Flooding: EU Solidarity Fund — House of Lords, 2016-02-25
Topic: Public Lands
Susan Williams (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, with the leave of the House I will now repeat a Statement made earlier today in the other place by the Minister of State for Local Growth and the Northern Powerhouse. The Statement is as follows "I want to pay tribute to all those who have in whatever way supported the many places that were flooded in December and early January. The whole House will want to recognise the enormous amount of effort that has gone into supporting households and businesses, not just in the initial response to the floods but also in the ongoing work to get residents back into homes and businesses open The Government recognise that the immediate priority is to respond to the urgent needs of those affected. That is why we have already provided over £200 million to help those affected by the floods to support recovery and repair. A key feature of our package of support is the Communities and Business Recovery Scheme. It is designed to provide ready support to local authorities affected by Storm Desmond and Storm Eva to in turn help individuals, small and medium-sized businesses and communities to return to normality. Additionally, it provides property level resilience grants of up to £5,000 so that people can protect their homes and businesses against future floods by putting in place resilient repairs. To date under the Communities and Business Recovery Scheme, government has paid out a total of £21 million for Storm Desmond and £26 million for Storm Eva. Further payments will follow. We are also supporting farmers with grants worth up to £20,000 to help restore damaged agricultural land and farm vehicle access, repair boundaries and carry out field drainage Having set out what the Government have already done, I want to turn now to what more we can do. Today, I would like to announce our intention to make an application to the European Union Solidarity Fund. The fund was set up to respond to major natural disasters and to express European solidarity with disaster-stricken regions within Europe. The fund was created as a reaction to the severe floods in central Europe in the summer of 2002. Since then, it has been used for 70 disasters covering a range of catastrophic events, including floods, forest fires, earthquakes, storms and drought. The only time the UK applied to the fund was following the flooding of 2007, which saw widespread and significant damage across large swathes of England Member states have 12 weeks from the start of an incident to register their intention to claim. Once we have confirmed our intent, there is time to consider with the Commission the elements of assessment. Following this process, the Commission assesses the application and, if it is accepted, proposes an amount of aid to the European Parliament. Once the appropriations become available in the EU budget, the Commission adopts a decision awarding the aid to the affected state, following which the aid is paid out in a single instalment. When the aid is paid out, the affected state is responsible for the implementation, including the selection of operations and their audit and control. Emergency measures may be financed retrospectively from day one of the disaster. The EUSF is not, and nor is it designed to be, a rapid response instrument for dealing with the effects of a natural disaster. Financial aid can be granted to the applying state only following an application and the budgetary process, which can take several months to complete" My Lords, that concludes the Statement.