Flooding

Sheryll Murray Excerpts

Monday 6th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Paterson]

We have already had the Committee stage of the Water Bill, which comes back to the House immediately after this statement and that would be the appropriate moment to raise these issues. We have said that we have to have a cut-off point, and it was 2009, when the last Government firmed up on the whole idea of building on floodplains. There has to be a firm cut-off point, and the longer this goes on, the bigger the burden will be on other hard-working families who are helping to pay the cross-subsidy.

[Sheryll Murray (South East Cornwall) (Con)]

My constituency has suffered from two sorts of flooding over this period, and some residents in Calstock and Lower Kelly are almost cut-off because the road collapsed into the river. The council has been really good in working with the local residents, but Cornwall suffers under the Bellwin scheme because a unitary authority was foisted on it by the Labour party, against the wishes of the people of Cornwall. Will my right hon. Friend speak to his colleagues in the Department for Communities and Local Government to see whether something can be done about the disproportionate way in which the Bellwin scheme works against Cornwall?

[Mr Paterson]

My hon. Friend raises an important point, and I am pleased to say that only this morning the Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for North Cornwall and the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, my hon. Friend the Member for Great Yarmouth met the leader and chief executive of Cornwall council to discuss the impact of the Bellwin scheme on Cornwall.