Storm Babet: Flooding

Debate between Rebecca Pow and Stewart Hosie

Monday 23rd October 2023 Commons Chamber

[Rebecca Pow]

The hon. Lady and I have met and discussed her issues a number of times. I will just flag that we launched the frequently flooded fund of £100 million, which allocated funds to 53 projects. The areas that put forward viable projects for the funding are finding it very effective, and another round will open shortly.

Insurance is also really important for houses where there is a possibility of flooding, and Flood Re works intensively on that. The process has been tweaked to ensure that as many houses as possible can get into it and a huge number of properties have been helped. Those that have difficulties can go to the inventory that has just been set up, and 13,000 people who had slightly more difficult cases have been helped through that. The Association of British Insurers has worked closely to ensure that all people are being catered for. There is also an extra “build back better” £10,000 to build one’s property back better.

[Stewart Hosie (Dundee East) (SNP)]

Many of my constituents in Dundee and Angus were hit very hard by the storm, and I wish to add my thanks to all the emergency services and others, particularly at Dundee City Council and Angus Council, who did so much to help. It is absolutely tragic to see cars submerged, homes flooded, businesses closed, bridges washed away and, of course, lives lost.

Given that we are seeing more, and more frequent, extreme weather events, and given that the Minister recognised climate change in her statement, does she not now regret the Prime Minister’s recent statement rolling back many of the measures necessary to tackle climate change quickly?

[Rebecca Pow]

Contrary to what the right hon. Gentleman proposes, we take this matter extremely seriously. That is why we have doubled the flooding budget to £5.2 billion, as we are aware of these extreme weather incidents. It is also why we have opened a range of other funds, such as the £200 million flood and coastal resilience innovation programme, to look at how we can accelerate flood protection in areas where it will be trickier as sea levels rise, and so on. Another £8 million project in the Thames estuary, the Humber estuary, the Severn estuary and Yorkshire is looking at pathways to deal with exactly these things.

Flooding: Staffordshire

Debate between Rebecca Pow and Stewart Hosie

Wednesday 7th October 2020 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Rebecca Pow)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your auspices, Mr Hosie. This is my first time back in Westminster Hall, so I think this is quite an event for us all.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Theo Clarke) on securing this really important debate. She has been an assiduous proponent on behalf of her constituents, which is the right thing to do as the MP representing her area. She has bent my ear many times, it must be said, on some of the issues that she has talked about today.

I thank all hon. Friends and the shadow Minister for taking part in the debate, and showing a really strong and concerted effort on behalf of Staffordshire. I think that it demonstrates that, far from the regions not being listened to, we do listen to the regions in government. I think that our Severn colleagues would reiterate that, given the work that we have jointly all done for the Severn valley before.

In February this year, Storm Dennis brought more than 40 mm of rain in 24 hours. That deluge of rainfall over a short period caused 181 properties to flood in Staffordshire. Flooding affected properties, shops, homes, transport networks, towns, including Burton, Stafford and Rugeley, and the villages of Barton, Marchington, Handsacre, Hinksford, Rolleston and Yoxall.

I know that my hon. Friend has held a number of meetings with local residents about the impacts of the flooding. I know also that this summer she hosted a flooding roundtable with key constituents to raise these issues. I know that Staffordshire has suffered, but I do want to say that of course the Government are absolutely committed, as is the EA, to combating flooding. Flood and coastal risk management is a very high priority for Government.

We know of course that flooding has a severe impact on communities, individuals and shops. I know that from my own experience in Somerset, where we have had terrible flooding over the years. However, I am pleased to assure my hon. Friend that the existing flood defences across Staffordshire already protect 25,000 properties, and did so during the winter floods; that figure includes 4,555 in Burton-on-Trent alone.

Over the current six-year investment period, which runs to 2021, we will spend £40 million to better protect 5,500 properties from flooding, and this sum includes £37 million of direct central Government funding. We expect over the next investment period, which runs from 2021 to 2027, to invest a further £26 million, of which £24 million will be funds from central Government, and that investment will better protect over 3,000 more properties in Staffordshire from flooding. These last figures that I have just given all relate to Staffordshire, so the Government are certainly committed to providing funding in Staffordshire.

In addition to this investment in new defences, I am pleased to assure my hon. Friend that Staffordshire has also benefited from a proportion of the £120 million of recovery funding awarded by HM Treasury to repair assets damaged by the 2019 winter floods. Approximately £160,000 has been allocated to projects in Staffordshire, including on floodbank repair in Marchington, which I believe is in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Burton (Kate Griffiths), on repairing flood warning telemetry at Coven, and on removing deposited silt and stone from a channel in Yoxall.

I will expand a little on some of the successful schemes. Phase 2 of the Burton-on-Trent scheme, which is the largest investment project in Staffordshire, is under construction. It will reduce flood risk for 4,555 homes and 1,000 businesses, and it will upgrade 3.7 km of existing defences. The scheme is expected to be completed in February 2021. During the February 2020 floods, the scheme continued to protect homes and worked perfectly, even during construction. I think that we can be proud of all the work that has been going on there.

In particular, my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford mentioned the funding of, and her support for, natural flood defences. The Government are very committed to such schemes. A project that both the Staffordshire Wildlife Trust and the Environment Agency are involved with was cited by my right hon. Friend the Member for Staffordshire Moorlands (Karen Bradley), who has now departed from Westminster Hall, among others. Through the new environmental land management scheme that is coming in now that we are leaving the EU, we anticipate that natural flood management will be one of the public goods that can be paid for and delivered by our farmers to help to tackle flooding. It will deliver lots of other public benefits, but it will help to tackle flooding, so I am pleased that hon. Members have raised the issue of natural flood defences.

Of course, there are still challenges and lots of those challenges have been mentioned by hon. Friends today. My hon. Friend the Member for Stafford mentioned Sandyford brook and the issues there, which in October 2019, I think, affected 50 homes. I understand that the brook is a confined channel running through a densely populated area. A preliminary economic analysis has suggested a cost in the region of £2 million for that scheme, and it would provide economic benefits to the area of around £4.5 million. However, delivery will be dependent on sufficient partnership funding contributions being available, as the scheme would only be eligible for £400,000 of flood defence grant in aid under the updated partnership funding rules. I understand that the Environment Agency has been in negotiations with a potential contributor, but further negotiations are required.

I also wanted to say, because lots of colleagues have mentioned it, that the EA aims to finalise a delivery plan this autumn—autumn, going into winter—and to set up strategic delivery groups, as an opportunity to encourage local flood resilience forum partners to help deliver key activities, such as on highways issues, planning permissions and community support.

I am pleased that my hon. Friend supports the significant amount of money that the Government are pouring into flooding and flood defences. Our new £5.2 billion capital programme will continue to be allocated in accordance with DEFRA’s partnership funding policy. It is my duty as Floods Minister—I take the responsibility very seriously—to take a national perspective on flood risk management and to ensure that the available funding is fairly and consistently distributed. Although I appreciate that there can be challenges in securing the partnership funding, it would be contrary to the aims of the partnership funding policy for DEFRA to fill funding gaps for individual projects, and we have made no provision to do so.

I want to touch on my hon. Friend’s one-stop shop suggestion. I listened to her with great interest, and I definitely encourage her to continue to engage with at local level with the EA and any relevant risk management authorities. I know that we have seen successful collaborative working of this kind elsewhere in the country, particularly in the Calder valley, where the eyeoncalderdale.com website provides a one-stop shop for flood information. Clearly, solutions of this kind need to work for the community and one cannot use the same approach everywhere. I urge my hon. Friend to go and meet colleagues there in order to learn lessons from them.

Similarly, I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham (Daniel Kawczynski) for his input and his kind words. There are lessons to be learned from what is being done in the Severn valley, and that partnership working will be invaluable as we go forward.

I want to touch on a couple of other issues that have been raised. The issue of blocked drains was mentioned by a number of colleagues, including my hon. Friends the Members for Burton and for Stoke-on-Trent North (Jonathan Gullis). In August we published an independent review into surface water and drainage responsibilities, which looked at some of the complexities of determining responsibility for surface water and drainage assets. The Government have already accepted a number of recommendations from that review, including new measures to strengthen partnership working.

We are also implementing the 22 actions set out in the surface water management plan in order to improve understanding and to strengthen actions to reduce surface water where it impacts on drains. That links to the issue of who takes responsibility for what water, where and when. There seems to be a lot of angst about that, but the local sewerage network is the responsibility of the local water company. It is a risk management authority, and the Floods and Water Management Act 2010 sets out a duty to co-operate with other risk management authorities to manage flood risk, so that is for the water companies.

My hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Aaron Bell) touched on tree roots. He is doing exactly the right thing by getting in contact with the water company, because it is largely a local issue. I am nearing the end of my speech, but, to link to the one-stop shop suggestion, the EA runs a comprehensive flood warning system that works 24 hours a day non-stop, and 1.4 million properties are signed up to that free service. We also have a really comprehensive flood forecasting centre that is improving its services all the time.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford for securing the debate. She raised many important and interesting issues, but I hope it is clear that the Government are absolutely committed to tackling flooding and the terrible issues that people and communities face. We have upped all the funding towards that. However, if my hon. Friends have any other issues that they would like to discuss with me, they know that my door is always open.

[Stewart Hosie (in the Chair)]

I call Theo Clarke for the briefest of summings-up.

Finance (No. 2) Bill

Debate between Rebecca Pow and Stewart Hosie

2nd reading: House of Commons
Tuesday 18th April 2017 Commons Chamber

[Stewart Hosie (Dundee East) (SNP)]

I beg to move an amendment, to leave out from “That” to the end of the Question and add:

“this House declines to give the Finance (No. 2) Bill a Second Reading because it derives from the 2017 Budget which confirmed the continuation of austerity, it fails to provide the necessary stimulus to compensate for the economic impact of Brexit, it fails to address the inequity of VAT being charged on the Scottish Police Authority and the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service, it fails to provide concrete measures to support the oil and gas industry, it increases Insurance Premium Tax above the level of inflation, it increases duty on Scotch whisky, and it is a wholly inadequate response to the economic challenges being faced by Scotland and the UK.”

We oppose this Finance Bill—well, someone has to—not so much because of what it does but because of what it does not do. Let me take as an example the inequity of Scotland’s police and fire and rescue authorities paying VAT. It is a long-standing problem, and this Government could and should have taken the opportunity of this Finance Bill to rectify it, but they did not. In the Budget, there was at least a recognition of the problems faced by Scotland’s oil and gas sector, but no specific measures were announced—just another options paper, which was effectively announced last year. This Finance Bill should have been the opportunity to make concrete proposals for UK content and for oil exploration and decommissioning allowances to ensure that the sector continues to thrive, to flourish and to provide substantial tax yields for decades, but of course it does not. It does, however, put up the duty on Scotch whisky, and increase insurance premium tax again by 20%, which is way above the rate of inflation. Effectively, the Bill treats the Scotch whisky industry and the insurance sector as cash cows for the Treasury.

Having said that, we do welcome some of the measures in the Bill, particularly those that are intended to clamp down on tax avoidance and evasion. I welcome what the Minister said about restricting the use of past losses, disguised remuneration, the initial penalties for tax avoidance enablers, and the removal of the permanent non-dom status. However, it is hard to see how this Bill will assist in any substantial way to address the long-term UK challenge of improving productivity or even helping to make society a little less unequal, which is vital to unlocking our growth potential. That is particularly the case when one considers that alongside this Finance Bill are a set of welfare proposals that do not support inclusive growth but, rather, drive a coach and horses through it. They include the cut of £30 a week to employment and support allowance for claimants placed in the work-related activity group; a 55% cut in the rate of ESA for disabled people under the age of 25; the freezing of the lower disabled child element of universal credit; and the changes for full-time students who receive disability living allowance or personal independence payments who are now not treated as having limited capability for work and are therefore not entitled to universal credit until they have been assessed, which means that they face long delays without support.

I do not want to digress too far from the Bill, but delivering those cuts when disabled people and those on low to middle incomes are already facing a barrage of cuts from this Government is a disgrace. Moreover, those cuts not only fly in the face of the Tory party’s last manifesto commitment to help more disabled people into the workplace—something that is vital—but undermine the essential drive for real inclusive growth, which is vital if we are to grow the economy and maximise our potential.

[Rebecca Pow (Taunton Deane) (Con)]

I just want to point out that, under the Scotland Act 2016, we are devolving benefits worth £2.8 billion to the Scottish Parliament. That is almost a fifth of Scottish spending. It would be really interesting to hear what the hon. Gentleman thinks about that. Indeed, he could even welcome the fact that this Government have created such a strong economy that Scotland is able to have that much money gifted to it.

[Stewart Hosie]

I am sure that the Scottish people will be delighted to hear that the hon. Lady thinks that somehow they do not pay taxes and that they are dependent on the largesse of ladies like her to fund our welfare system. We have had a very small amount of welfare devolved. If she wants to make such a contribution, she can read out the rest of the Whips’ briefing note when she catches your eye later, Mr Deputy Speaker. [Interruption.] The Tories can groan all they like, but they have called a snap election, and on the same day we are debating the Finance Bill.

In this Bill, the Minister wishes to reduce the dividend nil rate from 2018-19 from £5,000 to £2,000. I will listen carefully in the next 10 days or so to what the Government say about that. Perhaps they can prove that only very wealthy people benefit from that allowance and that it may be a reasonable change. Equally, it may be the case that many small and start-up business owners depend on that money to tide them over and that the measure will be nothing more than a tax on enterprise—a disincentive to start a business, to create jobs and to power local economies.

I did find it slightly jarring when the Minister explained that wealthy people could put lots more money in individual savings accounts. That is fantastic news for people who are already wealthy: they can save tax free. Let us juxtapose that with a change to the dividend nil rate from a modest £5,000 down to £2,000, which might act as a disincentive to people who genuinely want to start a business, while allowing already wealthy people to save tax free. That might be the kind of error we would have seen under the old fiscal charter and its requirement to run a permanent surplus quickly, almost irrespective of the economic conditions. However, the new fiscal charter is more flexible than the last one, which should make such a measure unnecessary. The Government are still targeting a surplus early in the next Parliament. Let us see how early it is in the next, next Parliament.

Again, without digressing too far, the numbers and the timescale for even a modest surplus within four or five years look precarious. The forecasts for a current account surplus are tiny, not even reaching 1.5% of GDP. If there is any external shock or capital flight if sterling suffers further devaluation, which is quite likely if the Brexit negotiations go wrong—again, highly possible—the figures could fall apart very quickly indeed.

At its heart, this is a Finance Bill delivered with the pretence that the hard Tory Brexit is not happening. It sits in splendid isolation from reality. We cannot assess whether it will assist with the challenges that lie ahead. We cannot even assess properly what the consequences of the limited measures in it will be, because the Office for Budget Responsibility told us about Brexit at the Budget:

“There is no meaningful basis for predicting the precise end-point of the negotiations as the basis for our forecast.”

In short, this Finance Bill, like the 2017 Budget, is effectively based on a central assumption that pretends that Brexit does not exist. That is a ridiculous thing to do, given that article 50 has already been triggered.

The Economy and Work

Debate between Rebecca Pow and Stewart Hosie

Thursday 26th May 2016 Commons Chamber

[Stewart Hosie]

I was not aware that my hon. Friend was with Mr Lewis, but what he has said does not surprise me in the slightest. For all the talk of an increase in the minimum wage, I think that anyone on the progressive side of politics understands that a real living wage will be undermined by the Government’s cuts to in-work benefits and tax credit.

The Government are failing in respect of almost every key economic indicator. They have missed nearly every target that they have set themselves. The numbers—not the rhetoric—demonstrate beyond doubt that their claim to economic credibility is in tatters. We are asking for a genuine, comprehensive plan for trade, exports, innovation and productivity, and a genuinely rebalanced and fair economy. The Chancellor said that trade and exports would underpin his strategy for growth, but the UK current account deficit now stands at a record £96 billion, its highest ever cash level. The Chancellor promised a doubling of exports to £1 trillion by the end of the year, but exports fell last year to £511 billion. They are going in the wrong direction. On innovation, we continue to compare poorly with our competitors, and the Chancellor’s decision to change innovation grants to loans sends the wrong signals.

[Rebecca Pow (Taunton Deane) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Stewart Hosie]

No, I will not.

On productivity, we continue to lag behind other major economies, and our productivity rise is barely half the level of the rise that we saw during the pre-crisis period.

All those failures need a concrete plan to put them right, but instead we simply have spin and slogans such as “the march of the makers”, “the northern powerhouse” and “the long-term economic plan”. Those are empty, shallow words from a rotten, hollowed-out Government.