09:51 Ian Lavery (Labour)

The hon. Gentleman is talking about looking at every possible avenue of assistance, and I am sure that he will develop that theme. Does he agree that we need to think strategically and look logistically decades ahead, because of climate change? Forty years ago, previous Governments did not anticipate the situation that we face now. We need to ensure that we do not repeat the same mistakes.

That is essential. Whether people are climate change sceptics or not, there is a general belief and understanding that we are getting more rain that we have ever had before. It is essential that we have a strategic plan not just for next year or the next five years, but for 10, 20 or 30 years into the future. We need joined-together thinking with all the services that will be required to ensure that we address the problem adequately.

[Source]

10:04 Rebecca Harris (Conservative)

In August 2013 there was severe surface water flooding across my constituency, and my residents were told that it was a one-in-100-year event. Many hon. Members will have seen the flooding in my constituency on 20 July 2014, which we were told was a one-in-319-year event. One of my constituents remarked to me that his maths is not very good but that something did not add up. We clearly need to consider the fact that the national weather patterns are changing due to climate change, and that such rainfall events will be more frequent in future. We desperately need to ensure that we are prepared.

[Source]

10:15 Chris Williamson (Derby North) (Lab)

Like other hon. Members, I have already said that climate change is leading to more extreme weather events. Therefore, the role of the fire and rescue service will increasingly be to deal with the consequences of those events. I think that the hon. Member for Winchester touched on the cost of failing to deal with them; I hope he will forgive me if he did not, but I thought I heard him speak about the potential cost of failing to protect crucial infrastructure. It is absolutely colossal when we consider some of the power plants that have been under threat of being inundated, and hospitals, which I have already mentioned. This situation will only get worse, so we need to recognise the central and crucial role that the fire and rescue services play.

[Source]

10:39 Maria Eagle (Labour)

The reality is that this Government have been poor on flood protection. They slashed the budget when they first came into office and crossed their fingers and hoped it would not rain, but we know that the impact of climate change is increasing the risk of flooding in the UK. The Committee on Climate Change, the Government’s advisers on this, say that the chance of a £10 billion-cost event in the next 20 years is 10%. That event would be 10 times worse in cost than last year’s floods and more than three times worse than the catastrophic floods of 2007. The Government’s failure to take climate change seriously is putting more homes at risk of flooding. We have heard clearly from Government Members that they take climate change seriously. Perhaps they would like to ensure that their Government do so, too. This debate is obviously part of that effort.

The Labour party has clear plans to get the country back on track in managing flood risk. We will reprioritise long-term preventive spending, which is essential, as all the Members who have spoken today have made clear. We will establish an independent national infrastructure commission to identify the UK’s long-term infrastructure needs, including flood defences. That will enable us to try to reach a consensus that lasts beyond general elections on what is necessary with this kind of infrastructure spending. That is the approach we need. It is what the Committee on Climate Change and the National Audit Office say we need, but we have not seen a lot of it from this Government.

The Government’s independent advisers, the Committee on Climate Change, say that Government plans will leave an additional 80,000 properties at serious risk of flooding in the next Parliament alone if they are not improved. When I pointed that out over the summer, the Conservative press office—not the Minister’s party—briefed against the Committee on Climate Change’s figures rather than setting out what the Department was planning to do to get to grips with the problem. All the signs are that the Government spend far more time trying to spin their way out of trouble instead of putting in place proper plans to reduce flood risk, which are what is needed.

I have already said that if I was Secretary of State, I would start by reprioritising flood risk. The previous Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for North Shropshire (Mr Paterson), removed that from his Department’s priorities. We would introduce a new national adaptation plan to ensure that all sectors of the economy are prepared for climate change. It is unacceptable for Britain to have a plan for adapting to climate change drawn up by a Secretary of State who openly said that climate change would benefit Britain. We must end this Government’s short-term approach to flood investment and prioritise preventive spending by establishing a national infrastructure commission to identify our long-term infrastructure needs and get cross-party support to meet them.

[Source]