Flooding

Lord Spicer Excerpts

Monday 7th December 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Spicer (Con)]

My Lords, in the almost 40 years that I represented Worcestershire in the House of Commons flooding was one of two issues that came up the whole time. Does my noble friend accept that you cannot hide flood water? If you build barriers in one place, particularly on a river, and keep out the water in a particular place it is quite likely to be pushed on to another place. That happened continually in my old constituency. Upton-on-Severn was always flooding and was almost a national treasure for that at one point. Once we got that sorted out the whole lot went down to Tewkesbury and flooded that out. Therefore, when people call on the Government to spend more money on barriers, I hope he will bear that in mind.

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

My Lords, my noble friend has great experience of the flooding in his constituency and we have all seen the difficulties when many residents and businesses on the River Severn have been so affected. It is important to note that in Cumbria all the flood storage reservoirs were utilised—at Carlisle, Wigton, Longtown, Kendal and Penrith—and, indeed, the flood basins at Garstang and Catterall on the River Wyre were immensely valuable in preventing more properties being flooded. Therefore, how we stall water or how to slow the flow are things that we need to look at more rigorously.