Lowestoft Tidal Flood Barrier

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Monday 20th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Peter Aldous]

I am grateful to the hon. Member for raising that issue; it is one I will come on to. The tidal surge in 2013 gave a clear indication of what could happen in a worst-case scenario and we need to put in place measures to avoid that devastation to people’s lives.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I congratulate the hon. Member on bringing this matter to the House. The Ards peninsula in my constituency has 96 coastal erosion points, so this is happening in my constituency as well, and there is much concern about the erosion, the loss of land, and the impact on homes and livelihoods. Does he agree that the Government must find the money to address these concerns as they are quickly escalating to crisis point—that crisis point being the point of no return?

[Peter Aldous]

As I will highlight, we must not forget that some coastal areas face devastating flood risk problems too. They might not emerge quite as often as fluvial floods, but their impact on communities is very real. I will highlight the 1953 flood, which is still remembered vividly right along the East Anglian coast.

The second point the National Infrastructure Commission raised was that the existing catchment flood management plans and shoreline management plans should be updated to take into account the commission’s new standards and should set out long-term plans for flood risk management. Thirdly, it argued that currently—at the beginning of 2020—the Government should be putting in place a rolling six-year funding programme in line with the funding profile the commission set out. This would enable the efficient delivery of projects addressing the risks from all sources of flooding. It is vital that when these improvements to the country’s flood defences are made—this comes back to the point the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) raised—coastal communities are not overlooked. Storm surges, such as those in 1953 along the East Anglian coast and more recently in 2013, have a terrible impact from which it can take communities a long time to recover—some never do.