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Flood and Water Management Bill

My Lords, in moving Amendment 12, I shall speak also to Amendments 13 and 24 in the same group. My noble friend Lord Redesdale has a further amendment in this group. There are two small amendments in this group which revolve around the word "expected". They are there to find out whether there is any reason why the national and local strategies differ in this respect. Clause 7(2)(e) states that the national strategy must specify, ""how and when the measures are to be implemented"." The local strategy, under Clause 9(4)(e), must specify, ""how and when the measures are expected to be implemented"." Is there some subtle difference here, or an important difference that I do not understand? The reason for tabling these two amendments is to find out what the difference is, whether it is intentional and, if it is intentional, what it means. The second amendment is perhaps more substantial. At the moment, Clause 7 states that the national flood and coastal erosion risk management strategy must specify, ""the costs and benefits of those measures, and how they are to be paid for"." That is obviously extremely important. I want the criteria to include how they are to be assessed and the schemes prioritised. There is considerable concern that the cost-benefit analysis which is used to distinguish between schemes in different areas fails to distinguish between urban and rural areas. This means that in any list of priorities, market towns and villages often struggle to attract adequate protection. The instance that has been cited to me, and which I have investigated, is that of the rather nice market town of Pickering in North Yorkshire, where it is believed that its schemes cannot compete, under the existing cost-benefit system, with schemes in the middle of Leeds, for example. Those inevitably provide a lower cost per head than a rural town which may be very much in need of protection but does not have enough people to come out well—in relation to cost—from the cost-benefit analysis. It is suggested that what is needed is a separate funding scheme for rural, as opposed to urban, areas. I cannot comment on that but I can comment on my proposal that the national flood strategy that is laid down should set out very clearly the criteria for this, and establish whether there is the same system whereby smaller places have to compete against much bigger places, or whether there can be some variation in this. I will briefly outline the position in Pickering as an example. The town has had four major floods in a decade, the most recent causing damage costing in the order of £6.5 million. It is, in the view of local people, a town left to drown. There have been several close calls in recent months. It is not a question of whether it will flood again but of when and how badly. Schemes have been put forward, particularly for work upstream. That is a sensible way of dealing with the matter, but it is generally believed that if flooding is to be prevented, as opposed to mitigated, it requires a more significant project to protect the 130 homes and businesses against a flood of the level seen in 2007. It is put to me that, for a while, the cost-benefit system was suspended and, as a result, other towns, particularly the group that includes Malton, Norton and Old Malton, which are around eight miles downstream from Pickering, are now protected from similar floods while Pickering remains defenceless. I do not want to say anything more about Pickering; it is a delightful place and if people have not been there they should go. Apart from anything else, it has a steam railway which is as close to a proper steam railway as you will find in this country. However, I am not talking about the steam railway but about flooding. Pickering is sited where a valley comes down from the moorlands, opens out, debouches on to the Vale of Pickering, which is a huge floodplain—it used to be a lake in fairly recent glacial times—and flooding is a real problem. The point I am trying to make more generally is that if the Flood and Water Management Bill is to be successful, towns such as this—of which there are many throughout the country—ought not to suffer simply because they are smaller and cannot match the cost benefits of a big city. Cities have tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of people protected compared with a small place which protects fewer people. If the small place is to survive successfully in the future, adequate flood prevention measures, both upstream from the town and within it, have to be taken into account. This should be set out clearly in the national strategy, which is why my amendment should be accepted by the Government. I beg to move.