Flood Defences ‘should be top priority’

From the 4th April WaterBriefing Newsletter 2013 comes the news that Conservative MP Dominic Raab, speaking in a House of Commons debate on flood defence and insurance, said that the current negotiations on flood insurance shed broader light on the UK’s wider environmental policy and asked if the Government had its priorities right. He questioned the Government’s environmental priorities, saying that resilience is low down on the agenda and Government must place more emphasis on adapting to climate change.

Quoting warnings from the Government’s outgoing chief scientist Sir John Beddington last week of more floods and storms, Mr Raab said the threat of flooding needed more focus. “Strengthening flood defences should be a top priority, both in its own right as a matter of sound policy, but also to contain the rising insurance premiums that have prompted today’s debate – and yet environmental resilience has been relatively low down the pecking order of UK environmental policy for more than a decade. The Government ought to place greater emphasis on adapting to the reality of climate change – the environmental here and now and spend less time speculating on technological winners that hike energy bills, particularly for the squeezed middle, without substantially decarbonising the UK economy” he said.

He went on to compare the £2.6 billion spend on “inefficient” green subsidies for solar and onshore wind with Defra’s spend on flooding and coastal defence for the five-year period of the current Parliament, as it is a similar figure. He suggested merging the departments as “Defra often feels like “DECC’s more realistic but poorer cousin” and it is left “to pick up the pieces when an environmental crisis strikes. That would integrate policy and realise at least £1 billion from cutting bureaucracy, which could be used to invest in flood defences as well as to pay off the deficit more quickly,” Mr Raab said.

Labour MP Rosie Cooper said that a short-term deal on flood insurance is “not a solution to all our problems. Fixing the insurance problem is inextricably linked to fixing the underlying flooding issue. For that to happen, we need to have a change in culture in tackling flooding issues.” She called the flooding response co-ordination “shambolic”, with no single agency responsible for flooding when it occurs. Diana Johnson, MP for Hull North, asked why nothing about flood defences was forthcoming in the Budget.

In his reply to the debate, Richard Benyon, DEFRA minister, said that £120 million of investment had been announced in the autumn statement.
Mr Benyon, responding to the numerous concerns that the Statement of Principles will expire with no replacement, leaving many households facing the prospect of unaffordable insurance, also said “I say from the start that, yes, the Government are in arduous and urgent negotiations with the insurance industry. We recognise that the Government’s first and primary role is to tackle risk by building flood defences.”
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