Blake Stephenson

Absolutely. Since Bedfordshire was flooded in September, Ministers will know that I have been vocal about improving resilience, and the Government can do that in this Bill. New houses mean nothing if residents find themselves ankle-deep in water in their living rooms, as they did across the country last year. I want the measures on nature recovery to be strengthened to include explicit plans to deliver nature-based solutions to flooding. I want schedule 3 to the Flood and Water Management Act 2010 to be brought into force to ensure that communities have the right protections from flooding. I want this Bill to give internal drainage boards more powers to take over the maintenance of infrastructure to protect people from flooding. If it does not, local authorities should have the enforcement powers to ensure that sustainable drainage is maintained. I also want to see more robust measures in this Bill ruling out development on floodplains, which goes to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Joy Morrissey). The Bill could make a real difference to our resilience to flooding, and I urge the Government not to miss this opportunity. Despite protections in the NPPF, we still see development in functional floodplains. Rivers were here before us; they do not know and they do not care that we are here. As the Dutch have done successfully, we need to make room for our rivers. We must get out of their way, with stronger protections against development in floodplains. I turn briefly to new towns, which are provided for in this legislation through development corporations. It will be important to ensure that those corporations have the power to deliver real places and communities, not just the cookie-cutter dormitory-on-trainline that developers might like to churn out for the highest possible profit margins. New towns should capture the essence and spirit of the communities into which they are sown, and they need to be beautiful, as the Deputy Prime Minister reflected on in her opening remarks. The Government should also address important questions that they are currently dodging on how these new towns will interplay with wider local development strategies. I am disappointed not to see some of that detail ironed out in this Bill. New towns will result in a double whammy of housing development for some communities, but we do not yet know exactly how damaging that might be. The Government are also yet to confirm whether the housing provided by new towns will count towards a five-year land supply, meaning that our communities could be forced to take far more housing than they need, without the right infrastructure, unless this Bill is strengthened. This Government talk about being on the side of the builders, not the blockers, but without improvements, I am afraid that the Bill is almost guaranteed to create a new generation of so-called blockers. Homes are needed so that young people who aspire to own their own home can do so. Most of the blockers, as this Government like to call them, are not standing in the way of progress: they are standing up for their communities against bad development.