Flooding

Neil Parish Excerpts

Monday 24th February 2020 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Order. I remind the House that, as we said in the last statement, statements are followed by questions, not speeches. We must have short questions; it will not harm the Minister or the Chair if we have long questions and speeches, but it will harm the people who do not get a chance to be called, so I ask for some courtesy and brevity.

[Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)]

I welcome my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State to his new post; it is well deserved.

Flooding is going on and it comes very suddenly, so we will have to manage it in the future. Some rivers need to be slowed down, and for some we need to increase the flow as they get to the sea.

With Flood Re, there is a cut-off date of 2008. Many people who bought houses after 2008 cannot necessarily get insurance. It is time that we looked at that again, because Flood Re has worked but many people cannot actually get access to it.

[George Eustice]

I am conscious of the point that my hon. Friend makes, and indeed that was made to me by residents when I visited York with the hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) at the weekend. For houses built in recent years, we have known about potential flood risk, and that should have been factored in in the planning system. So it would be rather extraordinary for there to be modern-built houses where the risk is so high that they cannot get insurance.