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Flooding: Pitt Report

My Lords, we, too, welcome the Statement. Even more, we feel that we should express our gratitude to Sir Michael Pitt for his thorough report and recommendations. Perhaps I may take your Lordships’ House just a little further back than the 2007 floods. I was involved in the flash floods in north Cornwall on the outskirts of Boscastle on Monday 16 August 2004. I fear that the lessons from that Cornish experience were not learnt before the 2007 repeat flash floods. There were four lessons in particular. The first is the vital importance of speedy public information, to which both the Statement and Sir Michael referred. I strongly recommend to the Minister that he looks carefully at the role of local radio. Those of us who travel around can now make sure that we get all the traffic news immediately interrupting national programmes. That would be an effective way of ensuring that people do not go into a flood area or that they can find their way out of one safely. Recently, loss of life in Cornwall was prevented by the so-called extreme rainfall alert that the Environment Agency used, which made possible pre-deployment of emergency services and, as a result, people were rescued from their vehicles. Secondly, a lesson that should be learnt is that the co-ordination of emergency services is critical. We saw that in Boscastle. It is clear that the regionalisation threatened for control centres may destroy that effective local co-ordination, which would be a backward step. Thirdly, helicopter crews in the north Cornwall emergency were absolutely critical. They saved many lives. We would have had drastic loss of life if it were not for them. Again, we are having a dispersal of that expertise under the Ministry of Defence proposals. Fourthly, the then Deputy Prime Minister assured me as the local Member of Parliament that the confusion arising out of the Bellwin formula, which allocates resources in an emergency to different levels of local authority, would be reviewed. However, there is no reference to that in the Statement and I have not been able to find anything in Sir Michael’s recommendations that deals with it. All those issues should have been addressed between 2004 and 2007. It is sad that Sir Michael was not asked to undertake this review immediately after the Cornish example rather than having had to wait for a repeat in 2007. As has been said, the key recommendations from the Pitt report were available six months ago. He was calling for immediate action. Six months is not immediate action. It is also sad to note that the delays that seem to have occurred have been not because of indecision about which organisation should be taking primary responsibility, but because of funding issues. Will the Minister say, if he can, what role the Treasury has had in deciding what should happen in the intervening period? Building on flood plains is an extremely important issue. I understand that there is talk of a further review of PPS25 in this respect. Will the Minister give an undertaking that that will be urgently pursued, as it is obviously of critical importance? Perhaps he can also indicate the numbers in the current new homes targets that may be threatened by a review of the flood plain allocations. Scotland has a flood risk Bill now in progress, so why do England and Wales have to await lengthy pre-legislative scrutiny of a draft Bill, which will probably mean that we will not get full legislation this side of a general election? I return to my original point: why did we not have a fully comprehensive Pitt review after the 2004 Cornish emergencies? Why did we have to wait for the repeat in 2007?