Flooding in Cumbria

Debate between Tim Farron and Baroness Hayman of Ullock

Tuesday 19th March 2019 Westminster Hall

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

I beg to move,

That this House has considered flooding in Cumbria.

It is a huge pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bone. I wish to speak about the situation with regard to flooding in Cumbria. In the days following Storm Desmond in December 2015, in response to our collective call for action, I was promised by David Cameron that funding would be provided to protect those towns and villages along the River Kent and its tributaries. I thank the Minister for her support in holding to that; it is genuinely appreciated.

This week, the Kendal flood defence scheme will come to the council’s planning committee. MPs are generally advised to stay neutral on planning issues, but I have chosen to intervene on this occasion because, having won the funds to deliver that flood protection, I am determined to do everything I can to give families and businesses the protection and peace of mind that they so desperately need. Having waited more than three years even to get to the planning stage and having been through many iterations during the consultation, those who still live with the trauma of Storm Desmond should not be made to wait any longer, so I place on the record my concern that the proposal should not be dragged out further by an unnecessary public inquiry.

Storm Desmond’s impact on communities in Cumbria was unprecedented and long-lasting: 7,465 properties were flooded, affecting an estimated 14,694 people, the largest number of whom were in South Lakeland. Some people were out of their homes for three years, and 3,000 children were unable to return to school until the new year of 2016. They missed a vital part of their education; for some, this was in the run-up to very important January exams. In addition, 1,029 businesses were flooded, causing huge economic damage to our communities. Jobs were lost and some businesses went to the wall. Flooding caused poverty as well as heartbreak.

The long-term toll on the tourism industry is also unquestionable. In terms of popularity, the Lake district as a destination is second only to London. UNESCO recognised that in 2017 by granting world heritage site status. The Cumbria visitor economy contributes £3 billion a year and employs more than 60,000 people. However, Storm Desmond saw a 76% decrease in tourism business profits and a drop-off in visitor numbers of about the same proportion; 57% of Cumbria’s tourism businesses also reported reduced numbers of international visitors. Four months on from the floods, 77% of businesses continued to suffer reduced booking inquiries.

As well as people’s property and livelihoods being affected, there was a significant impact on Cumbria’s infrastructure. The A591 north of Grasmere was simply washed away, cutting the Lake district in two, as its most important road was then closed for more than five months. There were 107 other road closures; there was damage to 792 bridges and the closure of the west coast main line. The impact on other vital services was devastating. More than 1,000 hospital operations were cancelled, causing significant suffering and distress.

In the light of the widespread and long-term impacts, both personally and economically, it is clearly in both the national and the local interest that the Government should invest significantly in preventing a repeat of the devastation. The current plans for flood defences in my constituency provide protection for residents and businesses in Kendal, Burneside and Staveley and are welcome, but many badly affected communities are being offered nothing by the Government.

[Sue Hayman (Workington) (Lab)]

The Derwent river catchment, which is in my constituency, has no significant flood alleviation projects in the pipeline, despite being flooded multiple times during the past 10 years, and does not qualify, under the current funding formula rules, for significant funding. The Minister is aware of our concerns, and I thank her for taking the time to listen to us on this matter, but recent alerts have led to more concerns about mental health problems among my constituents. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that we need a serious and thorough review of the current spending formula in order that all our constituents can be properly protected, as well as those in other rural areas that fall foul of the current system?

[Tim Farron]

I thoroughly agree with all that the hon. Lady has said. The funding formula for Cumbria works massively against us in terms of both resilience and response to crises. I will talk later about the impact on mental health. The hon. Lady makes an extremely good point in that respect. The lasting consequences of flooding are very often huge when it comes to people’s wellbeing and their fear of what might come next.

We welcome the funding that we have got, but it is insufficient. Many areas, such as those that the hon. Lady has referred to in her own constituency, have not received that support. In my own community, we look at the failure to come forward with funding and support for places outside Kendal in particular. Windermere Road in Grange has flooded for many years, and only now has the Environment Agency been given approval to do a 12-month appraisal. We were expecting spades in the ground by now, not more chin stroking. I would appreciate the Minister’s intervention to ensure that the residents of Grange are not kept waiting for the flood protection that they desperately need. People will be reassured by tangible, visible construction and action, not by meetings and promises. The funding has been allocated for the scheme and plans have been made; we now need to move forward with actual delivery.

Flooding in the village of Holme, along Stainton Beck, in Burton and on the Strands at Milnthorpe remains unaddressed. Those places are on a list of flooding hotspots where action remains to be taken. The same is true of many other places throughout Cumbria. The Burneside and Middleton Hall bridges have been closed for more than three years, dividing and damaging communities. In the year and a half for which the Staveley bridge was closed, the community found itself cut off and isolated, without any financial support from the Government. Kendal’s bridges, including the Victoria bridge, were closed following Storm Desmond because of safety concerns. However, when Cumbria local enterprise partnership put in a bid for £25 million to make the county’s bridges and infrastructure more flood-resilient, it was rejected by the Government.

Meanwhile, the Government have failed to come forward with any plans for protections for the communities around Windermere: Bowness, Waterhead at Ambleside and Backbarrow in particular. Those communities have been completely ignored in the Government’s plans. They remain exposed and vulnerable, subject to whatever the weather throws at them next. Of all the businesses in Cumbria closed by Storm Desmond, more than one tenth were around Windermere lake.

[Tim Farron]

I agree with all that the hon. Gentleman has said. He makes an important point, which is very significant to his constituents, but also to mine around Windermere lake. Residences are affected, but so are dozens and dozens of businesses, all of which are the backbone of our local economy and have a massive impact on the wellbeing of local people. The Government must now take responsibility for the failure to invest in protecting those businesses. We cannot get away from the impact on families and businesses, which cannot plan for the future because they feel that they might get hit again. Even a modest downpour can trigger real panic in people of all ages, especially children. Flood prevention is about protecting not just properties, but the wellbeing and mental health of the people who live in them.

I was hugely affected by what I saw and experienced on the morning after Storm Desmond, as we helped stricken people to empty their homes. I saw the forlorn Christmas decorations and sodden Christmas trees left out on the front garden or yard. I stood with people who had been made destitute. Barely able to afford to feed their children or pay the rent in the first place, they had forgone insurance because, frankly, they could not afford it, and they were left facing utter ruin. We cannot guarantee people that there will not be floods again, but we can massively reduce the risk. We can help people to give themselves permission to have confidence in the future and reassure their children, so that they can sleep easier at night.

A survey carried out by the Cumbria community recovery group reported that in the areas hit by the floods, a sense of vulnerability and loss of control was created, which re-emerged following further heavy rainfall of any kind. People reported anxiety and symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, which worsened further for those facing the loss of their employment, as well as their home.

For those flooded communities that have not received help—such as Grange, Windermere and Backbarrow—I ask the Minister to change the Government’s position and agree to intervene. There are deliverable schemes that will protect all those communities around England’s largest lake, as well as the community in Grange-over-Sands. I ask that she agrees to fund those as a priority.

The failure to hold water companies to account is a further area of concern. Despite the Kendal flood defences being built to withstand a one-in-100-year event, the water companies—in our case United Utilities—are only required to meet the standards for a one-in-30-year storm event. That is ludicrous. Millions of pounds are being spent on flood defences for our community, but the area will be just as vulnerable from surface water flooding. Surface water is one of the biggest factors to cause homes to be flooded in Cumbria over the last 10 years. On Steeles Row in Burneside, poor drainage means that residents have to deal with raw sewage overflowing into their homes and on to the street every time there is even a moderate downpour. I challenge the Minister to hold water companies, such as United Utilities, to account—to a one-in-100-year standard—so that homes receive the protection that they need.

Let us be clear that we are talking about not simply flood protection, but the mitigation of a human-created disaster—the consequences of climate change, which is more properly described as a climate catastrophe. The Government have moved away from renewable energy. They have changed feed-in tariffs, so that it is harder for businesses to invest in solar energy, while giving licences for fracking. The Guardian recently outed the Government as providing some of the heaviest bursaries for gas and oil companies. The cancellation of the Swansea tidal lagoon proves that the Government have stopped even pretending to care about climate change. Britain has the second-largest tidal range in the world, and yet we fail to use that natural, renewable resource to cut carbon and create jobs.

I want us to mitigate the consequences of our failure to tackle climate change in time to protect my communities from flooding, but I am also determined that the Government take the big strategic decisions to fight climate change. That requires a revolution in renewables and a push for energy self-sufficiency, which would protect our environment, boost our economy and give us vital energy security. I see no sign of any appetite for that from this Government. I was with students in Kendal last week, protesting against inaction on climate change. That was a reminder that the coming generation will not let us get away with it, and they are absolutely right not to.

[Sue Hayman]

I was in Cockermouth on Saturday with students from Cockermouth School and other primary schools, and they take the issue very seriously. In my constituency we also have to deal with coastal erosion and coastal flooding, which are greatly impacted by climate change. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that we need to build coastal protection into the broader funding formula for flooding protection?

[Tim Farron]

Yes, I agree, and I will come on to the need to treat Cumbria as a special case when it comes to flood funding allocation. We have a very long coast with many tidal estuaries, which could be a source of energy but are also a source of flood risk. The hon. Lady makes a very good point.

Flooding is a problem in my patch, as well as for my constituency neighbours, the hon. Lady and the hon. Member for Barrow and Furness (John Woodcock), but it is a problem that only stands to get worse. The extreme weather events that we face are becoming more frequent. According to the Met Office website, Westmorland has the highest average annual rainfall of any place in England. The most beautiful place in the country turns out to be the wettest—who would have thought it? We have a lot of lakes to keep topped up.

I ask the Minister to re-evaluate the funding criteria, to ensure that Cumbria is treated as a special case with recurring support for flood resilience, because for us it is not a question of whether it will flood, but when and how severely. I want the Minister to intervene with emergency funding to protect the communities around Windermere, such as Grange and Backbarrow, which currently face the future with no protection. We need more than just one-off lumps of money to deal with crises; we need a fundamental change in the funding formula.

The current partnership funding mechanism focuses on the value of assets protected. That obviously favours wealthier communities and parts of the country where house prices are higher and homes more densely built. It dilutes any consideration of how likely an area is to flood. The system of classification is, frankly, not fit for purpose. Many communities flooded in 2005, 2009 and 2015; that is three floods in 10 years, each of them at least a one-in-100-year event, meaning that flood frequency estimations are now wildly inaccurate for Cumbria. Properties should now be placed in the higher risk category, based on the reality of the past 10 to 20 years. The current figures are based on statistics that are so far out of date that they have basically become fantasy.

In short, the steps that the Government need to take are clear and threefold. First, we need urgent investment now. We need to build capacity to take water out of Windermere at times of high rainfall in order to protect the communities on its banks. I have presented the Minister with a case for such a scheme made by one of my constituents, and I look forward to hearing her response. Secondly, we need the Government to hold the water companies to account, so that communities are given the long-term protection they need. Thirdly, it is clear that the Government need fundamentally to shift their thinking when it comes to the allocation of funding for flood defences, so that we in Cumbria—England’s wettest county—get the recurring funding we need to make ourselves resilient, and to keep our families and businesses safe.

I am massively proud of our people and communities in Cumbria. In the face of devastation, they pulled together to support one another at great personal cost. For example, the Kendal Cares initiative sprang up literally overnight after Storm Desmond, to meet the needs of those who had lost so much. Today, I want the Minister to commit to supporting our communities in an enduring way, so that we can prevent a repeat of the devastation that occurred in December 2015. Cumbria surely deserves that protection, and I hope that the Minister will provide it.

Rail Services: Cumbria

Debate between Tim Farron and Baroness Hayman of Ullock

Wednesday 20th June 2018 Westminster Hall

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

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the future of rail services in Cumbria.

It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Dame Cheryl. I will try to make my speech a little shorter than it would have been, to allow time for the hon. Member for Barrow and Furness (John Woodcock), who shares my deep concerns on this issue.

The Lakes line, between Oxenholme and Windermere in my constituency, may be only a short, 12-mile stretch of railway, but when it comes to significance, it punches far above its length. The Lake district is in its first full year of being a world heritage site, meaning many thousands more tourists, at least, visiting our part of the world. The Lakes line is essential to those visitors accessing the astounding natural beauty of the national park and surrounding areas and the wonderful tourism industry that provides such a breadth of experiences for locals and visitors alike. Our tourism industry generates £3 billion a year, supports 60,000 jobs and is vital to our local economy, but the Lakes line service is not only used by tourists. It is also a key part of the lives of many locals. It is used by hundreds of commuting schoolchildren and workers and is a means of accessing vital services—or at least that is how it used to be. Over the past few months, that has all changed.

When 200 of us walked in protest along the length of the Lakes line 10 days ago, what had been a bustling line was deserted. There were no people at the stations and no trains on the tracks. And let us not fall into the trap of believing that the new timetables are entirely to blame for this catastrophe. Services on the Furness line and the Lakes line have been consistently failing and regularly cancelled ever since Northern took over the two lines in April 2016. This April alone saw 160 cancellations just on the Lakes line. By itself, that substandard provision would be totally unacceptable, but Northern has taken underperformance to new heights.

Like so many others in Cumbria, I was horrified to hear Northern’s announcement on Monday 4 June that all trains on the Lakes line were to be completely suspended—a train line with no trains. The Northern franchise is huge, covering all the local and commuter services in the north-east, Yorkshire and almost all the north-west of England, yet since the introduction of Northern’s interim timetable on 11 June, one in five of all the cancellations on the entire huge network has been on the relatively small Lakes line. Indeed, it is the only line in the country on which services have been completely suspended. That is beyond unsatisfactory; it is completely unacceptable.

However, Northern has not stopped there. We learned on Friday that Arriva Northern had extended the suspension by a further two weeks, to 2 July. That was possible only because the Government had rubber-stamped its request to extend that appalling suspension. A spokesperson for the Department for Transport said that it did not object to that “operational decision”, despite the fact that the Secretary of State himself had assured me that he was

“not prepared to accept more than the current two weeks”

and that he had been

“clear to Arriva that doing this over the long term is simply unacceptable”.—[Official Report, 4 June 2018; Vol. 642, c. 58.]

Those are the Secretary of State’s own words, on the record, from the statement in the House of Commons on 4 June—words that he repeated to me and the hon. Member for Barrow and Furness when we met him that evening. It sounds very much to me, and to many of us, as though the Secretary of State said one thing to the House on that Monday and in practice did the opposite on Friday.

This calamity could not have come at a worse time. The cancellations have occurred during the Easter holidays and through the May half-term, and they are now hitting the local economy during the early summer season. There are fears that the substandard or non-existent provision could stretch into the summer holidays.

Let me gently remind the Minister that we are not a dispensable backwater. After London, we are Britain’s second biggest visitor destination. Our contribution to the UK economy is huge and our contribution to the broader British brand is unrivalled. The lack of trains has already had a catastrophic impact on the people of Cumbria, and the toll that it will inevitably take on the local economy could be enormous. Over the past few weeks, local young people taking their A-level and GCSE exams have found themselves stranded or late to school. People have missed hospital appointments and benefits assessments, while others have been regularly late to work. One woman I spoke to is having to move house from Staveley to Kendal just so that her kids can get to and from school every day and she is not blighted by the worry of her 12-year-old child being stranded in town and unable to get home.

Northern has not only failed to do its job, but completely undermined local confidence in this stretch of railway. My constituents are voting with their feet, and the sight of deserted train platforms along the line is now all too familiar. The replacement bus services are barely used by locals at all. Tourists use the service only because they see no alternative.

However, Northern’s utter failure to do its job and provide adequate train services in Cumbria is not limited to the Lakes line. Over the past few months, the Lakes, Furness and Cumbrian coast lines have all experienced shocking services.

[Sue Hayman (Workington) (Lab)]

There are also concerns about staffing levels at Northern. It is short of train crew to cover the new Cumbrian Coast timetable, and the Northern control centres are so overstretched that the routes in Cumbria seem to have fallen right to the bottom of its list of priorities. Over the past month, there have been daily cancellations of trains through Workington, including the last train of the day, which is a huge inconvenience and runs the risk of stranding people miles away from home, with no idea of how to get back. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the situation is simply unsustainable and that Northern is badly letting down thousands of people on a daily basis?

[Tim Farron]

I completely agree with everything that the hon. Lady has said. It feels to me very much as though all the lines in Cumbria are afterthoughts for Northern, given its huge empire. Many of the staffing problems would have been completely foreseeable and predictable by competent management who were planning for the future and had Cumbria’s interests at heart, so the hon. Lady is absolutely right to say what she has said.

As I said, over the past few months the Lakes, Furness and Cumbrian Coast lines have all experienced shocking services. My constituents who use the stations at Arnside, Grange-over-Sands, Kents Bank and Cark have experienced service equally dreadful to that experienced by those who use Oxenholme, Kendal, Burneside, Staveley and Windermere. That is not the result of accidental oversight; it has been caused by a series of appalling decisions by both Northern and the Government.

There seem to be three main failings that must be identified and fixed. First, the Government’s choice to cancel electrification of the Lakes line last year has very clearly contributed to the mess that we are in today. Northern took on the line on the understanding—this is the only excuse I will allow the company—that it would soon be running electric trains, and it planned and ordered on that basis. Because of the Government’s decision to cancel electrification, on the basis of inaccurate figures that must now be revisited, Northern were forced quickly to borrow from Scotland old diesel trains that their drivers were not trained to run.

Secondly, the Government awarded the Lakes line and Furness line franchises to Arriva Northern from April 2016. This was an unfolding disaster from day one, given the removal of good services from TransPennine and the introduction of substandard stock and service from Northern. The Minister should undo that mistake today and take the Furness and Lakes lines off Northern. It has clearly breached the terms of its contract: it is contracted to run trains and it has failed to do so.

Thirdly, we have seen incompetence from Northern and inertia from the Government. The fact that no statement was made to Parliament on the crisis until 4 June, despite months of poor performance and despite many of us raising the matter in the weeks and months beforehand—I raised it at Prime Minister’s questions and at Transport questions weeks before it came to the House of the Government’s own volition—leaves many of us questioning the Government’s commitment to those of us in the far north-west.

When the Secretary of State did finally make a statement to the House, it was in part to explain that he had permitted Northern not only to cancel trains, but to cancel an entire line for what turned out to be a month. That cancellation is as unprecedented as it is unacceptable.

In the last few days, a number of us have chosen to prove that we could and would do what the Government and Northern rail could or would not. On Sunday, thanks to the Lakes line rail user group, West Coast Railways and many other volunteers, we began a temporary and limited, but reliable and glorious, service on the Lakes line. The Lakelander has been successfully running on that line for the last four days, and it has kept to time.

Many in Government and the rail industry have helped us—they know who they are, and they probably would not thank me if I named them—but many have not been so helpful. As we have gone through the process of reintroducing trains to England’s most picturesque railway line, we have seen from the inside the lack of co-ordination and can-do spirit in some parts of Government and the rail industry. Never have I seen so much buck-passing or excuse-making as I have in the last few days. Despite that, we now have a limited but excellent service on the Lakes line—a heritage operator on a commuter route.

I do not need to tell hon. Members that that is not a long-term solution, so I would be grateful if the Minister could confirm what action he plans to take. Will he remove the Lakes and Furness lines from Northern as a matter of urgency and run those services directly from the Department until a suitable operator can be identified with the necessary resources, competence and commitment that those two superb lines deserve? The Secretary of State told me and the hon. Member for Barrow and Furness that he would look at that option two weeks ago, so what progress have the Government made?

Will the Minister look again at the case for the electrification of the Lakes line? We now know that the Secretary of State cancelled the electrification last year based on figures that were ludicrously inaccurate. The model that he threw out was based on a service with trains running on at least two tracks, at 125 mph and at intervals of less than two minutes. I respectfully remind the Minister that a brief look at the Lakes line demonstrates that we require none of those things. As a result of using that inaccurate model, it was assumed that the electrification would cost more than double what it would cost to electrify the line in reality. Given the enormous damage done to the reputation of the Lakes line by Northern and the Government, does the Minister agree that the best way to show ongoing commitment to it would be to keep the Government’s initial promise to electrify the line?

Will the Minister fulfil the promise made to me by the Secretary of State in yesterday’s debate to ensure funding to support a marketing campaign to repair and boost the reputation of the Lakes line and of the wider Cumbrian economy? I have forwarded a formal bid for that package to him. I am grateful to Cumbria Tourism, which I asked to draft that proposal and which came up with an excellent bid. I understand that the Minister spoke to the chief executive of Cumbria Tourism this morning, and I am grateful to him for that, so I hope that he will be able to announce today that he will endorse that bid.

Given the chaos on our railways, will the Minister clarify his and the Secretary of State’s powers? On the east coast main line, it appears that the Government have the power to remove a franchise from an operator because the shareholders deem it unprofitable. However, Northern, which has demonstrated an inability to run a basic train service, still retains its franchise. Why has the Secretary of State not intervened? Is it because he does not have the power? In that case, when will the Government seek such powers from Parliament? I, for one, would be happy to vote to grant them. Or is it that he has those powers but has chosen not to use them, in which case he has quite some explaining to do to the people of Cumbria?

It appears that the Government are prepared to take a line away from a rail company when shareholders are losing money, but when passengers are left stranded and are forced to miss work and school, they simply look the other way. That raises the question: what is the purpose of the railways? Are they a public service that underpins our economy, or simply an opportunity for private profit at public expense?

In arranging the Lakes line temporary shuttle service over the last few days, it has become clear that when there is a commitment to a railway line, a passion to serve local people and a determination to succeed, anything is possible. The question is: is the Northern franchise not simply too big and too unwieldy for its own good? Would it not be better for the Cumbrian lines to be taken out of the franchise altogether and run as a micro-franchise so that the people who run our lines are also the people who are committed to them?

I was walking with my children along the old railway line at Sandside between Milnthorpe and Arnside last week. We talked about what had happened to that old line—why it had been closed, the tracks removed and the viaduct dismantled. The Beeching axe fell more than half a century ago on lines that the industry had given up on. It is painfully clear to all of us that Northern has given up on Cumbria. For the sake of everyone who relies on the Lakes and Furness lines, from local students and commuters to our millions of visitors, I call on the Minister to give Northern its marching orders. The travellers of Cumbria are at the end of their tether and, frankly, so am I.