EU Solidarity Fund: Flooding — House of Commons, 2016-02-25
Topic: Public Lands
James Wharton (Conservative, Centre-right): First, I want to pay tribute to all those who have supported the many places that were flooded in December and early January; the local authorities, the emergency services, the Environment Agency staff, the community volunteers, the military and many others made a significant contribution to supporting communities affected by the terrible events that we saw over Christmas, in December and in early January. The whole House will want to recognise the enormous effort that has gone into supporting households and businesses, not just the initial response to the floods, but the ongoing work to get residents back into homes and businesses open The responsibility for recovery, including matters relating to the European Union solidarity fund, lies with the Department for Communities and Local Government, and officials in DCLG worked hard throughout that period and continue to work hard to support those communities and those affected by those events. The Government recognise that the immediate priority is to respond to the urgent needs of those affected, which is why we have already provided more than £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, which is designed to provide ready support to local authorities affected by Storm Desmond and Storm Eva and, in turn, to help individuals, small and medium-sized businesses and communities 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, and we are also supporting farmers with grants of up to £20,000 to help restore damaged agricultural land and farm vehicles and access and repair boundaries and to address field drainage Having set out what the Government have already done, I want now to turn to what more we can do. I am today announcing that the UK Government will make an application to the EU solidarity fund. The EUSF was set up to respond to major natural disasters. 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 different catastrophic events, including floods, forest fires, earthquakes, storms and drought. The only time the UK has 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 intent 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. It is then paid out in a single instalment. When 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, but 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 budgetary process, which can take several months to complete.