Storm Babet: Flooding

Tim Farron Excerpts

Monday 23rd October 2023 Commons Chamber

[Rebecca Pow]

Of course it is critical that warnings go out appropriately at the right time, and that was why this incident started to be flagged the previous weekend and why the national flood response centre was set up. There is a comprehensive Environment Agency flood warning service and I advise people to sign up to it, as well as checking whether they are in an area that might be at risk of flooding. One of the issues is awareness. The EA runs a lot of comms programmes on this, but if there is more that should be done, I will look at that in the review.

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

When Storm Arwen hit Cumbria two years ago, many of our villages and other communities lost electrical power for several days due to damaged power cables. I know that that has happened to many communities over the last few days. What progress have the Government made since 2021 to make Britain’s power infrastructure more resilient—for example, by creating a national bank of mobile generators to ensure that communities are not left cold, dark and vulnerable for days on end? Have the people hit by Storm Babet benefited from lessons learned from Storm Arwen, or are we no further forward?

[Rebecca Pow]

I would like to assure the hon. Gentleman that DEFRA has been working closely with the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, which has a strategy for exactly this issue, because it is critical that power outages are considered when emergencies such as this take place. Effective action was taken over the Rolls-Royce plants in the Derbyshire area; that was a very effective alignment with the Energy Department. Just as an aside, we work closely with the water industry on preparedness, should there be electricity outages, some of which might be linked to flooding. In fact, there was another incident near Derby and it had a clear management plan.