Flooding

Mary Creagh Excerpts

Wednesday 6th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)]

May I begin by paying tribute to the council workers, police, fire officers, Environment Agency staff and the Army who sacrificed Christmas with their families to protect other people’s families in the grip of flooding? May I pay particular tribute to the Penny Appeal, a charity based in my constituency which, with boxer Amir Khan, brought much needed biryani to Cumbria and the lake district before Christmas?

We know flooding is the greatest risk that climate change poses to our country. Those are not my words; they are the words of the Committee on Climate Change. The 2015 national security risk assessment says that flood risk is a tier 1 priority risk alongside terrorism and cyber-attacks, so I want to look at the Government’s record on flood defence spending, outline the impact of flooding in my constituency and look to future resilience.

The 2007 floods were the largest civil emergency since world war two. Tragically, 13 people lost their lives and 40,000 homes were flooded, 1,000 in Wakefield. The Labour Government commissioned Sir Michael Pitt to ensure the lessons of those floods were learned, and his key recommendation was that flood defence spending should rise by more than inflation each year. We acted on that recommendation, and in three years flood defence spending rose from £500 million in 2007 to £670 million in 2010. As Labour’s shadow Environment Secretary from 2010 to 2013, I watched in horror as the coalition Government cut flood defence spending by nearly £100 million in 2010—a 27% cut in capital funding.

I asked the House of Commons Library to research what the impact of that decision was over the last five years. It calculated that, had spending continued as Pitt recommended from that 2010 baseline, flood defence spending should have been £3.468 billion over the last 5 years, but under the coalition Government it has been just £3.228 billion. That is a flood defence funding gap over those five years of £240 million.

Despite what colleagues on the Conservative Benches are saying, the consequences of that funding gap are stark. In Leeds, the UK’s third largest city, a planned flood defence scheme was cancelled in 2011. That scheme covered the Kirkstall area of the city, which was under water two weeks ago. We have a smaller scheme that will be ready in 2017 and will only protect against a one-in-75-year flood, not the one-in-200-year event under the original plan. So when the Prime Minister said at Prime Minister’s questions today that no flood defence schemes were cancelled, he was wrong.

There is a north-south divide when it comes to funding to deal with flooding. The annual budgets of northern metropolitan councils have been disproportionately cut. Cuts to Wakefield council alone between 2011 and 2016 are predicted to reach £149 million. Maintenance of highways and bridges and drain and gully clearance have all had to be cut—invisible cuts but very visible when the waters rise.

I am very pleased that after the 2007 floods I got £15 million for flood defences in Wakefield. Thanks to that investment we were not impacted by these recent floods, but flooding did hit a number of houses and businesses in Calder Vale and Horbury Bridge. When I visited them on Saturday, people told me they were concerned about the availability and affordability of flood insurance, and they were not claiming on their insurance because they were worried they would not be able to get insurance in the future—and some were simply uninsured.

The deal, or statement of principles, we had with the insurance industry was based on flood defence spending rising by more than inflation each year, as recommended by Sir Michael Pitt. The new scheme does not cover businesses or homes built after 2009. This needs to be looked at urgently.

If flooding is a part of a national security risk, we need to see the resilience review the Minister is going to undertake, reporting to the Intelligence and Security Committee.