Flooding

Lord Benyon Excerpts

Wednesday 6th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Nigel Evans (Ribble Valley) (Con)]

I do not think any of us will forget Christmas 2015 in a hurry. The hon. Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves) talked about the selfless humanity she witnessed in her constituency, and each and every one of us saw the same thing in areas where flooding took place. I have never seen anything like it in the 23 years I have been a Member of Parliament.

A four-minute limit will not allow us to name all the people we would love to mention and thank publicly, so we will have to do it in another way. Let me just mention Gillian Darbyshire of the Whalley Lions and her entire team, who have given up 10 days of their Christmas holidays to man the emergency centre in Whalley. They were absolutely superb. I also wish to mention Marshal Scott, the chief executive of Ribble Valley Borough Council, who also gave up 10 days, coming into the emergency centre every day and working incredibly long hours with an amazing team. The day after Boxing day, the bin men came out to remove the sofas and furniture from the streets, which looked like a warzone at times. I would love to thank them and the emergency services, but, as I say, I shall thank others in a different way.

Four lads who were coming up the M6 from Watford heard about the floods, pulled off at the Clitheroe junction, went into Whalley, helped clear a lady’s house of all the debris, and then got back into the car and drove on to Scotland to spend the rest of their Christmas there—it was absolutely amazing. The Whalley Lions have helped to bring in cookers, washing machines, fridges and microwaves; they have handled more than £1 million-worth of goods. More than 1,000 volunteers have been involved. I know that you have spent some of your Christmas dealing with the floods in Chorley, Mr Deputy Speaker, and I am sure you will want to thank the people who have given so much support.

I, too, have some big asks to make of the Government in the limited time I have left. Clearly, we do need a review of the flood defences, and Sir James Bevan has said that that will happen. We do need a review of the drainage, gully and culvert cleaning around our constituencies to make sure that it is done properly. In pubs there is signage saying when the toilets were last cleaned, so what about having public provision for information as to when the gullies were last cleaned and when they are next going to be cleaned? That would allow the people to hold local authorities to account if they did not do this work.

Building on floodplains is absolutely bonkers. There was a famous scene on Facebook of one of the fields in my constituency, where permission had been given for 39 houses to be built—it was well underwater. We have to look for the sponges that exist throughout our constituencies so that they can take the flood waters. The extra building that is going on is insane and we need to examine that, as well as the use of woodland, which has been mentioned. The new insurance company, Flood Re, is great, but it will not cover houses built post-2009, and lots of houses have been built since then. We have to examine that, and I think the Prime Minister gave an indication that the Government are going to look at what is happening in respect of businesses, too. We have to look at the unadopted roads issue and that of dredging. For goodness’ sake, it cannot be beyond their wit to come to a conclusion as to whether dredging does or does not work, and, if it does work, to do it.

[Richard Benyon (Newbury) (Con)]

It does not work.

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[Richard Benyon (Newbury) (Con)]

I refer Members to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

Flooding events are miserable experiences for householders, and for businessmen and women. Many other Members have, like me, waded through the stench of a flooded home. In 2007, 3,000 homes in my constituency were flooded, and there have been many flooding events since. When I had the current Minister’s job, I had the miserable experience of witnessing events similar to those that have occurred recently.

When flooding events happen, many good things happen as well. As we heard earlier today, communities come together and there is great heroism. Flood defences work, and properties are protected. Emergency services are brave and stoic, save lives and do great work. However, there is also a tradition of stupid things being said and, occasionally, stupid things being done. We must be careful not to take a short-term view when flooding events occur.

One of the great knee-jerk reactions among many commentators—including, I am afraid, some Members of Parliament—is to say that the panacea for all flooding events is dredging. Admittedly, on some rare occasions it works. For instance, I have visited the constituency of the hon. Member for Workington (Sue Hayman), and I know that improving river beds in such areas may well be the right thing to do. However, we could spend all the budgets that any Government would ever have on dredging rivers such as the Thames, and within two years they would be back where they were because of the way the silt moves down them.

If we want to improve the rivers, we must consider wider catchment issues such as land use management. We should bear in mind the extent to which farming has changed in recent years. If we look at a map of the Bristol channel two years ago, when all the excitement was going on around the Somerset levels, we see a large proportion of Somerset being washed into the channel in a plume of silt. That was caused by farming practices higher up, not in the area where the flooding was taking place.

There is an enormous amount of historical revisionism. I want to say a little about the Leeds scheme, because, as was pointed out by the hon. Member for Leeds North West (Greg Mulholland), I was the Minister in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs at the time. That was an over-engineered scheme. The right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn), and a number of other local politicians from all parties, came to DEFRA when I was there, and we discussed the scheme at great length. If my hon. Friend the Member for Elmet and Rothwell (Alec Shelbrooke) were here, he would say that it would have been a disaster if it had been built at that stage, because it would have jetted water through Leeds into communities in his constituency.

We managed to convince people that a smaller scheme could work, and I gather that it is now being constructed and will protect a large number of properties. The other scheme, however, would have eaten into the budget of whoever was in government, and taken flood defences away from other communities which are represented in the Chamber today. Other Members’ constituencies would have been flooded. It is important for us to prioritise flood spending very carefully.

I believe that there is now a good opportunity for us to consider how we should address flooding in the very long term. Integrated catchment management schemes need to be thought through, involving agriculture, forestry, planning, water framework directive implementation, and the way in which we manage our uplands. We need to look again at the funding and investment models that we have used in the past, and at the economic assumptions that have been made. We need to ensure that the 5 million homes that are at risk in this country are represented here as well.