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Flood and Water Management Bill

I am delighted to make a short contribution, following my hon. Friend the Member for Selby (Mr. Grogan). The Bill is important. As a member of the Select Committee, I could make an argument for delay so that we got the totality of the Bill, but it is important that we prioritise the flooding aspects of the earlier Floods and Water Bill and deal with some aspects of water management. I approach the Bill from three standpoints. First, the Select Committee's pre-legislative scrutiny was a detailed exercise. I have tried to read the papers. We have done our homework and carried out our scrutiny role properly. Secondly, as my two constituency neighbours explained in graphic detail, Gloucestershire will be renowned for the 2007 floods. All of us who were involved in those dreadful days will always remember what that meant for some people and their representatives. As we know, some of the problems continue. I was dealing with floods only a few weeks ago. Thankfully, they were not major but they were still significant. The problem is not ever-present, but it has not gone away. As a result, my third point of influence is through the work of the people who formed action groups. I shall mention four, although there are more in my constituency—the Painswick Stream group, the Slad Brook group, the Bridgend group in Stonehouse, where I live, and the Shorn Brook group in Hardwicke. Each of those groups has lobbied me and kept me directly in touch will all developments. I have learned that the problem is ongoing. More than anything, we must be honest with people. I shall say more about that shortly. To me, there are four aspects that we should try to bring together. There are issues of leadership, particularly leadership from the centre, but also at a local level, funding, responsibility and deliverability. The two Pitt reports did an immense service by highlighting a series of recommendations. Pleasingly, the Government are turning the clock forward and bringing into statute the very things that Michael Pitt asked us to do, although most of the recommendations did not require legislation. At the centre of these efforts we have the double-headed hydra—the Environment Agency and the lead local authority. The decision-making mechanism can be criticised for its vertical structure, but as other hon. Members have said, unless there is clarity, there will always be confusion about who does what. I welcome the way in which the Government have set about trying to deal with the charging of voluntary and community groups. Some of us felt that that campaign might not be successful, but the Government have listened. Although, as my hon. Friend the Member for Weaver Vale (Mr. Hall) said, we must make the campaign stronger, I am proud that I can go back to my Stroud groups and say that we have listened and we will do the right thing. I shall expand on three points that have been mentioned. First, I spend my life trying to persuade people that, far from being a problem, internal drainage boards are a valuable addition to the way in which we organise things at a local level. I think I understand what the Government want us to do through the legislation—to widen the IDBs realm of activity and to deepen their ability to co-ordinate their activities so that an IDB does not need to be too locally based. We miss a trick if we do not recognise the value of those people on the IDBs, given the way in which they can apply their skills, knowledge and, certainly, local understanding to any flooding situation. I do not mind levying the cost at all. I will go to any of my parish councils and tell them that we should levy a charge so that those IDBs can function, because the preparatory and preventive work that they are so able to carry out is very important. We have ducked riparian ownership, because it is an immense issue. We have not mentioned it, because, despite including it in the draft Bill, we cavilled even there at the possible repercussions of taking away responsibility from owners. We cannot duck the issue completely, however, and I shall concentrate on one simple aspect that has caused me enormous problems—when the riparian owner has not only failed to do the work, but has been obstructive and unhelpful, and other people have been flooded as a result. The riparian owner may have barricaded their land, built it up so that other people subsequently flood or, in one case of which I know, just refused to operate the sluice gates. When one sees a neighbour being flooded after they have desperately tried to get on to somebody else's property, which has barbed wire around it and barred gates, that is the most depressing thing. I therefore want the Bill to make it clear that we can prosecute such people and use enforcement, so that they at least get the message that that is not good neighbourliness. They should be held responsible for either their inactivity or their improper actions. We have also skated over the issue of critical infrastructure. People have mentioned the railways, and they are crucial to the issue, because they are a huge conduit for water. If we do not include the railway system and Network Rail, in particular, alongside the water boards, the Environment Agency and all the other public bodies, we will fail to realise how important they are. It has not always been easy to get such bodies to take responsibility. The situation has improved in my area, but some households flooded when the railway organisations failed to take responsibility for their cuttings, so I shall look very carefully at how we can co-ordinate activities and make the strategies more coherent. I shall leave my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State to puzzle over my final point. It is about our raising expectations by putting in place a strategic plan, which in this case is the local service water management plan. I am very pleased that the Government have encouraged the 70-odd areas that are working through the issue to come up with such plans, but once they are in place it behoves us to find the money to deal with any subsequent problems. There is a need for honesty. If we are to put in place a plan and the money to fund the action, we should tell people. But, if that is not going to happen for any reason, we must, as I said in an intervention earlier, tell people and households that they will have to look at their own resilience and take their own measures because we cannot guarantee that, in every eventuality, they will be safe from flooding. That may be a sour note on which to end my contribution, but the worst thing of all was when we met people who thought they had been promised protection, and it was not possible to deliver that. We need complete honesty in how we go about these matters.