HC Deb 10 May 2001 vol 368 cc353-62

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Dowd.]

6.9 pm

Mr. Mark Todd (South Derbyshire)

We unexpectedly have longer to debate the important subject of flood defence than we anticipated. I hope that we will not take up the entire time until 7.30 pm, but the issue is critical for residents of south Derbyshire, and I am glad to be able to raise it in this Parliament.

In early November last year, many households in my constituency suffered the terrible experience of flooding. In the worst hit village of Hatton, 142 properties were flooded, and many people experienced the misery of sewage flowing back into their homes. Other villages along the Trent and Dove, including Willington, Barrow on Trent, Scropton, Hilton and Shardlow experienced severe disruption and the flooding of some properties. Local land drainage failures caused flooding in other villages such as Stanton.

In most cases, defences that were the responsibility of the Environment Agency were overtopped, but other drainage problems often contributed to the damage. Emergency services responded well, but were stretched to the limit. Since the floods, repairs and restoration have been the main preoccupation of many lives. Some people fully reoccupied their homes only very recently.

The various public agencies that are responsible in the area—the Environment Agency, parish, district and county councils and the sewerage operator, Severn Trent—tried first to understand what happened and secondly to explain events. They are now starting to produce solutions that may prevent repetition in some areas. Some remedies have been agreed—for example, the repair and slight raising of the defences on the Foston brook. In other cases, however, there is far more to do.

Considerable scrutiny of events has occurred nationally. That is hardly surprising in view of the scale of the disaster. The Environment Agency produced its report, entitled "Lessons Learned", and the National Audit Office has published a report on inland flood defence. The Select Committee on the Environment, Transport and the Regions and the Select Committee on Agriculture have also produced relevant reports. I want to draw out some key points that were made in several reports and reflect the south Derbyshire experience.

First, I shall quote from "Lessons Learned", which states: The attribution of responsibility for the management of water courses posing a significant flood risk needs to be reassessed. It is not clear in my area why some water courses are the responsibility of the Environment Agency and others are not, when their interdependence as drainage mechanisms is clear.

When the Agriculture Committee took evidence from the Environment Agency, reference was made to the accident of the agency being responsible for some water courses while others were left in the hands of riparian owners. One Environment Agency representative said that that often related to the membership of flood defence committees and the influence that certain landowners had exerted in the past, the results of which had been passed on to the agency. There is no logic to the assignation of responsibility for water courses.

Secondly, when water courses are the specific responsibility of riparian owners, their performance is supposed to be monitored and enforced by local authorities. Many local authorities choose not to carry out that function or believe that they cannot. In reply to a parliamentary question that I tabled on 2 May, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food listed seven councils that were not prepared to inspect flood defences, 12 that had failed to respond to Environment Agency inquiries and 115 that were unable to carry out inspections or did not believe that they had the resources to do the job. That renders a holistic grasp of flood defence in many areas impossible.

Scrutiny of the list of councils that the Minister provided to me reveals that many of them cover areas that were severely afflicted by the floods last October and November. Although, fortunately, none of the councils in my area were included on the list, I think that many hon. Members would be surprised to discover the attitude displayed by their local authorities to such a critical issue. It is also true that, relying on the activity of individual local authorities causes grave inconsistencies both in the standard of inspection that is achieved, when there are inspections, and in the precise measures that are used to identify shortcomings.

There are solutions to that problem. In its "Lessons Learned" report, the Environment Agency sets out quite clearly a view that I strongly endorse: the Environment Agency should have either the power to inspect or the power to compel others to inspect. Clearly that would require either additional resources for the Environment Agency to perform the role itself or additional powers for it to force unwilling local authorities to act. That however brings us to the third issue, which concerns the resources applied to doing the job.

It is clear that the resources available both to the Environment Agency and to local authorities are inadequate. One can certainly draw that lesson from the responses of local authorities, especially as many of the 115 local authorities that I mentioned said that they would have liked to fulfil that responsibility but felt that they did not have sufficient resources to do so.

Research done by the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food itself has shown that additional funding is required for flood defence, which is a point that is reiterated in the "Lessons Learned" report. The National Audit Office report, which focused on the state of our flood defences, said that asset surveys completed up to last autumn showed that, as regards standards of preparedness to meet their objective, 40 per cent. of flood defence assets fall into the categories of fair, poor or very poor.

Fourthly, some expenditure is urgently required. We should review the decision-making process and the criteria used in deciding on flood defence construction. In my area, parts of the village of Hatton have defences intended to protect for only one in 10 years. The defences of the rest of the village, with one small exception, were intended to protect for one in 100 years. As the Environment Agency points out in its "Lessons Learned" report, we should support consistent standards across individual communities.

It would be difficult for me to defend to the citizens of Hatton the proposition that we expect lower maintenance levels and less flood protection in one area of Hatton than in another area that is just the other side of a railway track that forms the major defence for the rest of the village. That is not a defensible position, and I am glad that the Environment Agency is highlighting it as one of the issues that must be addressed in deciding on future defences.

We should review the criteria on which investment decisions are based. Sadly, not everyone in south Derbyshire was properly insured against flooding, so that some householders themselves have had to bear the cost of the damage. Nevertheless, currently, the costs that householders or, in most cases, their insurers have to bear are not those that are allowed for in the cost benefit analysis that is performed in justifying individual flood defence projects. Value added tax, which is ignored, is one obvious exception. However, most insurers have a replace-as-new policy, which is usually what householders prefer to trying to find a second-hand item that precisely matches the items lost in the flood. Those essentially modern-day views of the actual cost of flooding are not taken into account in the cost benefit analyses that are used to justify defences.

In the particular case of Hatton, this is likely to mean that upgrading the defences in the area beyond the railway line will be hard to justify against the criteria. The Environment Agency has carried out an initial analysis and there is more work to be done, so it is important not to prejudge that, but it has already indicated to me the difficulties of defending this particular group of houses and meeting the criteria that have been set down.

Fifthly, the Government have published welcome draft revisions of PPG25 to tighten control on flood plain development. They have also decided to consult on my proposal—inserted in the report by the Select Committee on Agriculture—that the Environment Agency has the right to call in for public inquiry applications with which it disagrees.

Currently, a local authority can choose to ignore the advice of the Environment Agency when it has reservations about construction on a flood plain. In my view, that power has led to foolish and inappropriate developments in the past, which in some cases have placed the residents of those developments at risk and in others have inconvenienced other people by occupying part of a flood plain that was there for a purpose—to hold water when we faced flood conditions. Clearly developments of that kind place at risk property, and in extreme cases, lives. The Environment Agency should have the power to insist on a public inquiry to examine an application on which it dissents.

Sixthly, we must integrate the sewage operators in our flood defence framework. I shall again quote some local examples. It is clear that planning decisions often make optimistic assumptions about local domestic surface water drainage or systems that have decayed through local adaptation over time. What tends to happen is that when a new housing estate is constructed, the developer agrees that domestic surface water drainage will not go into the main sewage system, but instead go into soak-aways. Over time, people make adaptations to their properties and end up with the surface water drainage going into the foul water system and overloading it. Sometimes the tests that are carried out to work out whether a soak-away will actually work in an area where the water table is very high—as it is in the village of Hatton—or in a low-lying area, make assumptions that are unsound.

The first priority must be to make sure that that is clearly understood, because the linkage with the foul water system and then with the effectiveness of other surface water systems is critical. In some cases foul water systems critically depend, at overflow, on the effectiveness of surface water systems; and if the foul water system is supposed to overflow into a surface water system at times of crisis and is already over the top, then predictably, the foul water system will swiftly back up into the houses. That is what happened in Hatton, and villagers have rightly asked a lot of questions about the design of the sewage system and its ability to deal with reasonably predictable demand; and about the failure of Severn Trent Water to spot warning signals in respect of the performance of the sewage system in the past when residents regularly complained about the systems backing up or flooding into garden areas.

Regrettably, at times of very high rainfall and flooding across the fields from Foston brook breach, that led to immense crisis in the village, with many people facing the most unpleasant experiences. Flooding is bad enough, but finding foul water coming back into one's house is a deeply depressing and distressing experience.

As I have said, if the evidence of Hatton is typical, the links between the various elements of the system are not always properly understood. In Hatton, it was only after the event that Sever Trent, the Environment Agency and the local authority looked at the relationship between the various parts of the system and realised that some of the interdependence did not function properly. Clearly the sewage operators must be part of any framework of future planning.

We must also be innovative. It is a truism that defences built in one place simply direct water elsewhere. Water does not disappear when flood defences are constructed: it is displaced and flows to another location. Defences built in one place are often to the disadvantage of people somewhere else, and more strategic planning is required. I welcome the catchment planning that is being carried out in five pilot projects, as described in a parliamentary answer that I received last week. I am sad that those five areas will not benefit my constituency, but the principle of viewing flooding strategically is sound. I hope that the pilot studies prove successful and, if so, are rapidly emulated elsewhere.

We should, however, examine carefully the role of soft defences against flooding and how we can work with riparian farmers to ensure compatible land use, allowing flood dispersal and water storage in periods of heavy rain. It is clear that intensive agriculture, including density of livestock and crop choices, has substantial implications for the ability of a field system near a water course to absorb significant amounts of water when flooding takes place. Farmers in that position should be given a substantial incentive to cultivate their land, and practise animal husbandry, in ways that will allow flood dispersal on land that is less vulnerable than populated areas. That is an important function for which farmers could receive financial recognition. At a time when we are considering how to reconfigure agriculture and learn some of the lessons of the past few years, farmers could be invited to play a critical role in such circumstances. That role could be readily defended to the rest of the community as an appropriate subsidy and support for the agriculture sector.

Most experts predict that extreme weather conditions will become more common, so low lying areas such as much of south Derbyshire require a far higher priority to be given to both strategy and the local delivery of flood defence and management.

I hope that the Government re-elected in four weeks' time will have the chance to give further thought to what I have said this evening and to the various reports produced in the past few weeks, in order to develop appropriate responses that will give comfort to the citizens of south Derbyshire who suffered so grievously. They are merely representative of many other people around the country who also look for much higher priority and greater strategic thought to be given to this critical subject which, for too long, has bumbled along in the background of Government thinking. It has been subject to the normal compromises of British thought, which involve the division of responsibilities among a variety of agencies, and men and women of goodwill co-operating together on common goals. Sadly, in the modern world, that, increasingly, is not a workable framework for dealing with a critical subject of strategic importance, which is what flood defence and flood management have become.

6.30 pm
The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Mr. Elliot Morley)

First, I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate, and on his detailed presentation of his case. He covered the villages that he represents—Hatton, Scropton, Willington, Barrow on Trent, Swarkstone, Shardlow, Ambaston and Egginton—and I should like to express my sympathy for the difficulties experienced by those of his constituents who have been affected by floods. I understand how distressing floods can be, and that the problem is even worse when foul water is involved.

One of the problems identified by my hon. Friend was that the floods experienced by his constituents happened because of a combination of factors It is certainly true that there was over-topping of the river defences, but in addition the volume of water caused sewers to back up. The amount of surface water also posed difficulties.

I understand the points made by my hon. Friend that arise from the "Lessons Learned" report on the recent flooding. Those matters include determining where responsibility for water courses lies, the roles of riparian owners and of their internal drainage boards, main and non-main river designations, and the high-level targets that I have set for the Environment Agency and local authorities.

I share my hon. Friend's concern that many authorities seem not to have made much progress, and I shall touch on that in a moment, but I want to deal first with the problem of flooding in Hatton. He was right to say that it was caused by the River Dove rising so high that the Hatton sewage pumping station was flooded. As a result, the sewage system was flooded and the Foston flood defence bank was breached. Floodwater entered the sewage system through the combined foul and highway sewers.

Since the flooding, Severn Trent Water has worked to improve and protect the sewage network in and around Hatton. I understand that the company has effectively isolated the sewage system from the River Dove, and I am sure that my hon. Friend will be pleased to hear that. That should prevent the pumping station from being flooded if the river breaches its banks again.

The company has also installed additional capacity at the pumping station to enable overflows to be pumped to a ditch. It has undertaken maintenance work on sewers in the area, which has included a closed-circuit television survey, cleaning work to improve the flow, and some repairs to prevent the infiltration of ground water into the sewers. An extensive study of the sewage systems in Hatton and the surrounding villages has begun, and will include some computer modelling. One-to-one interviews with householders have been carried out, and some householders have had non-return valves fitted to their drainage systems to prevent sewage back-flow problems.

Severn Trent Water has also maintained close liaison with developers in the area to ensure that any new buildings do not have an adverse effect on the existing sewage system, or on existing residents. It deserves some credit for adopting a comprehensive approach to the problem in response to the concerns by my hon. Friend.

My hon. Friend raised a range of other matters, and I shall try to deal with them. I recognise that the arrangements for flood and coastal defence are complex, but he was a member of the Select Committee that looked into the matter, and so knows the arrangements better than most.

The Environment Agency has a general supervisory duty for flood defence, but local authorities and internal drainage boards also have a role to play. Flooding from sewers is the responsibility of the local water and sewage company, whereas surface water is usually the responsibility of the relevant highways authority.

Although a number of agencies are involved, I do not believe that an efficient and co-ordinated response is impossible. That is what we are trying to put in place by setting the high-level targets after the winter floods. We have asked all operating authorities to produce publicly available policy statements setting out their approach to flood and coastal defence and showing the water courses for which they are responsible. Those authorities must also say how they would manage flood risks on those water courses. Those statements will help to illuminate local approaches and give local communities the information by which they can judge the performance of these bodies.

I recognise that this does not apply to the bodies responsible for sewers and surface waters. The Environment Agency has discussed with me the idea of using its Floodline service, which was very successful in the recent floods—it gave people a point of contact as well as providing information and updates—as a one-stop approach for all those who suffer flooding, from wherever it may be. That includes problems with surface water and drains. This is probably a longer-term aspiration. It is important first to establish local partnerships and secure local agreement between the agency and the other bodies involved, which will be assisted through the development of an effective emergency plan in the light of last autumn's experiences.

I am also prepared to consider the institutional arrangements for flood and coastal defence more generally in the light of the findings of the review of funding arrangements and the financial management and policy review of the Environment Agency. Both reviews are currently under way and will be reporting their findings this year. That will be an opportunity for considering a range of issues, including the funding and structural mechanisms, relating to the way in which we carry out flood and coastal defence in this country.

My hon. Friend referred to the willingness of local authorities to carry out inspections of flood defences and critical ordinary water courses. He referred to his parliamentary question and the answer that I gave him. The long list of local authorities that had not, for various reasons, responded in the kind of detail that we expected, was very disappointing.

There is an associated high-level target that authorities should identify flood defences for which they are responsible. It is possible that some of the authorities on the list do not have any such responsibilities. However, these inspections are required under our high-level targets and the approach was agreed at a meeting with senior members of the Local Government Association. There is a related high-level target for the Environment Agency to report on flood defence inspections and its assessment of flood risk. That is expected shortly. I have asked the agency's chairman to ensure that the report provides a full analysis of the inspection problems. That includes an analysis of the response that we have had from local authorities so far. I want to assure my hon. Friend that we take this matter seriously.

My hon. Friend touched generally on the economic appraisal. He knows how that operates in relation to the methodology that we use in determining priority scores for where the resources should go for flood defence schemes. We cannot get away from the fact that there will always be more demand for spending on flood and coastal defence than can be provided in any one year. In that respect, it is right and proper to have a mechanism that identifies priority. Therefore, those with the most need get the schemes put in place as quickly as possible.

Mr. Todd

I accept what my hon. Friend has said. However, he will need to think about two issues—the scale of the total pot available for carrying out the schemes, as that will obviously influence the number of priority schemes that are available, and the precise mechanism that is used to determine the cost and benefit of each scheme, which I referred to in my speech.

Mr. Morley

I accept those points. We are reviewing the scoring system and have just started a formal consultation process on the way in which the system works. We will, of course, reflect carefully on the comments that we receive from people who respond to the consultation.

Funding is, in many ways, the crux of the issue, as it determines what can be provided. I am glad to say that the Government have increased funding for flood and coastal defence as part of the 2000 comprehensive spending review. Following the devastating floods of last autumn, which in many cases were the worst for more than 100 years, we made available an additional £51 million over the next four years. That was announced last November. That money was mainly to accelerate river defence schemes and to allow catchment flood management plans to proceed. I very much appreciate my hon. Friend's welcome for that.

We have also put together a package of £11.6 million to fund the Environment Agency's exceptional costs in responding to last year's floods and carrying out emergency repairs. That sum is available in the current financial year, so that the agency can deal with those matters. In total, more than £400 million a year is being spent on flood and coastal defence in England. That sum is not far away from the proposal for the appropriate sum made in the independent assessment commissioned by the Ministry.

Mr. Todd

I was about to ask about the relationship with the survey carried out by MAFF. Although there is obviously some relationship, the amount set aside is substantially less than the amount identified in that survey. Furthermore, many of the local authorities which replied so unfavourably—as my hon. Friend and I agree—referred to resource problems in carrying out their responsibility. Finally, the survey on the state of our current defences showed—as I said—that 40 per cent. of those defences fall into the "fair or below" category. That demonstrates a huge shortfall merely in the routine maintenance of our existing defences.

Mr. Morley

Yes, my hon. Friend is right again, although many of the levies raised by the regional flood defence committees, which are responsible for the day-to-day management and upkeep of flood defences, were specifically for this financial year so that some of those maintenance issues could be addressed.

There is considerable regional disparity. Some regions are extremely good but in others, such as Yorkshire, a high percentage of defences are classified as "fair" or "poor". However, I do not want to give the impression that to classify a defence as "fair" means that it is in immediate risk of falling down—that is not the case. Furthermore, only a small number of defences are classified as "poor". Nevertheless, we need to deal with those issues.

I accept that we need to consider whether we are committing enough resources for flood and coastal defence overall. My hon. Friend will be pleased to know that a study is under way to examine whether there should be even further increases in investment in flood and coastal defence. That study is linked to research that we have commissioned into the possible effects of climate change.

If there is a change in weather patterns due to climate change, with more extremes of weather of the kind that we experienced during the past winter, we must plan ahead for that. That means committing additional resources and examining what they should be, as well as considering the implications of the possible impact of changed weather patterns. That is being done.

We are also reviewing the funding arrangements for flood and coastal defence—the mechanisms, rather than the global sums. That report is due to be published in September. I can thus reassure my hon. Friend that a great deal of work is being done on flood defence.

We are holding this debate on one of the warmest days of the year thus far; the sun is shining so perhaps this is not the kind of day on which people think about storms, floods and coasts, but we have to keep planning for them. I assure my hon. Friend that the issue is constantly in the back of my mind. At MAFF, we constantly think ahead about a long-term strategic approach, such as that recommended by the Select Committee. Of course, when I see the sun shining at present, all I can think of is that the foot and mouth virus is clearing up, so that cheers me up no end.

My hon. Friend mentioned soft defence. He might be interested to know that, as part of the response to the autumn floods, I have approved the appointment of an independent expert engineer from the Institution of Civil Engineers. His remit is to consider innovative ideas that might inform the way that we approach flood defence schemes. I met the committee concerned and made it very clear to its members that they should not feel restrained by current or traditional thinking in relation to hard engineering, and that they should embrace the idea of soft defence as part of sustainable flood and coastal defence schemes. Indeed, a combination of the two might be used. I am sure that the members of the committee do not feel restrained in their thinking.

My hon. Friend made a powerful case on behalf of his constituents tonight. I understand their concern, and his concern, to see progress and to see the results of the investments that we are making and the reviews that we are conducting in relation to flood defence. I am pleased that work is being done in relation to the sewerage problem, which was one of the key factors in the flooding of the area. The reports will be published in the course of this year, and I am sure that there will be a continuing debate about the nature of our flood defence schemes and the appropriate level of commitment.

As a Government, we recognise that we may be moving into a period of climate change. My right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister has said many times that the floods that we experience should be taken as a wake-up call to the dangers of global warming and climate change. I very much hope that President Bush heeds that wake-up call in relation to the need for a global approach to climate change.

I can assure my hon. Friend that we recognise that there are implications for investment for the long term, and that we will make that investment for the long term, for the defence of his constituents and the people of this country.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at thirteen minutes to Seven o'clock.