Flooding (West Cumbria)
Debate between Jim Sheridan and Jamie Reed(14 years, 1 month ago)
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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?
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.