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Flood and Water Management Bill

I welcome in particular new clause 2, tabled by my Front-Bench colleagues. First, I welcome the fact that it states:""The Environment Agency must undertake a programme"." We need greater clarity throughout the legislation on who is responsible for what, and the new clause gives a lead on that. Secondly, I welcome the requirement that the Environment Agency undertake regular maintenance of the major watercourses. Under existing legislation the Environment Agency is responsible for the major watercourses, but as I discovered when trying to follow up on the persistent—the all too regular—flooding incidents in my constituency in recent years, it is terribly difficult to get any single body to take responsibility. There is always buck passing between the EA, the water companies and the local authority; each of them makes out a case that it is not technically responsible. Clarity is essential and, unfortunately, I do not believe that the Minister's legislation, in its widest sense, provides that. The Bill seeks to provide it in some areas, but in other areas it will be a lawyers' charter. I have a heavy feeling in my heart that there will still be endless battles to establish who is responsible for what. I hope that we have not lost the clarity provided in existing legislation on the fact that main rivers and watercourses are the responsibility of the Environment Agency. That should remain the case; the Environment Agency should maintain them to ensure that the flows are as good as possible, given the existing channels and water flows in those rivers, and should come up with major and minor capital schemes to improve them where we persistently and regularly encounter obvious flooding problems. My constituency is typical of those which were badly attacked by floods in 2007—but this flooding did not just happen in 2007. We have often been told that these events happen once in 100 years, but for many of my constituents such flooding might be a two or three times in a decade event; it is becoming extremely persistent. The main reason is overbuilding on the floodplain, which is often forced on the council against its will and when its judgment was rather better. In such situations, I have always encountered a secondary problem of inadequate facilities and the inadequate maintenance of facilities. That means that water flows are impeded or are simply too great for the facilities provided by the Environment Agency, the water company and, in some cases, the local authority, and thus there is bound to be another flood. I hope that the Minister will give us some comfort in addressing the initiative proposed by my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of York (Miss McIntosh). Let us consider the problems in my area. The River Emm is a rather small stream at most times, but can swell quickly; the River Loddon is a fairly big river, because it is close to joining the Thames by the time that it flows through my area; and on the edges there is the Thames itself and some Thames floodplain. All of those flood, and it is clear that some of the problem is the aggravation that comes from improper maintenance. All too often branches get caught in the River Emm, resulting in the detritus of leaves, litter and so on which creates a mini-dam at various places along the watercourse. Vegetation grows extremely quickly in the rather wet summers that we are having these days and that creates another barrier to the free flow of water. Clumsy people sometimes do not help the matter by putting a shopping trolley or an old pram into the river, thus adding to the trees and the vegetation, and before we know it, there is a dam in the river. Maintenance work cannot be done once a year; people have to be sent out regularly to inspect and to supervise. If a little work were done often, it would not be so expensive. We need boots on the ground; we need someone who walks the course. We need someone who has the tools and equipment necessary to remove that detritus. One of the obstacles on the Loddon, which is a bigger river, results from the fact that people dropped a lot of masonry some years ago when they were building a bridge—undoubtedly this was a public sector project that caused problems. These people never bothered to take the masonry out of the river bed and so at a very crucial point where the river abuts a pub and houses there is insufficient depth. That is where it naturally floods. It also usually floods the main Reading road. In the most recent bad floods, all the main roads to Reading were cut off, with the exception of the motorway. It is odd when someone in high-tech valley 35 miles from London cannot for a whole day make a simple journey into the main town in the middle of our high-tech valley because the rivers have not been kept clear or the necessary capital works have not been carried out to handle the water. I hope that the Minister will take this more seriously. I am glad that the Liberal Democrats support the proposal. Their spokesman, the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Martin Horwood), has brightened up our debates, because it is the first time that I have seen someone come along with carefully prepared and beautifully typed-out scripts on each of the provisions, with his notes on the Liberal Democrat amendments on yellow paper, his notes on the Conservative amendments on blue paper, and his notes on the Government amendments on light pink paper—that paper should probably be dark red now, as they have moved on.