Flooding — House of Commons, 2016-01-06
Topic: Public Lands
Richard Benyon (Conservative, Centre-right): I refer Members to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests Flooding events are miserable experiences for householders, and for businessmen and women. Many other Members have, like me, waded through the stench of a flooded home. In 2007, 3,000 homes in my constituency were flooded, and there have been many flooding events since. When I had the current Minister’s job, I had the miserable experience of witnessing events similar to those that have occurred recently When flooding events happen, many good things happen as well. As we heard earlier today, communities come together and there is great heroism. Flood defences work, and properties are protected. Emergency services are brave and stoic, save lives and do great work. However, there is also a tradition of stupid things being said and, occasionally, stupid things being done. We must be careful not to take a short-term view when flooding events occur One of the great knee-jerk reactions among many commentators—including, I am afraid, some Members of Parliament—is to say that the panacea for all flooding events is dredging. Admittedly, on some rare occasions it works. For instance, I have visited the constituency of the hon. Member for Workington (Sue Hayman), and I know that improving river beds in such areas may well be the right thing to do. However, we could spend all the budgets that any Government would ever have on dredging rivers such as the Thames, and within two years they would be back where they were because of the way the silt moves down them If we want to improve the rivers, we must consider wider catchment issues such as land use management. We should bear in mind the extent to which farming has changed in recent years. If we look at a map of the Bristol channel two years ago, when all the excitement was going on around the Somerset levels, we see a large proportion of Somerset being washed into the channel in a plume of silt. That was caused by farming practices higher up, not in the area where the flooding was taking place There is an enormous amount of historical revisionism. I want to say a little about the Leeds scheme, because, as was pointed out by the hon. Member for Leeds North West (Greg Mulholland), I was the Minister in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs at the time. That was an over-engineered scheme. The right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn), and a number of other local politicians from all parties, came to DEFRA when I was there, and we discussed the scheme at great length. If my hon. Friend the Member for Elmet and Rothwell (Alec Shelbrooke) were here, he would say that it would have been a disaster if it had been built at that stage, because it would have jetted water through Leeds into communities in his constituency We managed to convince people that a smaller scheme could work, and I gather that it is now being constructed and will protect a large number of properties. The other scheme, however, would have eaten into the budget of whoever was in government, and taken flood defences away from other communities which are represented in the Chamber today. Other Members’ constituencies would have been flooded. It is important for us to prioritise flood spending very carefully I believe that there is now a good opportunity for us to consider how we should address flooding in the very long term. Integrated catchment management schemes need to be thought through, involving agriculture, forestry, planning, water framework directive implementation, and the way in which we manage our uplands. We need to look again at the funding and investment models that we have used in the past, and at the economic assumptions that have been made. We need to ensure that the 5 million homes that are at risk in this country are represented here as well.