Weather Events (South West England)

Debate between Sheryll Murray and Neil Parish

Wednesday 26th February 2014 Westminster Hall

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

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hood. I also thank the right hon. Member for Exeter (Mr Bradshaw) for obtaining this important debate.

I echo the words of my hon. Friend the Member for Newton Abbot (Anne Marie Morris), who said that the Dawlish line needs to be restored. As well as connecting to Cornwall, the line is a great tourist attraction. It is a lovely railway line to travel along. Given that it is 150 years old, it is amazing that it is still there. The line is a remarkable achievement of Brunel, who was such a great engineer. Restoring it is important.

We also have to consider a complementary line that would potentially make it much faster to get from Plymouth and Cornwall up to London. We already have a second line that comes from Exeter up to Waterloo; it runs through my constituency. We have a loop at Axminster, but we need a loop at Honiton, which would help. We also ought to consider twin-tracking the railway all the way down from London to Exeter because that would give us a line to Exeter. Furthermore, we should consider whether we can go across from Exeter towards Okehampton and down to Plymouth. We could try to go across Dartmoor itself, but that might not be easy.

Those things have to be done, and I echo the words of my hon. Friend the Member for South West Devon (Mr Streeter), who pointed out that billions of pounds are to be spent on HS2. Every time I have been through the Lobby to vote for HS2, I have held my nose for the simple reason that I did not want to support it. If we do not see real and meaningful investment in the west country, it is our duty to speak up and stand up for our constituents, and I believe we will. I look forward to my hon. Friend the Member for South Dorset (Richard Drax) reinforcing that point in a minute.

We have to consider the current structure, but we also have to consider sea defences. After I said in Parliament the other day that we do not have to retreat from the sea, The Daily Telegraph poked fun at me slightly by saying that I am like King Canute. Of course King Canute actually stood in the sea to try to persuade his courtiers that he could not keep back the sea. On the Somerset levels there are now Dutch pumps. The people of the Netherlands do not retreat from the sea for the simple reason that, if they did, they would probably lose between a third and two thirds of their country, and they do not intend to do that.

We have to treat sea defences as an infrastructure project. People can rightly argue, as the Government have, that we inherited a huge £120 billion financial deficit in the day-to-day running of the country, and we are reducing that deficit, but there has never been a better time for investment in capital projects and infrastructure because we will never see lower interest rates. I lived through a period of interest rates of 12% and 15% when I was farming, and those rates were cruel and painful to say the least. We now have much better interest rates, so let us use them to our advantage. We need to protect our coastline.

The A30 and the A303 need to be dualled so that we do not only have the M5. The A30 down from Exeter is a good road, but the A30 that runs on the edge of Dorset into Wiltshire, Somerset and the south of my constituency needs to be dualled. We do not want to be held up entirely by Stonehenge. We have to sort out Stonehenge, but it should not be the sticking point against dualling the rest of the road.

On his visit to the west country, the Prime Minister said that 100% of the need will be provided under the Bellwin agreement. There are potholes all over Devon and Cornwall. The roads are horrendous, and a fortune has been spent on them. The roads have to be put right. I was driving through Seaton the other day, and I nearly drove into a pothole the size of half a car. The pothole was not quite that bad, but it was huge and would cause amazing damage.

[Sheryll Murray]

Does my hon. Friend agree that Bellwin should be extended to allow local authorities to repair potholes properly, rather than cold-filling potholes only for them to become deeper a couple of weeks down the road?

[Neil Parish]

My hon. Friend is right about the need for good repairs. The county councils naturally argue that a major repair is much more expensive than just filling a pothole, but she is right that it is a pointless exercise if all the tarmac comes out of the pothole five minutes later. An awful lot of money is available to be spent.

I also welcome the Prime Minister’s pledge of £5,000 grants to help businesses through the floods. Will the Minister give us more detail on how people can claim that money? It is always great when the Government offer money, but people would like to be able to claim and use it.

On the Somerset levels, it has been said that raising the railway line across the moors would cost £200 million. There is one solution to ensure that that railway line does not flood, and that is a sluice at the end of the river Parrett to stop the sea from coming in. At the moment, the sea comes in and drives the fresh water back, and that is what keeps the moors flooded. I cannot guarantee that the sluice would mean that the moors never flooded again, but a tidal sluice on the end of the Parrett, north of Bridgwater, could mean that the depth of water on the moors would not be enough to flood the railway line.

Doing the arithmetic, it would cost £200 million to raise the railway line and that will never happen. I reckon that a sluice across the Parrett would cost some £50 million and if hydroelectric power was put there as well, the project would start to show its worth. It would help farmers, properties and nature conservation. When there is water over the whole Somerset levels for six to eight weeks, there is nothing left when the water recedes. There will not be the lovely flora and fauna or reeds and rushes that everybody wants, because it will all have rotted. Then there is the farmland, what has happened to people’s property and the stock that has had to be moved across the moors. We have to look at the situation seriously.

The other great benefit of having a sluice across the River Parrett is that the water could be penned in during the summer and the area could be made like a mini Norfolk broads. That would bring the benefits of a huge tourist attraction. Devon and Cornwall need a railway line, but we have to cross Somerset to get there, and we need to consider that. I know that the right hon. Member for Exeter does not like dredging and all those things, but they must be part of the armoury. We can hold water in certain places and further upstream, but in the end rivers such as the Parrett and Tone silt up, and without dredging we will not get the water away fast enough.

The management of those waterways has to be much more local, and that is where inland drainage boards can do a lot more. We might need more drainage boards. Will the Minister consider that? We might, dare I say it, have to get people living in houses further up the catchment area to pay a small amount, because their water is flowing down and flooding the lowland areas. There are ways of raising money, which will help. Local management would be so much better.

Flood Insurance

Debate between Sheryll Murray and Neil Parish

Tuesday 26th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Neil Parish]

I agree with the right hon. Gentleman that the Government can step up to the plate and be the insurer of last resort. However, the point I am making is that the Government must be the insurer of last resort, not the insurer of first resort.

Because there has been so much flooding in the past year, the insurance companies have naturally been putting the maximum possible pressure on the Government. They are in business, so it is right for them to do so. However, given that everybody who pays insurance across the piece will pay for the scheme, the Government must ensure that everybody is dealt with fairly.

It is essential that people who genuinely cannot get insurance—those who have been flooded two or three times, such as my constituents in Feniton—can get insurance in the future. The current statement of principles does not cover them. I am therefore looking forward to the Government putting in place a much better system so that people can access insurance irrespective of whether they have been flooded several times. It is not their fault that they live in a property that is flooding; in many respects, it is planning decisions that generate floods.

In the village of Feniton, there have been appeal decisions allowing more houses to be built where the appeal inspector has actually recognised in his brief that the village will flood and might flood further as a result of the development, but has allowed the houses anyway because the district council has not got its five-year housing plan up to speed. That means that the poor people down the bottom of Feniton will get flooded even more. What is the logic of that? This must be not only about flood insurance but about a planning policy that says we do not build on floodplains or on hills above villages so that the water runs off and floods the people at the bottom end of the village even more. This is something I get quite excited about, because the people who get flooded should not have to put up with it.

Other hon. Members have talked about ensuring that the money for the Bellwin scheme is available when, for example, roads are washed away by floods. Very often, the Government claim that Bellwin is available to local authorities, but when the latter claim it, the Government and the bureaucracy decide that many of the proposed schemes to cover flood damage are not eligible. That has to be dealt with.

[Sheryll Murray]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the Bellwin scheme is only for immediate and emergency repairs, which it is often not possible for local authorities to carry out?

[Neil Parish]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. If a road or bridge is washed away, the local authority might not be able to put it right immediately, but it will still have an effect on local people and local authority spend.

I am keen for the Government to negotiate a system that gives people access to affordable flood insurance in high-risk areas; otherwise, we will end up putting a levy on all insurance payers, only to find that people cannot get genuinely affordable insurance. That is key. I will want to see in the proposal what the word “affordable” means, because what is affordable to one person is not affordable to another. I do not want the insurance companies gobbling up a great deal of money and then not offering affordable assurance to my constituents in villages and towns that have been flooded.

Dairy Industry

Debate between Sheryll Murray and Neil Parish

Thursday 13th September 2012 Westminster Hall

[Neil Parish]

I welcome my hon. Friend’s contribution. More producer organisations being able to negotiate decent contracts, and being able to cut the contracts within three months, which is what the voluntary code is all about, will help to drive the price up. In the past, some contracts have done the reverse, and have driven the price down.

Currently, there are no formally recognised producer organisations operating in the dairy sector, nor is there a definite interpretation of what the dairy package regulation means for the establishment and recognition of producer organisations known to the industry. Members will hiss when I say that my experience is that producer organisations are much stronger in many other countries across Europe and, dare I say it, probably get a better price because of that. Let us not always shun what may be done across the channel, but endorse some of it if it improves the price to farmers.

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

Does my hon. Friend agree that if producer organisations are to have clout they have to represent everyone in the industry and not be dictated to by the large producers, as we have seen happen in other industries, such as fisheries?

[Neil Parish]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Farmers’ great strength is their independence, but sometimes they do not get together as much as they should. This is an opportunity, with producer organisations, to do precisely that. It is important that the Rural Payments Agency is in a position to formally recognise groups of farmers who wish to constitute themselves as a dairy producer organisation before spring 2013. We have to stop talking about that, and do it.

The Government must also continue their work in making farming and the dairy industry more competitive, through cutting regulation, waste and red tape. The independent taskforce, set up by Richard—Dick—Macdonald, has been successful, but it means that the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has revoked some 39 statutory instruments only to turn around and introduce a further 41. We have, therefore, to run a little faster to get rid of regulation.

Farmers have to spend a great deal of their time filling and refilling forms on everything from livestock movements to nitrates regulation. The cost of current regulation is upward of £5 billion a year, with 50% of all DEFRA regulations coming from the EU. In particular, it is important that the Government look again at the nitrate vulnerable zone, because I do not think that it is scientifically based, and it costs the industry a huge amount. Ultimately, DEFRA must go further in cutting the barriers to growth domestically, and give Parliament more scrutiny over EU regulation coming in.

Farmers are never going to get a good price while we flood the UK market with liquid milk. The majority of milk produced in this country is for the liquid milk market, with only 49% of it going into processed products such as cheese and yogurt, which is far less than in many other countries. For instance, in Eire—the Republic of Ireland—80% of the milk is exported.

Common Fisheries Policy

Debate between Sheryll Murray and Neil Parish

Thursday 15th March 2012 Commons Chamber

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

It is a great pleasure to be called to speak in this debate on fisheries and the common fisheries policy. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Miss McIntosh) for securing it and for chairing the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee. We have heard from several Committee members, including my hon. Friends the Members for South Dorset (Richard Drax) and for Hastings and Rye (Amber Rudd), as well as the hon. Member for North Tyneside (Mrs Glindon)—I was going to say “North Teesside”, but I know that it is somewhere up north—who has great expertise in this topic.

May I also pay tribute to my great friend, my hon. Friend the Member for South East Cornwall (Sheryll Murray)? She has huge knowledge of fishing and the fishing industry—indeed, her knowledge of those areas is probably second to none in this House. She endured a terrible tragedy last year, and all our hearts go out to her. In the circumstances, it is very brave of her to speak about fishing issues as she does.

I also wish to join many other Members in commending the Minister on the very good job he has done battling away in Brussels. We certainly do need to battle away. It is difficult enough trying to manage and organise fishing policy for the seas off the coasts of Cornwall, Devon and the north of England—and even Scotland, if I may dare say so—from here in Westminster.

[Sheryll Murray]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the situation we are in now is similar to what happened a decade ago? We heard similar promises then, but the end result was not what we anticipated. We should bear that in mind when we send the Minister to Brussels to negotiate.

[Neil Parish]

We have, of course, a new Minister and a new—coalition—Government, and I have every faith in both this Minister and this Government to deliver what we want.

It is essential that we fight our corner. The European Commission offers great gifts of devolving powers. It offers the tools to achieve that, but when we look into the toolbox we find that it contains very few tools. In the end, the instinct of Brussels is not to give powers away but to grab powers. It has done that for decades. That is why the CFP is in such a mess. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Oliver Colvile) that we should not have just six-mile and 12-mile limits, but should extend that and have a 200-mile limit.

Let us consider what the Norwegians can do. If an area of the Norwegian sea is being over-fished they can shut it down within hours. In the European Union, however, it would take months—if an agreement is ever, in fact, reached. In the EU we have Austria, the Czech Republic and Slovakia all arguing about fishing. They have a few lakes, but they have no coast. The European Commission plays that situation, of course.

--- Later in debate ---

[Neil Parish]

No, I do not think they would. They offer great platitudes to those who go out of fishing, but all they are interested in is having a centralised policy whereby the total amount of fish caught within the EU meets their targets. They are not actually worried how many fishermen there are to do the fishing, even though they will tell people otherwise. This, again, comes back to the problem of managing things from Brussels, so we have to deal with the principles of the CFP.

I suspect that the Minister may well not be able to come back with a 200-mile limit yet, but we have great confidence that over a period of years he will achieve that. I say that because of what we are doing now with this limited resource: we are throwing it into the sea, dead. A lot of those fish actually putrefy on the sea bed. Local fishermen tell me that a lot of sea lice attack the dead fish and that when they catch fresh fish that are alive they often bring up in their nets some of those dead fish, which contaminate the healthy fish. Is this situation logical? Is it right? No, it is absolutely wrong.

[Sheryll Murray]

Does my hon. Friend agree that rotten fish on the sea bed not only contaminate the catch, but prevent other fish from coming into these areas to swim? This is like having a graveyard on the bed of the sea, and we would not go into a room full of dead bodies, would we?

--- Later in debate ---

[Neil Parish]

It might well be difficult for our fishermen to catch some of the types of fish that are now coming into our waters, for the simple reason that the type of nets being used may not catch them. Alternatively, those fish, too, may be caught in the nets being put out in a mixed fishery, so we may have an even greater loss, as I suspect that our fishermen will not have quota for those particular species. So the whole situation gets worse and worse, and we want our fishermen to be able to earn a living. That is why our Minister has such a nightmare to sort out.

The next matter is very difficult to deal with, because fishermen and the fishing industry have made big investments in quota and are keen to see it maintained, but our 10-metre fleet and the under 10-metre fleet want to catch more fish sustainably, which has a huge impact on our coastal communities. Even that is complicated, because of the super 10-metre fleet, which has large engines and can catch as much fish as the large boats. It all becomes very complicated—and that is why we have such a marvellous Minister to sort it out.

[Sheryll Murray]

Not only do some of those 10-metre boats have large engines, but some tow two nets at the same time. I have heard that they are now considering towing three nets, so they are fishing at the same intensity as some of the larger vessels with which we are all familiar.

[Neil Parish]

My hon. Friend is right, because fishing boats’ engines, the type of satellite, the equipment used for navigation and to see exactly where the fish are, and all the other equipment on those boats, are getting so much more sophisticated that it is almost impossible for the fish to escape. It is not a case of putting one’s finger up and seeing which way the wind is blowing: the fish can be found. We need to find the balance in how we share a limited resource. We must get rid of the discards one way or another, and we need to ensure that fish are shared out between the different fishermen in our waters. We need to manage our waters not just in the six and 12-mile limits but out to the 200-mile limit.

As has been mentioned, what has happened has been a travesty of justice. When we joined the Common Market in 1973 we presented a low figure for the number of fish we caught, whereas other countries, especially France, Belgium and others, inflated their figures. We have suffered from that ever since, and it needs to be put right.

I want to raise one last point, and that is the problem of the slipper skippers—people who, year after year, do not have the boats to catch their fish and are leasing out their quota. I feel that the Minister should impose a siphon—perhaps 10% or 20%—every time they lease out their quota, so that over five or 10 years they will lose their quota. That quota could then go to the smaller fleets and the under 10-metre boats. That would send out the message that when someone is sitting on a sofa and not fishing, it is not right for them to hold quota.

Water Industry (Financial Assistance) Bill

Debate between Sheryll Murray and Neil Parish

Tuesday 6th March 2012 Commons Chamber

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

I thank the Minister for all his work in getting this Bill into Parliament so that we can deliver the £50 saving to water rate payers in the south-west, because they are a hugely deserving cause, as one would expect me to say.

As other Members have said, although we have only 3% of the country’s population, we have 30% of its beaches. We welcome many holidaymakers to Devon and Cornwall—they are most wonderful places to go to, and I encourage every Member to do that—but of course people from throughout the country use those beaches, so a small share in the cost of cleaning them up and looking after them will be gratefully received, and is necessary and fair. I thank the Chancellor for getting the money through, because we inherited a very difficult financial situation from the previous Government. They had 13 years to sort this out in much better economic times; we have managed to find the money in very difficult economic times, and that is a worthy achievement.

We must look at the profile of the people who are having to pay those bills in Devon and Cornwall. A large percentage of the population are elderly, including a lot of people who have been retired for a long time, and may have retired on good incomes but have found that inflation and other things have taken away their buying power.

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

Does my hon. Friend agree that the average income per household in my constituency and the wider south-west is about £23,000, which is way below the national average?

[Neil Parish]

I do indeed. We have to look at the income profile of people’s salaries and wages. We rely a great deal on tourism, which, while it is essential for the whole area, is not necessarily the most highly paid industry in the country. It is right to give support to the people paying those bills.

The money that South West Water has made available to clean up the beaches is essential. Whatever the rights and wrongs of water privatisation, we must realise that before the industry was privatised, the infrastructure had not been dealt with. That meant that a huge backlog of work needed to be done on the sewerage works throughout Devon and Cornwall, and the cost of that was bound to impact heavily on water bills. In my constituency of Tiverton and Honiton there is a £2.8 million scheme to improve Cullompton sewerage works, which started last November and is due for completion in June. South West Water has also spent £340,000 on a scheme to enhance Allers water treatment works, and there is another scheme to enhance the Cullompton works. It is key that the company carries on putting the infrastructure in place so that we can get much cleaner beaches. We have beautiful countryside in Devon and Cornwall, but we should not forget that people mainly come for our beaches, so it is absolutely right to keep them clean.

We must consider those who are unable to pay their bills. There is a national cost of over £15 per bill to make up for those who cannot pay. The combination of those who cannot pay and those who will not pay is always the most difficult thing for Governments and companies to deal with.

My hon. Friend the Member for Camborne and Redruth (George Eustice) talked about businesses. The Bill covers not businesses but private households. Businesses need much more competition. I urge the Minister not to let the horses frighten him. At the moment, the companies are saying, “You can’t possibly give us more competition, because that will frighten away investment from the City.” We do not want to frighten away investment, but neither must we be frightened away from looking at where we could create greater competition. In Scotland there is one nationalised company for wholesale water, and retail companies that can compete with one another. With our privatised water companies in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, we can look into ways to create more competition and then get the bills down for businesses too. It is essential that businesses, as well as householders, in Devon and Cornwall should benefit. The trouble is that if we spread the money for the £50 reduction across businesses as well, householders would lose a significant amount of it.

We need South West Water to be clear about why it is putting its bills up by another £20 or so. Although that might be justified, we do not want it to eat significantly into the £50 that we have provided to help people with their bills. We must remember that the south-west has been singled out because it has the highest water bills in the country, mainly because of the cleaning up of the sewage works.

The final point that I want to raise is about the London tunnel and the sewerage works in London. Last week I made an intervention that caused one or two long faces among Opposition Members, but I shall repeat the point. One night, when I was travelling back from here on my bicycle towards Chelsea bridge, going into Battersea, there was a low tide and I could smell the sewage being pumped into the River Thames. I question whether that should be happening in 2012. A company, a farmer or anybody else who polluted in that way would be prosecuted. Is there one law for some and another law for others?

It is high time this issue was dealt with. I know that that involves a huge expensive infrastructure project, but in the 21st century it is essential to clean up the sewage that goes into the Thames. Every time there is a tremendous amount of rainfall, the sewage works cannot cope and out goes the sewage into the Thames. The water companies have the right to do that—whereas a business that did it would be prosecuted immediately. I am delighted that this project is to be undertaken. I know that parts of London do not welcome it because of how it will affect them, but for the greater good of the capital and of the Thames, it has to be done.