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Flood and Water Management Bill

I shall continue the spirit of cross-party friendship by expressing support for new clauses 2 and 9. New clause 2 addresses an issue on which many of our constituents have sought a lot of reassurance. As the hon. Member for Tewkesbury (Mr. Robertson) rightly pointed out, in the aftermath of the floods, the maintenance of water courses—what had been and what had not been maintained—was a major issue. I took a very brave member of staff at the Environment Agency around various parts of Cheltenham, including Sandford Park and the George Readings estate, to explain the process of maintaining the water courses around the River Chelt, which is defined as a main river despite the fact that it is only a couple of inches deep most of the time. We discussed what exactly the EA's responsibility was in that respect and what it was going to do in future. I pay tribute to Anthony Perry from the EA for making those visits and for being open and communicative with my constituents. The process of reporting that the new clause suggests would offer the people at the Environment Agency, among other people, an opportunity to explain where and when maintenance was supposed to be taking place, in its opinion. If, in its opinion, maintenance was not appropriate or necessary, it would have the opportunity to set that out, too. That would all add to the spirit of transparency and openness about maintenance, which was a matter of great concern to many constituents. New clause 9 is also important and reflects much disquiet about the resources that will be available to the Environment Agency to carry out its duties under the Bill. Throughout the Bill, there are measures that will lead to not only more strategic work, but more specific investigations, duties, responsibilities and liaison. It is important that we are reassured that that can be done in practice. As far as we can detect, no new resources appear to be available. There is one source of funding for such work. It is not a happy precedent. The Minister kindly replied to two of my parliamentary questions on 26 January 2009 about the exact breakdown of the flood and coastal erosion risk management budget. I was not looking for this bit of information, but it reveals something quite startling, which is that the amount of the flood risk management budget retained by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, as opposed to that passed on to the Environment Agency through grant in aid or to local authorities through the formula grant, went up from zero in 2007-08 to £3.75 million in 2008-09 to £20.5 million in 2009-10 and it was expected to be £35 million in 2010-11. That may reflect the implementation of various aspects of the Pitt report, some of which may be welcome. The Minister might confirm this, but if that includes things such as the establishment of the national flood forecast centre, that is a welcome development, which everyone called for, including Sir Michael Pitt, and we supported it. Clearly that will cost some money and may reduce, if it is successful, the need for some hard defence spending using other bits of the flood management budget. However, if that is to be the precedent for how we pay for things that we cannot immediately find money for in the area of flood risk management, if we simply raid the overall budget for flood risk management and thereby give less to local authorities and the Environment Agency for flood defence works, although it delivers an almost bottomless pit of possible funds to the EA and to Ministers, it has bad consequences, which Sir Michael Pitt and those at risk of flooding in our constituencies would not welcome. It will inevitably mean that the backlog of projects and of necessary work to be carried out by local authorities and the EA will be delayed. Therefore, I seek some reassurances on how ring-fenced the future budget for flood risk management will be, as it was intended for work by the EA and local authorities.