River Severn Flooding Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
Philip Dunne
Main Page: Philip Dunne (Conservative - Ludlow)Department Debates - View all Philip Dunne's debates with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
River Severn Flooding
Philip Dunne Excerpts(4 years, 8 months ago)
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Daniel Kawczynski
I agree with my right hon. Friend. That is the flavour of what we are trying to get across to the Minister. Of course, individual flood schemes can help—we have one in Shrewsbury that protects Frankwell, the town council and the area around it—but in reality, although those small schemes protect parts of Shrewsbury, they just push the problem further down the line, which affects my right hon. and hon. Friends down the river.
By the way, the River Severn is the longest river in the United Kingdom at 220 miles. That accolade certainly means that the Government need to look at the river in its entirety and come up with a solution to manage its flow across all our constituencies.
Philip Dunne (Ludlow) (Con)
I, too, congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate, today of all days, when the Chancellor has just announced a doubling of flood defence expenditure over the next six years to £5.2 billion. He will have noticed that the Chancellor provided an additional £120 million to repair the flood defences already in place, which may help the constituencies of hon. Members whose flood defences were damaged in Ironbridge and Bewdley along the River Severn.
Most importantly, the Chancellor announced a £200-million contribution to place-based resilience schemes for local communities, in which the Severn valley catchment has an important part to play. I understand that £23 million of that £200 million is being allocated to the Severn valley to look at that catchment-wide solution. Areas such as Bridgnorth in my constituency, where water was pushed downstream from Shrewsbury and Ironbridge, and the river burst its banks, need some flood defences to prevent that happening again.
Stewart Hosie (in the Chair)
Order. This is an important subject, but if interventions could be slightly snappier, I would be grateful.