very much concur with my hon. Friend’s comments, and farmers are saying that. Let us not forget that hundreds, if not more, of cattle, sheep and other livestock ended up out in the Solway Firth, having come down the Cocker or Derwent rivers and been swept away. The livestock were hugely important, but the fields are still covered by boulders and debris and there is still a huge amount of work to be done.

I also pay tribute to volunteers, of whom there were hundreds during that extremely difficult time. I am not sure how many of us would put up complete strangers. I am not sure how many of us would say to someone we had just met on the street, who had only the clothes that they were wearing, “Come and share my house with me,” yet that is what people did. They offered their own homes and bedrooms; they fed others and looked after them.

Another group I pay tribute to—I know that the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale will agree with me—is the churches. We forget at our peril the spiritual side of all of this. When people are going through trauma and difficulties, having lost their home and possessions, it is important to be able to talk things through with others. The churches were on the streets, not just offering tea, coffee, sandwiches and so on, but listening and talking to people, and being there for them. The churches together played a huge role, particularly in Cockermouth.

I also pay tribute to the local authorities, who did a tremendous job, in particular Jill Stannard, the chief executive of Cumbria county council. Other Members here will have known Jim Buchanan, a good, honest and decent man who passed away quite recently. I pay a personal tribute to him. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”] I also thank Harry Dyke and Jill Elliott from Allerdale borough council.

While I am thanking people, I should thank the media—I do not do that very often—both national and local. The Sky coverage was excellent, as was that of Border Television, BBC Radio Cumbria, and in particular my local newspaper, The West Cumberland Times and Star, and Nicole Regan and her staff. Their conduct was fantastic.

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[Mr Reed]

The hon. Members for Penrith and The Border and for Westmorland and Lonsdale are right: more can be done that does not necessarily require additional hundreds of millions of pounds of expenditure. However, as my hon. Friend said regarding Carlisle, not only did the expenditure there save up to 3,000 homes on the night of the 2009 floods; it saved 1,200 jobs at McVitie’s biscuit factory. The cost saving there alone was well worth the £35 million that went into the flood defences.

Does my hon. Friend agree that we need hard defences as well as the soft defences further on in the environment? Parton, a village in my constituency, that has suffered in the past from flooding now has its own flood action group. People take shifts at 2, 3 or 4 o’clock in the morning when the rain falls, alert each other, put down the sandbags and put in the flood barrier defences. We had council workers working in their spare time—unsalaried—and local businesses, such as drainage firms such as Mayson Bros, providing investment out of their own pocket. They were not contractors; they were doing it because they wanted to do it. That is the definition of something that has existed for 200 or 300 years—the big society. That same building company, if it is on the bones of its backside because the contracts are not coming in, and that same council worker, if he is still in a job, probably will not be inclined to put in that extra effort now—

[Jim Sheridan (in the Chair)]

Order. May I say that interventions are becoming a bit lengthy? I think we get the point.