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Flood and Water Management Bill

Typically, my hon. Friend is absolutely right. It is in the interests of insurance companies themselves to get many of the issues relating to flooding and insurance sorted out. They do not want to insure properties that are at the most extreme risk—those that repeatedly flood and where no provision has been made to defend them against flooding—but we as a society have a common interest in insuring those properties where people have made best efforts to defend them or where flood risk management of the kind we have been discussing throughout the passage of the Bill has been put in place. We also have an interest in not seeing spiralling premiums and very high excess charges, thereby effectively excluding people from flood insurance even when that is formally provided. Some of these cases of spiralling premiums and very high excess charges even arise when households have spent tens of thousands of pounds on flood defences for their own households. In the case of Mr. Saunders-Pope of Keynshambury road in Cheltenham, the EA has spent tens of thousands of pounds putting flood defences right at the bottom of his garden and those of his neighbours, yet still the insurance company did not see the need—until the local MP intervened—to reflect that in their premiums and excess charges. The insurance industry and the insurance market for flooding are in danger of unravelling gradually over time, and we need to address that. I hope that Conservative Members will support either this new clause or the one tabled by the right hon. Member for Makerfield, because this is a crucial issue. New clause 15 also addresses a very important issue—planning permission in respect of floodplains and high flood-risk areas—that I would have liked to discuss had we had time to debate things adequately, but I recognise the late hour and the fact that we voted on a similar new clause in Committee. There are clear examples—one occurred only a few days ago in Tuffley, in Gloucester city—of planning permission being given in an area that regularly floods. In response to the planning inspector's granting of the planning permission appeal, Jackie Hall, the Conservative councillor for Quedgeley and Gloucestershire county council cabinet member, said:""This is very disappointing and does not address issues raised by residents. We simply cannot go on determining planning cases without updated legislation, which needs to reflect the events of the last few years."" The planning inspector involved commented that the flooding of 2007 was not likely to happen again. That is wildly optimistic, especially given that there were two such flood events in the space of a month in 2007 and another quite serious one subsequently. As I have said, climate change, urbanisation and more extreme weather patterns mean that it is wildly over-optimistic to suggest that these kinds of flood events will not happen again. We need to make it crystal clear that local authorities have the right to refuse planning permission on floodplains or on otherwise defined high flood risk areas. I could have cited many other examples had I had time to do so, and there are other important issues that we sadly do not have time to discuss, but I wish to give the Minister time to respond on the issue of insurance at least.