Water Bill

Debate between Lord Krebs and Baroness Parminter

Tuesday 8th April 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Parminter]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, and I return again to the issue of the use of any surplus reserves for Flood Re. I will not repeat the arguments we advanced in Committee and on Report. I feel that the House is clear that our aim is to ensure that any significant surplus funds can be used by Flood Re to encourage householders to adapt to the impacts of climate change and flooding, and so manage down risk.

I am grateful to the Minister for meeting the noble Lord, Lords Krebs, and me last week to discuss the matter again. We accept that decisions cannot be made now—pinning down in legislation what level of reserves should be built up and what should happen to them. However, we need clarity about the decision-making process that will condition what happens to surplus funds. Will the Minister confirm that Flood Re will have to draw up a strategy to manage surplus funds and that it will be published? Equally, we seek confirmation that the approach of “invest to save” is not ruled out if significant surpluses are built up. By this I mean spending on property-level protection where the economics of that approach show that it delivers the best value for money in managing down risk. Given that it has been shown that such an approach delivers a benefit of at least £5 for each £1 invested, it is too important an approach to discount. It could make a decisive difference to individual householders and their protection. It will also benefit the insurance industry by reducing the level of overall claims. It is, therefore, in the interests of a smooth transition at the end of the process of Flood Re. To that end, I beg to move.

[Lord Krebs (CB)]

My Lords, I, too, thank the Minister for meeting the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, and me to discuss this amendment. I do not wish to say anything at length but I shall make a couple of simple points. If we accept that Flood Re, according to the Government’s own figures, will build up a reserve, we can ask what this surplus might be used for. It could be used for future discounting of policy charges; it could be saved up for—excuse the pun—a rainy day when the call on insurance may be greater than anticipated; or, as our amendment suggests, it could be used to manage down future risk. As the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, said, this is in effect a proposal that Flood Re should invest to save, to reduce both its own future costs by encouraging household-level protection measures and to help those householders to exit at the end of the period of operation of Flood Re.

According to the work of the Adaptation Sub-Committee of the Committee on Climate Change, which I chair, about 190,000 properties could benefit from property-level protection. It would seem reasonable that some of the money that accrues as a surplus in Flood Re should, given the returns on investment to which the noble Baroness has already alluded, be used to help some or, I hope, eventually, all of these 190,000 properties to become more resilient.

Water Bill

Debate between Lord Krebs and Baroness Parminter

Monday 31st March 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Parminter (LD)]

My Lords, the aim of Flood Re is to provide affordable insurance for flooding and to transition to risk-reflective pricing. If a surplus of funds were built up, that could help to manage flood risk down by encouraging householders to adapt to the impacts of climate change and flooding.

Funding for Flood Re will be via a levy, set as part of the five-yearly review by government. The Bill makes clear what would happen if there was a deficit—namely, a further levy on the insurance companies—but it does not make clear what would happen if a significant surplus built up. In Committee I outlined the potential, on the basis of the Government’s own figures, that at the end of year 1 it could have at least £100 million in reserves. In the early years, the aim would be to build this figure up to meet potential claims. The maximum reserves that Flood Re should need in any one year, after paying for reinsurance and administration, is an amount equal to the reinsurance policy threshold. This is due to be £250 million. If there is a sizeable flood during the lifetime of Flood Re it will need to pay the first £250 million, with the rest paid for by a claim on the reinsurance policy. It will then need to build up the reserve again the following year.

Ministers and insurers may well want to build up a slightly higher reserve in order to protect against a possible deficit if there are two bad years in a row, so there may be no surplus, as my noble friend Lord Cathcart rightly pointed out in Committee. Over the lifetime of the scheme, though, there may be a build-up of reserves if there are fewer claims than anticipated. Given that the ABI is now saying that the number of households it expects to be underwritten by Flood Re is 350,000 rather than the original figure of 500,000, which was the basis of the Government’s impact assessment, that is certainly possible. The ABI made it quite clear to me that its intention was for any surplus to be returned to ABI members. We need to ensure that Flood Re does not inadvertently lead to insurers profiteering from excess levy income being returned to them. It may not be passed back to customers automatically but could lead to a reduction in the future levy on bills. It would be better for the levy to be reduced in advance if a reasonable reserve has already been built up or, better still, for the excess to be spent on managing down the flood risk. I am envisaging paying not for flood defences but for things like grants to low-income households for home flood protection measures. I would not want to pin down in detail in this legislation what levels of surplus of reserves Flood Re should be able to build up or what will happen in those circumstances but a marker needs to be put down that, if significant reserves are secured, such reserves may be used to incentivise Flood Re policyholders to fund household resilience measures.

This amendment, which I am glad to say has the support of the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, allows this issue to be explored by the Government and Flood Re administrators during their five-yearly review of the scheme. It gives flexibility but encourages managing down flood risk if, and only if, significant surpluses are built up. I beg to move.

[Lord Krebs]

My Lords, as the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, has said, this amendment is concerned with the possible surplus or cash reserves that Flood Re might build up. We have to recognise that although Flood Re is being designed as an integral part of the insurance industry it will be a public body spending public money and will operate on a not-for-profit basis. The noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, has indicated and the Government’s own figures suggest that there might be reserves of more than £100 million after one year. If that surplus exceeds the amount that is required to cover claims in any one year—again, the noble Baroness indicated a figure of £250 million—it would seem perfectly reasonable for that money to be used to manage down Flood Re’s own exposure to future claims and it could do so in a highly cost-effective way. This is about value for money. One estimate is that £4,000 spent on a property could prevent a number of claims on Flood Re averaging £45,000 a time, so the return on investment is going to be enormous.

The adaptation sub-committee which I chair has estimated that there are 190,000 properties in England where fitting flood-protection measures would be cost-effective, but progress in fitting them at household level has been very slow. In fact, the rate of uptake would need to increase by a factor of 20 to fit all such measures within the lifetime of Flood Re. This amendment recognises the potential to do more to protect high-risk households and the opportunity that the surplus reserves might represent. Investing in resilience now would leave high-risk households better able to afford flood insurance once Flood Re has withdrawn and, rather than adding to the cost of the levy, investing in this way promises to help minimise the costs of Flood Re over the lifetime of the policy.

Water Bill

Debate between Lord Krebs and Baroness Parminter

Tuesday 11th February 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Parminter]

My Lords, briefly, I support my noble friend Lord Shipley on this important amendment. We are rightly spending the majority of our time today discussing a financial vehicle to deliver affordable flood insurance, but the planning system has a vital role in making our country more resilient for the future. On the potential effects of cuts in local authority budgets on their ability to undertake their important planning functions, which my noble friend mentioned, I add that a review in 24 months’ time is sensible, given that in the intervening 24 months there will be further significant cuts to the Environment Agency’s budget, with an expected cut of more than 550 staff.

Given the scenes we have seen in recent days, it would be only too easy for people, rightly, to make the case that we must protect front-line staff in the Environment Agency. However, it is equally important to look appropriately at people in the back room who are working hard on the consultations on significant planning applications for developments of more than 10 houses or one hectare. Equally, it is important that the national flood management strategy, which the EA devised in 2011, is carried forward.

I add my support. The timeline that my noble friend Lord Shipley has suggested of 24 months is apposite given the need to review some of the resource constraints that both local authorities and the Environment Agency will face in the forthcoming months.

[Lord Krebs]

My Lords, I too support the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Shipley. I have already declared an interest as the chairman of the adaptation sub-committee of the Committee on Climate Change. The sub-committee has a useful data set that could be brought to bear were this review to happen. It has developed a set of indicators, which are published, for the resilience of planning decisions in relation to present and future risks from flooding, particularly from future impacts of climate change. For example, it has looked at the implementation of SUDS, at the implementation of household measures that could provide protection at the individual property level and at planning decisions to develop in the flood plain. As has already been said by the noble Lord, development in the flood plain has been going ahead faster than development elsewhere, but this is not necessarily a bad thing. If the properties are appropriately protected, either by community-level measures or by individual household measures, the risks can be managed. The sub-committee has a data set and a set of indicators that could be useful were the Government minded to accept the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Shipley.