Contribution
Thank you, Mrs Hobhouse.I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Norfolk (George Freeman) on securing a really important debate. There is no better champion on this issue in Parliament. He is bringing together many all-party parliamentary groups to specifically tackle and bring to the Minister’s attention the important issue of flooding and is setting up his own flood caucus, not only among parliamentary colleagues, but prominently within the county of Norfolk—which is invaluable. My hon. Friend mentioned the 22 villages that have been flooded in his constituency, and all of us have referenced our own impacted communities, so I know just how important this issue is.
I want to address some of my remarks by echoing some of the concerns that have been raised in this debate, because flooding devastates communities, families and the health and wellbeing of individuals who experience the trauma of flooding. It devastates our farmers and our economy at all levels and it represents a threat to life. What is worse, for some it is not a one-off event but a frequent occurrence. Far too many people are impacted. I am proud to say that the previous Government took robust action on flooding. Since 2010, more than 600,000 properties and 900,000 acres of farmland have been better protected by Government-backed schemes. In 2020, the Government announced a doubling of the flood defences budget, including £100 million for the frequently flooded allowance.
While those statistics represent vital progress, we must recognise, as has been indicated, that there is always much more to do. I will just canter through some of the points that have been made, because it is quite right that when dealing with water and with flooding, a catchment approach is always the focus. That deals with not only our farmers, but with our housing developers and our infrastructure providers. It starts right at the top, upstream, dealing with our moorland restoration projects and ensuring that our farmers have the funding to deal with environmental mitigation. That is why it is deeply frustrating that the Government have stopped sustainable farming incentive applications. While there is an acknowledgment that they have opened it up to an additional 303,000 applications on the back of our calls, it is nevertheless worrying to many of our farming community. That is exacerbated by issues such as the family farm tax, which is creating uncertainty in our agricultural sector.
The role of developers has been mentioned by all in this room and I agree that water companies need to be statutory consultees as part of that process. I also agree that planning considerations such as SuDS ponds and the design of houses—as has been illustrated by the hon. Member for Carlisle (Julie Minns)—need to be taken into account when new developments are built. Financial contributions must be considered too, because far too often flood alleviation schemes are not established at speed to deal with the amount of development that is coming down the line. That impacts not only settlements further downstream, but agricultural businesses. Therefore, when looking at flood alleviation schemes, it is right that those schemes are attractive enough for a landowner to enter into such an arrangement, and therefore the remuneration that is associated with those flood alleviation schemes needs to be properly addressed.
The Environment Agency, internal drainage boards and land managers were also discussed. We very strongly advocate a loosening up of the relationship between the Environment Agency, our IDBs, who do a fantastic job recognised by many in this room, and the land managers—who sometimes just want to get on and clean the ditches, but are unfortunately penalised for doing so at the moment. I am sure the Minister will be aware that the advice from officials in the Environment Agency is “do not dredge” and “do not remove that vegetation from those EA-managed assets”. I would encourage the Minister to push back on that advice and say that dredging is an option further downstream and that removing vegetation from EA assets should be a consideration.
I also address the issue of insurance, because that is vitally important, as was mentioned by the hon. Member for North Shropshire (Helen Morgan). Flood Re is incredibly important if we are able to provide reassurance for those developments that have been built after the kick-in date. We would advocate the Government going stronger and faster with the recommendations that have been made in this debate.