16:27 Daniel Kawczynski (Shrewsbury and Atcham) (Con)

Shropshire Council has taken the lead with the River Severn Partnership. I chair a caucus of 38 Conservative MPs who have this river flowing through their constituencies. We are approaching—I say this unequivocally—a general election. Every year, Mr Blair and John Prescott came to Shrewsbury. In 1999, they ostensibly walked around Shrewsbury, saying, “Don’t worry, folks, we are going to protect you.” Well, we had a flood barrier, which protects a car park and 38 houses and that was the extent of the help that we got from Mr Blair and Mr Prescott. We cannot have just little sticking plasters on this problem, bearing in mind that this situation will only get worse—I think, Mr Deputy Speaker, that you and I can agree on that. Given climate change and the number of months and days of floods that we are experiencing, this situation will get increasingly worse for our children and our grandchildren. If we can invest today in an innovative, progressive and modern way of holistically managing rivers, that will be not just a prototype for other parts of the United Kingdom, but, potentially, a massive British export worldwide. Think about the suffering and the misery in Bangladesh. Think about all the millions of people around the world who face economic hardship and sometimes death as a result of these rivers spilling over. If we can invest in this technology of managing rivers, it could be of huge benefit not only to our exports, but to our international development aid programme.

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16:47 Robbie Moore (Conservative)

As climate change leads to rising sea levels and more extreme rainfall, the number of people at risk from flooding and coastal erosion continues to grow. That is why this Government are acting now to drive down flood risk from every angle. Given that we have some time, I want to set out what the Government are doing at a national level, and then I will come back to some of the specifics that my hon. Friend raised.

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