Mr President, I find myself on my feet again and this time on a matter which is of great concern and importance to the people of Europe as a whole and also relevant to the people of my own constituency of South East England and particularly in Sussex, Berkshire, Kent and the town of Maidenhead. I speak of the extraordinary series of floods across Europe. I am very well aware, from my work on the Committee on Development and Cooperation, of the recent floods in Mozambique, the Indian sub-continent, Bangladesh, the Mekong Delta and so on. If you look at the list of countries and regions in the resolution, you can see quite how serious this matter has become. There has been loss of life in more than one EU Member State. There has been enormous damage, running into billions of pounds, to small and medium-sized businesses, householders, farmers, the elderly, individuals and particularly the poorest and weakest in our society. It is obvious to me that something is going very seriously wrong. Today there is a gathering in The Hague of the representatives of COP6. They are meeting to discuss progress on climate change. Last Monday Jan Pronk, Holland's environment minister, stated that the effect of climate change is irreversible for ecosystems, agriculture, water supply and health. The less we do and the longer we wait to tackle the root of the problem, the more serious the effects and the greater the strain on the resilience of peoples, plants and animals. This is undoubtedly true. The issues that are being discussed are for the medium and long-term. However, this resolution tabled right across Parliament, including by my colleagues from England, deals with a very real and short-term problem faced by thousands and thousands of people in Britain and across Europe. In Britain alone the estimated cost of the damage is about GBP 4 billion, only half of which is covered by insurance. Across Europe this bill will rise and rise like the water level. The Commission must make all speed to use its energies and funds to ensure that those affected in the hardest hit areas are helped immediately, through such instruments as the ERDF and the EAGGF Guarantee Section. We must in particular help our farmers, small businesses, the elderly and the householders who have been inundated time and time again. There is a question as to whether some of these people who have been flooded will be able to be reinsured and whether the insurance companies will take this on again. There must also be a realisation that the rush to build housing all over the green belt and in rural areas is dangerous folly. There was often a good reason why our forefathers did not build on these areas because they flood. Yet today there are governments, like the present Labour government, which are steamrolling informed local opinion into building on precisely these areas. I do not know exactly the situation across Europe but in the south-east of England this is a real and present danger. We must fight this headlong rush. We must take stock and take serious action to cut carbon dioxide emissions. We must prepare effectively and in a coordinated way in order to protect ourselves. We must do all in our power to help those already suffering from the terrible effects of the weather, both here in Europe and across the world. I further ask, in addition to the resolution that we have tabled, that we here in Parliament hold a public hearing on climate change in the near future and I now ask the Committee of Presidents to consider this. I ask you all to support our resolution.

Political group: PPE-DE