argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Future Flood Prevention — House of Commons, 2017-02-27
Topic: Public Lands
Neil Quentin Gordon Parish (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The evidence that the Committee took, and what we heard from people who came to talk to us, suggested that it is very helpful when communities are able to get together and warn each other about exactly what is happening. The Environment Agency and others can give the warnings, and the agency, the fire brigade and local authority staff are there to help, but the flooded communities themselves have built up a resilience that will help them in the future.
Future Flood Prevention — House of Commons, 2017-02-27
Topic: Public Lands
Andrew George Stephenson (Conservative, Centre-right): Will my hon. Friend join me in paying tribute to flood wardens? Earby, in my constituency, was badly affected by flooding, and is now waiting for three different schemes to be introduced by the Environment Agency this year. Flood warnings, local flood plans, floodgates, and all the work that those volunteers do is extremely important to the response when flood waters start to rise.
Future Flood Prevention — House of Commons, 2017-02-27
Topic: Public Lands
Neil Quentin Gordon Parish (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend is right. Local authorities, the Environment Agency and the drainage boards can do a great deal, but when local people come together, they know exactly what is happening on the ground, and flood wardens can react very quickly In Axminster, a shopping trolley went into a culvert and became full of wood. The whole place flooded, including three or four bungalows. If someone local had been there to hoick—I am not sure whether that is a word in the English language—the trolley out of the culvert, the flood would have been stopped. Such actions also ensure that resources go further. We are learning all the time One of the Committee’s most important recommendations was for a more holistic approach. It sounds obvious, but we need to work with nature rather than against it. If we slow the flow of the water by using natural remedies such as planting more trees, restoring wetlands and improving soil management, we are likely to see more and better flood prevention. We must allow water to flood fields naturally sometimes if they are on a natural flood plain rather than in an urban area. That would be a much cheaper and more cost-effective way of preventing floods.
Future Flood Prevention — House of Commons, 2017-02-27
Topic: Public Lands
Nigel Martin Evans (Conservative, Centre-right): As my hon. Friend knows, we had severe flooding in the Ribble valley and throughout Lancashire in 2015. He mentions agricultural land: on Friday, along with the Woodland Trust and the Ribble Rivers Trust, I planted some trees along one of the river banks. Does my hon. Friend agree that we need to look again at the number of trees being planted, and the usefulness of planting trees in stopping soil erosion and, indeed, holding a lot of the water that otherwise would go to the ground?
Future Flood Prevention — House of Commons, 2017-02-27
Topic: Public Lands
Neil Quentin Gordon Parish (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend makes a good point, because it is not just about planting the trees; it is also about where we plant them. If we plant them along the edges of the fields or the banks of the streams and rivers, we can hold back the water and hold back the soil. Very often, the soil and debris being washed from the field is also contributing to the flood. So this is not just about the number of trees; it is about making sure we are smart in where we plant them. The way we plant them is important, too. We visited the north of England, and when the old Forestry Commission was planting trees it turned the soil up and put it up into a furrow and planted the trees on the top of it. The only trouble is that there are then two gullies either side of it, which then allow the water to run down very quickly if the trees are planted on a slope. Therefore, over the years there are many things we can do, but my hon. Friend makes a very good point that this is about planting trees, holding that soil back and holding the water back long enough for the major flood to go through, and that was what much of the work was done on.
Future Flood Prevention — House of Commons, 2017-02-27
Topic: Mixed Topics
Neil Quentin Gordon Parish (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend will also be very aware that many fields only have so much topsoil on them, and it is the topsoil that is fertile and that we grow our crop in. Therefore, if farmers lose much of their topsoil to the streams and rivers, they have lost a lot of the very fertile soil in their fields. I think most farmers, when presented with a plan that can save their topsoil and the way they manage their fields, can see a big advantage in this, but we have to work with the farming community, rather than, as perhaps has sometimes been the case, just imposing our will upon them. If we can persuade them that there are many good reasons for managing soils in a slightly different way, we can perhaps get a lot further with that. We can sometimes use carrots, and not necessarily sticks. I am sure our Minister has many carrots to offer today, and we will be interested to hear about that when she sums up the debate We also need to take a closer look at development in built-up areas affected by flood risk. Naturally, we have laws that we hope will restrict most building on floodplains —sometimes it is breached, but on the whole it is not. When an area is flooded, very little of the water has actually landed on the flooded area. It usually comes from higher up. Rather than stopping building in flood-risk areas, we need to think when building developments of several hundred or 1,000 houses about capturing the run-off water from everywhere on those estates, including the roads. It could be captured in ponds or in reservoirs or tanks underneath some of the homes. Building in resilience measures to ensure that the water from a development could be held would make the situation better rather than worse. We can build developments, but we do not always give enough consideration to what is going to happen further downstream.
Future Flood Prevention — House of Commons, 2017-02-27
Topic: Housing
Nigel Martin Evans (Conservative, Centre-right): A lot of house building is going on in Whalley in my constituency, and one of the conditions was that tanks should be put in before the houses were built. Sadly, the houses seem to be being built and occupied before the tanks have been put in. Does my hon. Friend agree that developers need to take planning conditions seriously and abide by the rules and regulations set down by the local authorities, because of the misery that flooding can cause if they do not get these things right?
Future Flood Prevention — House of Commons, 2017-02-27
Topic: Public Lands
Neil Quentin Gordon Parish (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend makes another good point. Planning conditions can be flouted, and they are sometimes not properly enforced. It is sometimes claimed that resilience measures cannot be put in place because of the economic situation, but we must ensure that houses are not built unless those measures are taken. I am sure that the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Minister present will pass on that point to her colleagues in the Department for Communities and Local Government, because this is a planning matter. If we are going to plan for the developments that we need, we must plan them properly. I do not think that any of us are against development, but we must have the right kind of development and hold the water back. Indeed, if we could make a feature of those measures, we might also create some leisure facilities as well. That would be a planning gain The recommendations in our report also include the need for a new governance model to deal with flooding. As part of our inquiry, the EFRA Committee visited the Netherlands to learn how that low-lying country manages flooding. We learned that 25% of the land there is below sea level, and that half of its 17 million population live in flood-prone areas, so they know a lot about flooding. The threat of flooding led to local government and water management being administered hand in hand from as early as the 13th century. As the threat of flooding in the UK grows, we need to borrow some ideas from the Dutch and to mirror their focus on dealing with floods locally and nationally. The fens in this country were drained by Dutch engineers, as was the part of Somerset where I still have my farm. They know exactly how to deal with water, because if they did not deal with it, they would not have a country. It is as simple as that.
Future Flood Prevention — House of Commons, 2017-02-27
Topic: Public Lands
Neil Quentin Gordon Parish (Conservative, Centre-right): The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. We have tried to ensure that the report is not party political. Under the last Labour Government, the spending on flooding went down in dry times and up in wet times. The same thing happened under the coalition. We can argue about the figures, but they very much follow that same pattern. The report recommends learning from what has happened and putting in the proper resilience measures As I said, the report discussed the Dutch system. The idea would be to set up a regional flood and coastal board and then involve local authorities and local drainage boards, where they exist, and then landowners and businesses in order to have a broad catchment basis. As such, the Government should completely overhaul flood risk management, to include a new English rivers and coastal authority that is accountable for the delivery of flood protection. The Netherlands has a flood commissioner who is answerable to the Dutch Parliament and at a local level, which provides real focus. We may not need a full management system like that of the Dutch, but we can learn many things from it, such as how to alter the system through the Environment Agency and others to make it more answerable to Parliament, local authorities, drainage boards and landowners. I am convinced that, until we get a system that works from the top down and from the bottom up, we will not make the best use of our resources, because they will always be pressed. The commissioner would be able to hold those carrying out flood prevention work to account for their performance, because we have to get the best value for money.
Future Flood Prevention — House of Commons, 2017-02-27
Topic: Public Lands
Neil Quentin Gordon Parish (Conservative, Centre-right): The hon. Lady makes a good point. I think the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick), who is behind her, will be making some good points about the fire service. The Committee took evidence from the fire services, and their work on flooding and the time they put in are not always recognised. The Environment Agency has large pumps that can move huge volumes of water over short distances, but the fire services can pump out people’s properties and deal with things on the ground. That is not recognised enough within the system, and there is work to be done on that. It will be interesting to hear the Minister’s reply to that point. By overhauling the way we manage the whole system, we can go a long way to minimising the devastating toll of flooding on local areas and local people Unfortunately, the Government’s response, which was published last month, was a little disappointing. It was not up to standard and addressed our key recommendations in only a cursory manner. We then asked for more information from Ministers in time for this debate, and my hon. Friend the Minister wrote to the Committee on 16 February. We welcome her commitment to record and report, from 2018-19 onwards, on how many schemes include natural flood management. That will be important, because we must ensure that more such management is carried out. We welcome that step, but we also welcome the commitment to refresh the national flood and coastal erosion management strategy for England, which we hope will reflect many of our inquiry’s findings The report recommended some actions and, to be fair to the Government, DEFRA has made progress on some of those issues, including on catchment scale approaches and embedding natural flood management more firmly in flood management plans. Local partnerships have also made progress on co-ordinating action in some river basins. I think the Government agree with the Select Committee that not all flood areas fit neatly into local authority boundaries and that we need to introduce catchment areas to hold the water. We will need to speed up the water in some areas to get it out to sea, and in other areas we will need to slow the water down by introducing leaky dams to hold the water. Some areas will need to be dredged or desilted—whatever language we want to use—to get the water flowing more quickly.
Future Flood Prevention — House of Commons, 2017-02-27
Topic: Public Lands
Neil Quentin Gordon Parish (Conservative, Centre-right): I welcome the Environment Agency’s work on the Medway, where the water can move quite quickly. If we are not careful, the water will move too quickly and flood areas further downstream. Such work is essential Throughout the inquiry we saw that one size does not fit all. Some areas need the water to be slowed down, and other areas need it to be speeded up. We have to deal with it catchment area by catchment area. Of course it is fascinating that, before too long, we will probably move into more of a drought situation and will be talking about how to use our rivers to move water around so that we have enough water. For my first two years in this House, between 2010 and 2012, the Select Committee talked about nothing but drought. It was only when it started raining in 2012 and did not stop for two years that we talked about floods On funding for flood risk management, the Government have committed to a six-year programme with a capital budget of £2.5 billion. Although welcoming that increased funding, our report noted that it is unlikely to deliver sufficient protection in future decades. We stated that, by the end of 2017, the Government must publish their 25-year ambition for flood risk reduction and the cost of securing that reduction against different climate change scenarios. Disappointingly, the Government rejected that recommendation. The public need to know how their communities will be affected in coming years, and plans need to be put in place to ensure that they will be protected against flood risk. Flood risk comes not only from freshwater that falls in the form of rain but from coastal flooding, too We initially recommended that catchment scale measures be adopted on a much wider scale, and DEFRA is doing more to promote such approaches by, for example, trialling natural flood management measures—such as installing leaky dams, planting trees and improving soil management—alongside other measures. We welcome that, as well as the additional £15 million of funding in the autumn statement However, we need more detail on how much of the £2.5 billion capital programme for flood risk management will use natural flood management. The Minister’s commitment to include that indicator in reporting from 2018-19 is therefore welcome, but we would welcome more information on how she plans to ensure that every catchment area uses natural flood management to the maximum extent appropriate to its river basin. We saw that the Netherlands has re-meandered some rivers and is storing more water in the rivers, as well as on farmland I look forward to Members’ contributions to the debate, and I look forward to the Minister’s summing-up.
Future Flood Prevention — House of Commons, 2017-02-27
Topic: Public Lands
Nigel Martin Evans (Conservative, Centre-right): A few businesses in my area have been hit. One of them is relatively small, but it has been hit a couple of times by flooding, so the insurance premium is now running way into the thousands. The premises is also a mixed hereditament, which makes things more complicated, because people live where the business is. Surely, if Flood Re kicks in to help domestic premises, it should kick in for businesses as well. If there is a market failure, which I believe there is, and if it is suitable to have that sort of pooling of risk for houses, it should be the same for businesses.
Future Flood Prevention — House of Commons, 2017-02-27
Topic: Public Lands
Thérèse Anne Coffey (Conservative, Centre-right): I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish) on opening the debate and thank the many hon. Members who have contributed, often using direct constituency experience or a broader view from their role on the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee. I welcome the elevation of the hon. Member for Workington (Sue Hayman) to her new position as shadow Secretary of State; it is a pleasure to debate such matters with her. It was also a pleasure to be in her constituency during the recent recess when I visited the toy shop on the high street of one of her principal towns Flood and coastal risk management is a high priority for this Government. Compelling evidence suggests that climate change may lead to increases in heavy rainfall and increased risks from fluvial and surface water flooding by the mid-century. Both present significant risks, so we are putting in place robust, long-term national strategies to protect the nation. I am very aware of the impact that flooding can have on a community. In the worst cases, flooding can lead to loss of life, and even moderate flooding can cause significant damage to property and disruption to transport, communications infrastructure, businesses, schools and hospitals. I have certainly supported my constituents in Suffolk following flooding in recent years, and I am fully committed to reducing the impacts of flooding and coastal erosion. To that end, I thank Councillor Andy Smith, who is responsible for coastal management in my area and is chair of the coastal special interest group around the country through the Local Government Association. Together with the Environment Agency and councils, that sort of experience is leading to good local decisions.
Future Flood Prevention — House of Commons, 2017-02-27
Topic: Mixed Topics
John Alan Redwood (Conservative, Centre-right): House building in areas such as mine will add to the flooding problem. Will the Minister press the Environment Agency to ensure not only that it demands that enough provision is made for new houses, but that some retrofitting is done? Previous new developments have led to far too much surface water.
Future Flood Prevention — House of Commons, 2017-02-27
Topic: Public Lands
Thérèse Anne Coffey (Conservative, Centre-right): I recently met my right hon. Friend to discuss that matter. I also met several other people who have not spoken in today’s debate to discuss the challenges of flooding in their areas, including the hon. Member for West Lancashire (Rosie Cooper), who now wants to intervene.
Future Flood Prevention — House of Commons, 2017-02-27
Topic: Housing
Thérèse Anne Coffey (Conservative, Centre-right): The hon. Lady speaks with passion on this matter because it has affected properties in her constituency. I stress to her and to my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (John Redwood) that the Environment Agency does work with local councils. The guidance for new developments in the national planning policy framework is clear. Not only has the Environment Agency’s advice been accepted in 98% of applications, but there is a clear duty to consider the risk to existing housing stock. I am aware of the specific situation to which the hon. Member for West Lancashire (Rosie Cooper) refers, and I have passed it on to the Department for Communities and Local Government so that it can consider how to make things clear both in planning permission and in planning enforcement.
Future Flood Prevention — House of Commons, 2017-02-27
Topic: Mixed Topics
Thérèse Anne Coffey (Conservative, Centre-right): Councils are expected to do that for developments of 10 homes or more, and I hope that the hon. Lady will see progress in her local area. She referred to the situation in Sheffield earlier, and I can assure her that that was not what I heard when I met businesses and people to talk about the potential future scheme in Sheffield. However, one outcome of the national flood resilience review is that we want Sheffield to be a pioneer in how we bring in private investment.
Future Flood Prevention — House of Commons, 2017-02-27
Topic: Public Lands
Thérèse Anne Coffey (Conservative, Centre-right): I am cognisant of the fact that, certainly in my own area, there are fewer firefighters than there were some years ago. I do not have a single full-time firefighter in my constituency of 300 square miles, and this is an opportunity to pay tribute to the retained firefighters who help their communities. I assure the hon. Gentleman that there have been conversations with the DCLG and, now, the Home Office I have covered the point that we expect sustainable drainage in new developments. On governance, I flag up the role of the regional flood and coastal board, and a lot of that work is covered by the regional flood and coastal committees, which comprise a number of different stakeholders Several hon. Members raised the issue of insurance. The Flood Re scheme has been a good success, but I recognise what Members said about businesses, which is why we have worked hard to get the British Insurance Brokers Association to bring a product to market. I encourage all hon. Members to make businesses aware of that fact. If people feel that, having been offered a quotation for a specialist policy, they are still struggling, I would like to be made aware of it. I want to look at that in detail, but I am not able to promise today that we will have another Flood Re for businesses because the basis of Flood Re is that it is time-limited. It is a principle of general taxation that we share resources across the country and, to some extent, that is what has been extended with the Flood Re scheme, through which every insurance policy carries a premium to help with flooding I recently visited Mytholmroyd in the Calder valley, and some businesses there are moving. Admittedly they are moving about 200 yards, but they are moving and appropriate defences are being established.
Future Flood Prevention — House of Commons, 2017-02-27
Topic: Public Lands
Kevin Paul Hollinrake (Conservative, Centre-right): The Minister asked for examples. Topcliffe Mill in my constituency is a development of 12 apartments that currently has an insurance premium of more than £30,000 because of flooding. Although I can understand that commercial schemes are seen to be a market opportunity for commercial insurance companies, in many cases they are not. Topcliffe Mill is a case in point. I would be delighted if she looked at that particular case.
Future Flood Prevention — House of Commons, 2017-02-27
Topic: Public Lands
Thérèse Anne Coffey (Conservative, Centre-right): The point about leasehold properties is that they tend to be owned by the freehold or management company, which is why they come under the commercial area. If my hon. Friend wants to write to me with more details, I will look into it Of course I will be delighted to meet my hon. Friend the Member for Castle Point (Rebecca Harris)—I have met many other Members. It is good of the hon. Member for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins) to point out the role of emergency services in her area. I hope that I have answered some of the queries raised by the hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) about businesses. I might not have answered them to her satisfaction, but I point out that Flood Re did not apply to businesses after 2009 because that was when all the rules came in to discourage building on floodplains, and we should not reward them with flood insurance as a consequence of doing that In answer to the hon. Member for Dumfries and Galloway (Richard Arkless), we have a statutory basis for the flood management plan in this country, too.