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Flooding

My Lords, I pay tribute to the work of the noble Lord, Lord Crickhowell, because I can remember when he left the other place to chair the National Rivers Authority. He is quite right that it is unwise to hurry criticism. Plenty of people can be subject to criticism in due course, after we have had a mature look at what has happened. I reinforce his tribute to the water engineers and the electrical engineers, who have worked their socks off anyway, particularly in emergencies. They are the people on whom we rely and they are doing a very good job. The noble Lord mentioned the maintenance budget. To the best of my knowledge, flooding in less than 1 per cent of areas is as a result of a structural failure of flood defences. Even the NAO found that the flood defences that are in place are maintained to a very high level. There has been structural failure in only about 1 per cent of flooded areas. Those defences in place have worked extremely well, although I accept that there are not enough of them.