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Flood and Water Management Bill

I certainly agree that this is a well-intentioned amendment. What the noble Lord wishes to achieve is intended to be entirely constructive and helpful. As the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, explained, the amendment requires regular monthly reporting to Parliament on recovery following a major flood. The Government's response to Sir Michael Pitt's review, published in December 2008, made it clear that we support that idea in principle but that it would be necessary to depart from a monthly cycle if operational considerations meant that information was required, and that it could therefore be published more or less often than monthly. The Government's emergency response and recovery guidance has been updated to that effect. It also makes it clear that such reports should include, where possible, ""the numbers of households still displaced from all or part of their homes"." On the flooding in Cumbria and the number of people who have remained displaced, based on a questionnaire that went live on 25 January and has since been responded to, the number is about 150. That is based on 74 actual replies to the questionnaire and a 50 per cent response rate to date. Also on the Cumbria emergency, during the response to those devastating floods, local agencies provided daily updates on what was happening and on the impact on the local area. As soon as the immediate emergency ceased, the Government Office for the North West provided recovery reports on the agreed basis of three times a week. That frequency was subsequently reduced and updates are now provided on a weekly basis. The chief executive of Cumbria County Council is also invited to join the ministerial flood recovery meetings chaired by my right honourable friend Rosie Winterton MP to raise any issues or difficulties which require support. That group met as recently as last week. The Government are committed to public reporting of progress in the recovery phase and could choose to do so on the basis of some arbitrary period, such as a month. However, we would not wish that undertaking then to require reporting on the same basis from the local authorities and other bodies involved in recovery from a local emergency if that were not an appropriate requirement in the light of the local circumstances. More frequent reporting of certain facts will often be necessary to manage the recovery effectively, but in other circumstances, or later on in the recovery phase, such frequency will merely be a burden and a distraction. In the latest Pitt implementation progress report, in December, we reported concerns from local authorities that the reporting procedures should not be too bureaucratic. I can assure the noble Baroness that this is not a matter of it being too costly; it is a matter of what works best and what is the most effective way to provide the information and to ensure that we act on it. I should also remind the Committee that Parliament has many others ways of ascertaining facts, reviewing progress and challenging Ministers accordingly. In the light of that, and while I share the desire to ensure that appropriate information on recovery from flood events is reported publicly, I do not think that the amendment is necessary. The Government are concerned that it could be bureaucratic and burdensome and might lead to reporting arrangements that were not suited to the specific circumstances of particular events. I hope, with that explanation, that the noble Lord will feel able to withdraw the amendment.