Cumbria: Floods

Lord Framlingham Excerpts

Wednesday 20th January 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My Lords, over this Parliament, the Government will commit £2.3 billion for flood defences and the flood maintenance budget will be protected. In 2015-16, £171 million will be invested. There are pockets of funding in addition to that: there is £40 million for Storm Desmond and Storm Eva, as I said, and £4 million has been committed in match funding in respect of the charitable donations that have so kindly come in.

[Lord Framlingham (Con)]

My Lords, along with their many other excellent qualities, trees have a massive part to play in this battle against flooding. I urge the Minister and the Government to do all they can to encourage the widest tree planting possible in the areas liable to flooding, as a matter of urgency, so that we can make the maximum use of this invaluable resource.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My noble friend is absolutely right that trees are a very effective mechanism in terms of mitigating floods and slowing flood waters down. However, the storms we had over Christmas, Eva and Desmond, were too severe for this alone to have been an entire solution. We have to look at all the various solutions in the round, including managing the flow of water, to help to prevent such problems in future.