Flooding (West Cumbria)

Debate between Tim Farron and Tony Cunningham

Wednesday 17th November 2010 Westminster Hall

[Tony Cunningham]

They feel let down, is the honest answer. I recently received a letter from a PCSO in one of the towns I represent—I will not mention which one—who made just that point. She said, “When the community needed us, we were there. We now need the state, the county council or whatever to help and support us. I hope they will be there for us.”

Turning to the ambulance service, there was recently a vote of no confidence by nurses in both the West Cumberland hospital and Carlisle hospital in the local trust because of cuts, changes to working patterns and so on. They did an incredible job, and not only during the floods. My hon. Friend the Member for Copeland was there for the people he represents after the shootings in his constituency, and we can only imagine what it must have been like for those nurses having to deal with that. In such small communities, the victims were often people they knew, and gunshot wounds, as we know, are particularly horrific. Yet this is where they are now.

With regard to the fire brigade, I would like to ask the Minister to respond to a quote from the Pitt report, which states:

“The Government should urgently put in place a fully funded national capability for flood rescue, with Fire and Rescue Authorities playing a leading role, underpinned”

as a necessity

“by a statutory duty.”

That recommendation was published in 2007, and I wonder where we are now. I talked with my local fire officers just a couple of hours ago. The centre where gold command worked during the floods was in Cockermouth, in the fire and rescue service headquarters. That is now going. The service has been offered either a relocation to Penrith, with a reduced number of staff, or outsourcing, which means they would all go. They co-ordinated the entire rescue, with the police, the coastguard and everything else, but that is what they tell me is happening to them.

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

I sympathise very much with the hon. Gentleman’s points. He listed the three professional emergency services that played such a crucial role a year ago, as they have done many times since. He may be coming to this point, but for many of us in Cumbria there is a fourth emergency service: the mountain rescue teams. His party’s Government refused to give back the VAT and vehicle excise duty that those teams have to pay from their voluntary donations. The present Government have made sympathetic noises about that. Will he join me and other Members in pressing the Government to release what is a relatively small amount of money to give those teams not only a financial boost, but the formal endorsement that we, the community, recognise the value of their work?

[Tony Cunningham]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his comments and congratulate him—or perhaps offer my commiserations—on becoming president of his party. It is a great honour for him and for the county, so well done.

The hon. Gentleman can have a look at my speech notes, if he wants, but the next two words on the page are “mountain rescue”. Cockermouth mountain rescue team, in particular, gave immense help. It is unusual for people in my position to apologise, but I will, because we should have done as he suggests and exempted mountain rescue teams from VAT. I fed that into the Government whenever I could, but it was always resisted. I am happy to apologise for the fact that my Government—the Labour Government—did not do that. I fully support what he, the hon. Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart) and others are trying to achieve, because it is important. There is a symbolism associated with it. It would say to the mountain rescue teams that they are recognised, and they should be rewarded and congratulated. As a little aside, in 2001, my very first question at Prime Minister’s Question Time was on mountain rescue teams. I have a great affinity with them, and I am happy to support what the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) proposes.

Something else that is close to my heart is the lifeboat service, and during the floods the Maryport inshore rescue lifeboat in particular did incredible work. Just before the regional development agencies were disbanded, we had agreed a sum of about £1 million to build a new lifeboat station. That service now has a brand-new lifeboat, but nowhere to put it. It had planned to put it into a brand-new lifeboat station in Maryport, but there is no RDA funding.

I could go on discussing the emergency services. The RAF, too, did an incredible job, as did the coastguard and an organisation that many of us did not really expect to see: the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. That sounds strange, but the RSPCA was involved. I can remember being at a barrier set up to keep people away from the danger, and an elderly couple came up to me whose only concern—whose greatest concern—was their pet, which had been left in their flooded house. I got in touch with the RSPCA, which got a basket and rescued it. We should not forget its contribution.

The Environment Agency, in particular Glyn Vaughan and his team, did and are still doing a tremendous amount of work. In all the discussions and debates that the Minister will have on budgets, he should ensure that the Environment Agency is protected as much as possible.

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[Tony Cunningham]

I am very happy to do that. I spoke to the then Secretary of State and the Schools Minister, and made the point that it might have to be borne in mind that, because of the disruption, some of the students would not do as well in their exams as they could have. They were having to get up two hours earlier and were then stuck in traffic, going round and round. Those who had been flooded out might have been living in a caravan, rented accommodation or a bed and breakfast, and might not have had a computer or been able to do their homework. All that had a massive effect. I was delighted that the Government gave additional funding for extra buses, but having to travel 30 miles to get to school, perhaps arriving late, and then leaving early and missing lessons so as to get back, also had a massive effect.

The big change came within a week of the floods, when we managed to get a footbridge up and running. People said to me, “Why did it take a week?” and I was thinking, “Hang on. We’ve done very well to get it done in a week.” I want to pay tribute to the Army, who did a fantastic job. I think that the footbridge came from Bedford. Getting a footbridge from there to Workington and getting 200 soldiers up there to pile both sides of the river and get a bridge across in a week was a phenomenal achievement, and it said an enormous amount about the armed forces. The local people took them to their hearts and kept going down with pizzas, cakes and sandwiches. After a few days, I spoke to the Army officer in charge and he said, “What is marvellous is that we have to do lots of drills and practices, and it’s nice to do something for real that makes a huge difference to the lives of people here.”

[Tim Farron]

The hon. Gentleman rightly pays tribute to the swift work that was done to tackle some of the worst infrastructure problems. The previous Government, the local authority and the emergency services deserve credit for much of what has happened over the past 12 months. It is worth flagging up, however, that in Backbarrow in my constituency there is still no footbridge. Some 12 months on, the residents who live on one side of the river—the overall majority of the population—have no means of getting easily across it to where Leven Valley post office and primary school are located. Still today, children are being bused in to a school to which they ought to be able to walk. That is a county council responsibility, but perhaps the hon. Gentleman might ask the Minister to intervene, as the case is relatively easy to fix. That community is still rent in two.

[Tony Cunningham]

I am sure that the Minister has taken appropriate note of that. As the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale and the other Cumbrian MPs know, in the near future hopefully all six Cumbrian MPs will meet, and one issue that we will look at is flooding and bridges.

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[Tim Farron]

rose—

[Tony Cunningham]

I will give way to my hon. Friend, and then to the hon. Gentleman.

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[Tony Cunningham]

I agree, and co-ordination has to take place. If we do not invest now, we are only storing up problems and difficulties for the future. It is a little simplistic to say, “Well, we’ve got these budget cuts that we need to make”. To cut off or slow down funding now, which will mean a huge loss of investment in years to come, does not make any sense to me.

[Tim Farron]

The hon. Gentleman is being characteristically generous. On the point about co- ordination being so critical, I pay tribute to the right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) for the all-party work that helped the Flood and Water Management Act 2010 pass at the end of the previous Parliament. It gives out co-ordination powers and various responsibilities. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that that means that those authorities that have been given responsibility need to take it? I have two examples. First, many communities around the Lakes, in my constituency and in others in Cumbria, such as Bowness and Ambleside, flooded because of poor preparation regarding the maintenance of water levels in the Lakes at the wrong time of year. Secondly, one only gets a flood warning text if there is a risk from river water flooding, not if the risk is from surface water flooding. Those issues need to be tackled, because although it may have been a once-in-a-thousand-years occurrence looking backwards, as my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart) said, looking forwards, these will be much more regular occurrences.

[Tony Cunningham]

I agree. Picking up on the hon. Gentleman’s point about co-ordination, I actually began having meetings with Cockermouth flood action group before the floods, and I have had meetings with Barepot-Workington flood action group as well. One of the things I always insist on is inviting Natural England, the Environment Agency, the Lake District National Park Authority, the Highways Agency, the local council and so on. Doing so avoids the issues that the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale raised. If we are all sat round the same table with the residents from the action group, it is difficult to pass the buck and say, “Well, it’s not us, it’s the county council”, or, “It’s not us, it’s Natural England”.

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[Tony Cunningham]

The team of companies that got the new rail station up in, I think, six days, which is an incredible record, won a national award at Grosvenor House. We have all seen when travelling by train the people at the ends of platforms taking the numbers, and one of the funniest things was that they flocked to west Cumbria. There was a new train and station, and they were there taking photographs, which helped the tourism industry enormously. Strangely enough, the chief executive—the top man—of Direct Rail Services Ltd lives in Seaton, so it was useful for him to be able to get backwards and forwards.

[Tim Farron]

This will be a brief intervention as the hon. Gentleman has been very generous. On tourism, I wonder whether it is worth pointing out that the media, which did a wonderful job during the flood crisis, as has been said, nevertheless also contributed—probably inadvertently—to the general sense that Cumbria was closed for business. When the flood waters went away, perhaps even after a week or 10 days, people as close as Lancaster would not visit the Lake district because they assumed that we were all in complete chaos. As may have been noticed, I have kept out of the resource discussions, but as the hon. Gentleman will doubtless agree, a strong marketing operation is utterly crucial, so that Cumbria can stand up against those problems and ensure that it is clear that it is open for business when such things happen, as they occasionally and inevitably do.

[Tony Cunningham]

I very much agree, and I want to touch on tourism a little later. There are ongoing problems; there are businesses still not back in operation and people still out of their homes. I want to highlight one particular case that I have been trying to deal with: that of Mrs Michelle Lockett, who is still not back in her home due to disputes between loss adjusters and the insurance company.

I am sure this is only a coincidence and has nothing at all to do with the debate, but, strangely enough, I got an e-mail this morning—we should remember that this situation has been going on for 12 months. In it, a guy from the National Insurance and Guarantee Corporation—the insurance company—says:

“The current position with this claim is that the majority of the Buildings element of the claim has been settled…With regards to the Contents element of the claim we have agreed to accept this part of the claim subject to the normal terms and conditions”.

I want to send a clear message to NIG and Crawford that I will be watching this case very closely.

Having said that, I am not going to have a go at all insurance companies and loss adjusters. When I meet them, they say that 70 or 80% of people are happy with what went on. There are examples of good practice among such companies. Some people in Cockermouth were back in their homes within a couple of months. I am not, therefore, having a go, but there is still a lot of work to do.