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Flood and Water Management Bill

My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have participated in this debate, and I associate my remarks with those that my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours introduced, and which all noble Lords who have spoken reinforced, about our admiration for the response of the emergency services in the recent floods in Cumbria. We have not the slightest doubt that fire and rescue authorities play a vital role in flood emergency planning and response. They are, of course, category 1 responders as defined by the Civil Contingencies Act. It is because they have such an important role that my response to the noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, is that it is essential, as he said, that those emergency services work closely with local authorities and together. They need to understand the identified risks and the areas in which those risks lie to ensure that they are adequately equipped to deal with emergencies; I will come to the particular issue of equipment in a moment. Local authorities will need to make use of the knowledge held by the emergency services and understand the limits of their capacity. They have to make arrangements accordingly. However, I emphasise that they are category 1 responders under the Civil Contingency Act 2004, so this obligation and empowerment rests with them by dint of that important legislation. With regard to my noble friend’s amendments, the Government are concerned that they would effectively include fire and rescue authorities as risk management authorities under the Bill. My noble friend knows that the Bill revolves around definitions of "risk management authority". We identified some of the complexities of that when we dealt with an earlier amendment. The Bill is related to flood and water management. We are therefore reluctant to accept an amendment that would include fire and rescue authorities as risk management authorities. That is not because they do not have an important role to play. I have already recognised that, and it is provided for under other legislation. However, all the bodies given this designation in the Bill have a key role in managing and reducing risk rather than in responding to an emergency. That is the definition under the Civil Contingencies Act and where the fire and rescue services properly apply. All these risk authorities have a role to play in managing water, whether through drainage systems, water courses, reservoirs or otherwise. We will debate this at considerable length as we go through the Bill. They all have a role to play in managing water. Those bodies will be bound by a duty to act consistently with the national strategy and, except for water companies, with local strategies. They must play an active part in putting together these strategies, co-operating with partners and sharing information. We do not think that those are appropriate demands to put upon the fire and rescue authorities. In Clauses 11(7) and Clause 12(6), we have provided for an order-making power to designate other bodies or persons who must have regard to the local and national strategies in the exercise of any functions that have an impact on flood risk. We feel this is a more appropriate duty for the fire and rescue authorities, who are crucial to tackling floods, but have fairly limited role in managing in the risk of flooding, which is the main burden of the authorities identified in the Bill. We recognise the excellent intentions behind my noble friend’s amendment and that of the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, who spoke so eloquently to his amendment, but together they put a duty on fire and rescue authorities to put in place provision for rescuing people in the event of major flooding, including that from large raised reservoirs. Fire and rescue authorities have an important role to play in response to flooding—we had a recent illustration of that in Cumbria—but they are supported by flood rescue teams from the RNLI, the Maritime and Coastguard Agency and Mountain Rescue, to which the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, referred, which have different resources available. I know that the noble Lord lobbies strongly with regard to Mountain Rescue, and I understand the point he makes. I think I shall give him a little joy on that in a moment. I will never be in a position where I can fully satisfy him with regard to resources, but I shall indicate that a door that may help on his concern is a little ajar. As my noble friend said in his opening remarks, Sir Michael Pitt addressed the issue of a statutory duty. We support his recommendation that a fully funded national capability for flood rescue should be put in place, with the fire and rescue authorities inevitably playing the leading role. We agree that this should be underpinned if necessary by a statutory duty. However, this is not the Bill for that. I hope that my noble friend and the noble Lord, Lord Greaves—as well as other noble Lords who have supported them in this debate—will be encouraged to learn that we are taking work forward, bringing together the key stakeholders, departments and responder organisations in a project to improve flood rescue capability and co-ordination. The project has so far focused on putting in place a co-ordinated, multi-agency flood rescue capability. The flood rescue concept of operations, currently in draft, will help clarify the roles and responsibilities of flood rescue responders. The fire and rescue services and the RNLI are participating actively in the project, having provided project team members as well as sitting on the project board. The Government have agreed that the remit of the Fire and Rescue Service National Co-ordination Centre, established to co-ordinate the mobilisation of New Dimension assets, can be extended to include the co-ordination of the mobilisation of flood rescue assets from all flood responder organisations. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, will prick up his ears—I hope that other Members of the Committee will be suitably cheered—when I tell him that we are making available up to £2 million in the current spending review to enhance current flood rescue capability. A strategy for how this money can best be used is being developed, and responder organisations, including the fire and rescue service, could receive some future funding—I cannot go any further than that in a debate on this Bill, as the Committee will recognise.