Flooding — House of Commons, 2016-01-06
Topic: Public Lands
Andrew Theakstone Percy (Conservative, Centre-right): When I stood up to my knees in flooding back in 2007, it never dawned on me to try to make politics out of the flood victims in my area; it never dawned on me to make reference to the cuts in flood defence budgets by the then Labour Government; it never dawned on me to make reference to the advice they were given in 2000, after the floods that also devastated my area, on what they should spend, which they roundly ignored. I always thought of the flooding primarily as a human issue rather than a political one, so the wording of today’s motion is disappointing As somebody who was born and bred in my area and who is very proud of my area, it is also disappointing constantly to be told by Opposition Members, most of whom only appeared in Yorkshire when they won the nomination for a Labour constituency, that there is a north-south divide and we are in some way being badly done by. That is not helpful; it is all about creating bitterness and division, when really we should be trying to have a sensible debate I was disappointed, too, by the comments of the hon. Member for Wakefield (Mary Creagh) with regard to the flood scheme in Leeds. I do not know the details, but I live further down the River Aire, just 15 feet from the river at the point where it meets the River Ouse. In the lower catchment, we are aware that many of the flood defence schemes that have been put forward in the past would have pushed the water further down on to other communities. There has been a strategy of getting water from the upper catchment to the lower catchment as quickly as possible A number of tidal rivers—the Aire, the Ouse and the Trent, and the Dutch river, as we call it, which is known as the River Don elsewhere—meet in my area at the point where they hit the Humber. The strategy of moving water from the upper catchment to the lower catchment as quickly as possible is a real danger to people in our area, and also to some of those further along in the middle and upper catchments. I welcome what the Secretary of State and the Under-Secretary have said about the need for wholesale catchment reviews. We must not look at schemes in isolation but must consider the impact that they will have further down. My area was very badly affected by the tidal surge in 2013. More people were flooded out in my constituency than in the whole of Somerset, and I believe more than in the whole of southern England. We were hit by floods in Goole in 2010 and 2011, and we were hit in 2007 and 2008 and were on flood warnings again this time. Thanks to investment, the river defences fortunately held, but we are repeatedly hit in my area. As I said in interventions, we must change the whole way in which we address flood defence funding in this country Under the last Government, as under the current one, flood defence funding peaked after an event and then fell. The Labour Government cut flood defence funding before the massive 2007 floods, which devastated more homes in Yorkshire than the flooding we have just had. It then went up again, then was reduced, then spiked to a record high post-2013. All Governments have been guilty of that, and we have to change it I again make the pitch I have made on numerous occasions. In our area, we drain 20% of all England and we are at extreme risk of flooding. We flood repeatedly, and it has got to end. We need the special strategy for the Humber that the Secretary of State has committed to, which I welcome, but what people in my area really need—I say this as somebody who was born and bred there and is proud of it—is not politics but cross-party consensus to be made out of flood victims so that we do not have the devastation we have seen too many times in my area.