Flooding Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateRachael Maskell
Main Page: Rachael Maskell (Labour (Co-op) - York Central)Department Debates - View all Rachael Maskell's debates with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
(8 years, 7 months ago)
Commons ChamberI thank my hon. Friend for his question—we talked on Boxing day because the Calder valley was such a hard-hit area, and ensuring that the right support was in place for those communities was vital. He is right to highlight the community spirit that we saw across Yorkshire and the Calder valley; and people came out around the country. That was tremendous, and I praise them for all their work.
I thank public sector workers and the incredible volunteers for the outstanding support that they gave residents and businesses in York over Christmas. Successive reports over many years by the Environment Agency and the city council have highlighted the risk that the Foss barrier in York would not be able to manage the capacity of water in the River Foss at times such as this. Given that that concern has been consistently highlighted for years, why were the barrier pumps not upgraded, as that could have saved hundreds of homes and businesses from flooding?
I was also pleased to meet the hon. Lady at the Environment Agency’s offices in York. The Foss barrier was under review at the time the incident happened, and the Prime Minister has said that he will spend £10 million of Government money on upgrading that barrier to ensure that it has sufficient pumping capacity to deal with the additional volumes. In all rivers across Yorkshire and Lancashire we are facing higher river flows than we have ever seen before, and we must consider our defences in light of that. We have made an initial commitment to upgrade the pumps at the Foss barrier, and we will certainly look more widely to ensure that we are sufficiently resilient to deal with these new weather challenges.