Cumbria: Floods

Lord Greaves Excerpts

Wednesday 20th January 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My Lords, the noble Lord is absolutely right. I have given the figure for the funding committed for the transport infrastructure, but over this Parliament £2.3 billion will be provided for a range of flood defence schemes, which should help to mitigate the risk. It compares with £1.7 billion in the previous Parliament and £1.5 billion in 2005-10. At this point, that is what the Government are committing.

[Lord Greaves (LD)]

My Lords, the points raised about the infrastructure are quite right—it is vital—but does the Minister agree that also vital are small, ongoing maintenance schemes month by month and year by year, particularly clearing leaves from gullies, plastic bags from culverts and trees that have fallen into the becks? Councils are having increasing difficulty doing that because of the funding cuts; I declare my interest as a councillor.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

The noble Lord is absolutely right that ongoing maintenance is vital. In the recent floods, we have had two things: volumes of water, and therefore surface water increasing dramatically, and an extreme weather pattern increasing during some of these disasters. That is why the Government are reviewing the flood defences that we are putting in place because, no matter what we have done before, the next event is all the more extreme.