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Winter Floods 2013-14

Sir Edward, I welcome you to the Chair and wish you a very happy new year. I welcome the Minister and other colleagues as well.

I am delighted to have this opportunity, on behalf of the Select Committee on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, to debate our report on the winter floods 2013-14 and the Government response to it. In the major event of 2013-14, we can see indications of how the climate is changing. Extreme weather events, such as those in 2012-13 in Yorkshire and the Humber region, and other places, were followed even more dramatically by the events of 2013-14.

We have had a number of significant contributions to the question of reducing the impact of climate change on these flood events. Notably, Sir Michael Pitt, in his 2007 review, looked to achieve a one-stop shop to respond to flood events and considered how to end the automatic right to connect. He recognised that surface water flooding was perhaps the most dramatic new form of flooding in that year alone. We then had the Flood and Water Management Act 2010.

I want to focus on the Committee’s key conclusions and recommendations. First, I recognise the damage done by the widespread flooding last year, particularly in southern England, which cost small businesses alone an estimated £1 billion, not to mention the adverse effects, which took their toll on local residents and rural communities. Certainly, the Committee commends the widespread help and the immediate relief effort provided by the emergency services and others, particularly in the Somerset levels and across the southern half of the country, in response to these floods.

Our key recommendations are as follows. We must be seen to work—particularly the Environment Agency and other the partners involved, including local authorities—with local knowledge. We recognise the role of riparian owners in making good the damage that is done and preventing flood events, and the role of internal drainage boards. It is important that I say at this stage that I am an honorary vice-president of the Association of Drainage Authorities. I pay great tribute to its work in low-lying flood areas such as my own in north Yorkshire, and in East Anglia, the Somerset levels and elsewhere. I commend the work of the coalition Government in seeking to introduce internal drainage boards where they do not currently exist.

In a key recommendation, the Committee firmly believes that we should end the arbitrary split between capital and revenue expenditure and move to a total expenditure. I recognise that this would mean amending Treasury accounting rules, and as most of the recommendations in our report demonstrate, and as reflected in the Government’s response, we are perhaps looking to the next five-year strategic spending review. However, we would like to put down a marker now.

Ofwat and Ofgem have recognised that utility companies such as water companies have moved to a total expenditure approach. It was unacceptable and most frustrating that, as the waters were rising and causing increasing damage in Somerset—I am sure my hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr Heath) agrees—there was an argument about the size of a pump from Holland to be used to keep the water at bay. Was the pump sufficiently large that the expenditure would constitute capital expenditure or was it deemed to be smaller, therefore falling under what we call revenue or maintenance expenditure? We would like to see an end to that type of argument.

We highly recommend that we revert to a programme of regular maintenance and dredging. A stitch in time saves nine. The most frequently used figures show that for every £1 spent on maintenance and dredging, £8-worth of savings are made in future.

We would also like funding to be more closely matched between maintenance and capital—I will explore that in a little more detail—and the amount in the maintenance and revenue budget in the next spending review should be announced more than one year ahead. The Committee welcomes the Government’s six-year spending forecast, but we believe that, as far as possible, that should also be reflected in the revenue and maintenance spending.

One fact to record is that not one flood defence failed in the winter floods of 2013-14. It cannot be in the interest of any future Government, or in the public interest, for any existing flood defence to fail. That is why it is so important that the maintenance of these capital pieces of kit, not just the regular maintenance and dredging, is protected.

We have said in previous reports that we should not rely on public partners alone, and that is reflected in this report. I personally applaud the Government’s approach to partnership funding. We entirely accept, looking critically and constructively at flood expenditure, that it is a little bit like the health service: there will never be enough money to go round. I note that there are several flood warnings today, particularly for the East Anglia region: Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex. There will always be areas vulnerable to flooding. It is a matter of debate how many houses will be protected under present plans. It is important that we open up to partnership funding and private partners. I welcome and applaud the investment through United Utilities and other water companies in this regard. If we can encourage water companies to invest in upstream flood defences, that will be excellent.

This is the moment to recognise the Pickering “Slowing the Flow” project, which is largely a public partnership approach. Slowing the flow by planting trees upstream, soaking up the excess water, creating bunds and having a softer, more natural flood defence, as set out in the Government’s own natural environment White Paper, shows that there is a lot more we can do. The money will go much further on those projects than on very expensive,

hard, physical flood defences, which are capital intensive. Obviously, we will need a number of those, but we need to consider more imaginative processes as well.

The Government have committed £2.3 billion of capital spending up to 2021, but as I have mentioned we must not be seen to neglect the maintenance of flood defences and watercourses if homes, businesses and farmland are to gain better protection against future flooding risk.

The Association of British Insurers has said that, over the last four years, revenue expenditure is down 18% and maintenance expenditure down 40%. That 40% figure relates to dredging and repairing existing walls. We join it in urging the Government to seek a closer match between revenue and maintenance budgets and capital expenditure. The Committee has repeatedly urged the Government, and do so again today, to increase revenue funding in line with funding for new capital schemes so that the necessary maintenance, including dredging and watercourse maintenance, can be carried out to minimise flood risk.

Our understanding is that funding for maintenance remains absolutely at a bare minimum, and that has to be addressed in the next spending review. As I said, it is important to announce maintenance funding more than one year ahead so that everyone knows what the programme is. We must not neglect the costly one-off capital investment that is needed to repair existing flood defence walls. In June last year, the Committee advised Ministers that more fully funded plans are needed to address the backlog of maintenance and to maintain the growing number of man-made flood defences. Regular work to dredge and keep rivers clear can be an essential flood maintenance measure, yet we heard from the Environment Agency in taking evidence for the report that that is exactly what gets squeezed when flood defence budgets are tight. The outgoing chair of the Environment Agency, Lord Smith, told the Committee that the main lesson he had learned from the winter floods while at the Environment Agency was

“to push as hard as we possibly can for keeping and increasing maintenance expenditure alongside capital expenditure, and making sure that Government is aware of the degree of priority that has to be given to that.”

That is the message I think he would like to bring to the House’s attention this afternoon. In the Association of Drainage Authorities’ evidence, it said:

“Fully funded plans should be drawn up to address the backlog of maintenance needed across the country.”

It said that measures to prevent flooding, such as regular maintenance, are less costly and more predictable in the long run.

I will focus on the work of riparian owners. When the pilot schemes have been completed, we would like to see them rolled out nationally. We applaud the public sector agreements the Government have negotiated with the internal drainage boards. The Committee is keen to see internal drainage boards maintain more flood defences. It is important to recognise that internal drainage boards, including the one in my area of the vale of Pickering—I met with it two or three years ago—raise thousands of pounds through a precept. It passes the money on in large measure to the Environment Agency, and it goes

into a central pot for regular maintenance. That money never comes back to the vale of Pickering to do the essential maintenance that is required.

The pilot schemes are absolutely essential in ensuring that where the money exists and is being raised locally, such as in the vale of Pickering and other internal drainage board areas, it can be kept and used, utilising local knowledge and the engineering skills that they can buy in. We recognise that local knowledge is the key and that flood risk management priorities must reflect local circumstances. We urge the Government to end, as far as possible, any confusion over maintenance responsibilities—as we conclude in our report—through a widespread education campaign, so that maintenance activity is carried out by internal drainage boards and local landowners, particularly where they are riparian landowners as well.

I repeat that we need to rely more on natural flood defences, the planting of trees and other softer flood defences. We need urgently to ask the Treasury to look favourably on ending the arbitrary division between maintenance and revenue expenditure and capital expenditure. If we can urge the Treasury to amend the accounting rules for areas such as yours, Sir Edward, and mine that are prone to all forms of flooding—coastal, fluvial, river, surface water and groundwater flooding—that one change alone would revolutionise flood defence spending.

I end with a couple of questions to the Minister. The Government are looking to secure £600 million of partnership funding and external funding while achieving 10% efficiency savings over the next six years. It would be interesting to hear how that matches up. It is important that, after the Committee’s debates and the evidence we took, the staffing in the Environment Agency on flood defences has been protected, which is a welcome development. Those staff—many of them were not wearing Environment Agency jackets or uniforms, so local people did not know they were there—and the emergency services played a crucial role in cleaning up in the immediate aftermath of the winter floods. Will the Minister explain what the impact on the six-year investment programme will be if the conditions of partnership funding and external funding and the 10% efficiency savings are not met?

Will the Government look favourably on allocating revenue funding in future for more than one year at a time? Revenue funding has only been allocated to 2015, but we have a six-year commitment on capital funding. That is not helpful to those in the firing line for maintaining flood defences. The Committee recognises that there are only finite funds and that there is a need to balance competing demands on a finite budget, but the avoidance of flood through defences should, as far as possible, take priority over cost-cutting.

The natural environment White Paper was an excellent document, and the Government and the Department could do a lot of work to build on it, looking at softer flood defences and other issues. My hon. Friend the Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner), if I may call him that—we served on the Committee together—has done a lot of work on the natural capital aspects of the White Paper. The Government are committed to a green, low-carbon economy, and the planting of trees and other softer flood defence options are all part of that strategy.

We commend the report and its recommendations in totality. We recognise that the Government have finite funds and that we should look to other partners as well. As an MP representing one of the most rural communities, I recommend that agricultural land be recognised as worthy of flood defences, and we press the Government further on that. The National Farmers Union gave us the staggering figure of the amount of farming and food production land lost each year through flooding. When I was an Essex MEP, there was a rather alarming proposal on managed retreat that sent the heebie-jeebies through the farming community, so I do not know that we necessarily want to go there. If our food security is coming under increasing pressure, we should protect farmland as far as possible. We set great store on regular dredging and maintenance. The fundamental arguments on merging maintenance and revenue funding, announcing maintenance funding further in advance and removing the arbitrary division between capital and revenue expenditure by going, if Ofwat and Ofgem allow it, to a total expenditure budget would go some way towards protecting farmland. Local farmers and local landowners who, through council tax, are contributing to the funds raised by district councils, county councils and the precept to the internal drainage boards probably feel they are contributing more than anyone else to flood defence. It is important to recognise the contributions being made locally.

The Flood and Water Management Act 2010 is pretty much up and running in my area. I applaud North Yorkshire county council’s work in setting out its flood management risk assessment and for having the foresight to get somebody who used to work for Yorkshire Water to set it up. I hope that can be replicated by other local authorities.

I commend our conclusions to the House. We are grateful for the opportunity to debate them, and I look forward to the debate and the Minister’s response.

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