debates/debates2025-02-06b conversation_10
Source: hansard.parliament.uk (2025-02-06)

UK Parliament Hansard data: debates/debates2025-02-06b conversation_10

Darren Paffey:If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities. \p Steve Reed: The first role of any Government is to protect their citizens. Yesterday we announced that we are committing a record £2.65 billion to build and maintain around 1,000 flood defences, to protect lives, homes and businesses—a 26% uplift per annum on what the previous Government were spending. We are immediately using £140 million to unblock over 30 projects that are ready for delivery but stalled under the previous Government.  We are launching a consultation to update the funding formula so that we can speed up new schemes and ensure that rural and coastal communities are properly included. The previous Government left our flood defences in the worst condition ever recorded. This Government will put them right. \p Darren Paffey: Levels of E. coli and faecal matter in the River Itchen remain disgustingly high. I commend the Friends of the Itchen Estuary group for their work to highlight the issue. Like me, they want designated bathing water status in order to protect the river, so will the Secretary of State update us on when that application process will open again and on what changes we can expect? \p Steve Reed: I pay tribute to the Friends of the Itchen Estuary for their advocacy on this important issue. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs ran a consultation on reforms to the Bathing Water Regulations 2013, which closed on 23 December 2024. We are currently analysing the responses and considering how any proposed changes may impact the application and designation process, and we will of course respond fully in due course. \p Lindsay Hoyle: I call the shadow Secretary of State. \p Victoria Atkins: The head of the Dover Port Health Authority warned the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee this week that if funding is not secured with seven weeks, food security checks at the border will be stopped. That will mean unchecked and potentially dangerous meat appearing on supermarket shelves and in restaurants at a time when there is foot and mouth disease in Germany. When will the Secretary of State protect our borders and confirm that funding? \p Steve Reed: The National Farmers Union and other interested parties have quite rightly raised concerns about the discovery of foot and mouth disease in Germany. We are relieved that there has not been a further spread of that outbreak, but we are taking all appropriate measures at the border to ensure that this country remains safe in terms of biosecurity, and we will continue to monitor the situation and take appropriate action to ensure that there can be no repeat of what happened around 20 years ago, when a foot and mouth outbreak in this country devastated farming and cost the economy a total of £14 billion. \p Victoria Atkins: I do not think the Secretary of State either understood my question or knows the answer, because I asked him when he will confirm the funding. Compare this relaxed approach with the Prime Minister’s seeming desperation to pay more than the entire DEFRA budget to surrender the Chagos islands. Does the Secretary of State really support taxing British farming families for dying, slashing winter fuel payments for rural pensioners, and hiking taxes on rural businesses to pay £9 billion to a foreign Government on some dodgy legal advice from Labour lawyers? \p Steve Reed: If the shadow Secretary of State really cared about value for money, she would not have wasted £500,000 on relocating her office in the Department of Health, a project that was purely about her own personal vanity.