Rivers Authorities and Land Drainage Bill (First sitting)

Matt Warman Excerpts

Committee Debate: House of Commons
Monday 11th March 2019 Public Bill Committees

[Luke Pollard]

The Opposition have no problem with the clauses that the hon. Gentleman has talked us through. However, we have one question about charges for non-rate payers: do businesses have similar protection against increases? Beyond a certain percentage, council tax payers have the protection of the referendum; is there a similar protection for businesses, and small businesses in particular? Small businesses affected by flooding frequently use up available capital to restore their businesses and sometimes struggle with insurance. We would not want a situation whereby businesses in an area affected by flooding face increases that are greater in proportion than the increases rate payers face. We should make sure that there is an element of fairness, and I would be grateful if the hon. Gentleman set that out for the record.

[Matt Warman (Boston and Skegness) (Con)]

I will be brief and will begin, as others have, by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome on bringing the Bill forward. When a number of constituents wrote to me urging that I support it, I wrote back confident that it would face either the chop or the Chope. However, it has got through, which we should all be grateful for. According to the Association of British Insurers, my constituency is the most likely in the country to flood, and in 2013 it did so, which is why the Minister is spending £100 million on a flood barrier for it. I am as grateful for that as I am for the five IDBs that work in my constituency.

I want to ask two brief questions. First, the Bill is clearly aimed at the south-west, and I will not pretend for a moment that I begrudge that. However, I would like some reassurance that the IDBs in my constituency that work so well together could, if they wanted, avail themselves of the opportunity to form a rivers authority. Would the Government look favourably on that sort of thing? I say that without wishing to indicate that those IDBs necessarily want to do so, but that option is working well for Somerset in its shadow form and will hopefully work well in the future. I would like to think that we, too, could have that potential benefit.

Secondly, as the expansion of areas that are rated for IDBs is permitted elsewhere in the country, and since we all know that drainage boards work and that their benefits often extend well beyond the areas that pay for them, I hope that the expansion of IDBs will reach not just Somerset but other areas. Unfortunately, councils such as mine in Boston are often affected financially by necessary and sensible rises in drainage rates filtering through to their bottom line. That effectively means that borough councils cannot responsibly raise taxes as much as they wish to, because the 2% cap on council tax might be disproportionately taken up by that rise in drainage rates. A rivers authority is one way of solving that problem, but it strikes me that it is not the only way.

I commend this excellent Bill, and the excellent Member who has brought it forward. I hope that he and the Minister will be able to tell me that it is not only the south-west that will benefit from it.

[Dr Coffey]

To answer the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport, internal drainage boards operate in a quite different way. Effectively, cash comes from local councils, which appoint people to them, and there are people who have to pay the drainage rates—that relates to agricultural land. They carry out their own elections and make decisions together. The local businesses will be ones that are concerned with agricultural land, and they run their own election process. I hope that that provides the hon. Gentleman with some reassurance.

I am conscious of the issue raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Boston and Skegness that there is not a separate way of accounting for the item in question on the council tax bill. I am sure he recognises that it is not possible under the Bill to change the existing arrangements by which councils might want to show clearly how money is raised, or, indeed, other aspects of the referendum. However, I assure him that if people in his area, working with the councils, want to come forward on the matter of a rivers authority, it would be open to them to do so if they believed that the benefits would outweigh those of their current arrangement.

I reiterate that the Government support the changes. In my area the East Suffolk internal drainage board operates exceptionally well and, with the de-maining pilot, will take on further responsibilities for certain rivers in the area, with no extra cost to councils or indeed agricultural landowners. I believe that IDBs are generally a force for good. They are a key part of the Cumbria flood action plan.

Rivers Authorities and Land Drainage Bill

Matt Warman Excerpts

3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Friday 15th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Matt Warman (Boston and Skegness) (Con)]

I rise to briefly support this excellent Bill, as I did in the Bill Committee and on several occasions as it has progressed through the slightly tortuous private Member’s Bill system. It is excellent that we are finally here today with something that will deliver real and meaningful benefits for Somerset in particular.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome (David Warburton) knows, this is the point where I turn into a bit of a gloom bucket. While the Bill is brilliant for Somerset, I hope the Minister and his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State will be able to look favourably on the other parts of the country that seek to benefit from the good things it will enable for Somerset and, in theory, for other parts of the country as well. I say that for two reasons, and some of this is already in process through the consultations that the Department is running via the Environment Agency at the moment.

The first is the extension of rateable areas for existing IDBs. In my constituency, we are blessed with five IDBs. As I have mentioned before, according to the Association of British Insurers, it is the constituency in the country most likely to flood in relation to both internal drainage and coastal flooding. To be sustainable, drainage boards need to rate areas that benefit from the work they do but that do not currently pay for it. It seems to me that that is only fair, because the work the drainage boards do provides a huge benefit for the wider local economy. In Lincolnshire, they work remarkably effectively and produce work at a fraction of the cost of the Environment Agency—by the Environment Agency’s own admission—and, indeed, they have often worked as contractors for the Environment Agency to produce the maximum value for the taxpayer. They will be able to do even better work if they are properly and sensibly funded by all those who benefit from their work. That is what the Bill will permit—in practice, in some areas of the country, and in theory, in others. Once my IDBs, which are independent-minded and well run, come to a collective view on what they would like, I hope the Minister and his colleagues in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs will look favourably on it.

My second point is on the rivers authorities aspect of the Bill, which could be—I do not say it will be, but that it could be—an excellent solution for Lincolnshire as well. I would like that very much to come from my own drainage boards, councils and those who know best what is good for them, rather than suggesting for a moment that the Department should impose any of this on Lincolnshire, although I do not think it is currently minded to do so.

Ultimately, and to use Boston Borough Council as an example, the responsible thing for drainage boards to do is clearly to make sure that they have the resources to do their necessary work and keep everyone’s feet dry—literally. As they put up their rates, however, because we have rightly capped the amount by which council tax can rise, any rises in council tax are entirely taken up by those necessary rises in drainage rates, and drainage boards are effectively able severely to curtail, if not cut, the resources available to a borough council. Being able to make that funding a separate council tax line, so that it is a precept rather than a levy, will be a huge step forward in Somerset and allow people to be properly resourced at both council and drainage board level. That is a good thing, but it is not the only way through by any means—as the Minister said in Committee, I suspect my hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome will say that other options are available to my councils, and I imagine he will be right.

In remains the case, however, that today it is difficult for drainage boards to get the resources they need without butting up against that cap on council tax rates, which means that small authorities such as Boston Borough Council and East Lindsey District Council find themselves in a difficult position. The situation will be solved in Somerset through the rivers authority—that is good and we welcome it—but I hope the Minister will work with his colleagues, my drainage boards and the Environment Agency to try to alleviate the problem that this excellent Bill will solve in an admirable way for Somerset, so that we can also find a way through for areas such as Lincolnshire. I do not want to be too gloomy because this Bill opens a number of doors through which I hope counties such as mine, and councils such as those in my constituency, will be able to walk if they wish. This Bill is excellent for Somerset, and it is excellent that the Government and the Opposition are supporting it, as will I.