12:59 Luke Pollard (Labour)

That this House notes the damage caused by Storms Ciara, Dennis and Jorge and expresses thanks to workers from the Environment Agency, emergency services, local councils and volunteers; and calls for Ministers to set up an independent review into the floods, including the Government’s response, the adequacy of the funding provided for flood defences and prevention, difficulties facing homes and businesses with getting insurance and what lessons need to be learnt in light of the climate emergency and the increased likelihood of flooding in the future.

It would be very easy to dismiss the recent flooding as a freak accident, an act of God, and leave it at that, but we need to take a difficult step and recognise that more could have been done. As the climate crisis produces more severe weather more often, we will be having more flooding more often, so we need to learn the lessons.

As the climate emergency produces more and more flooding, so flooding will become more frequent, and yet the resources for the Environment Agency have been severely cut over the last decade. Does the hon. Member agree we need long-term, not just short-term, funding for the Environment Agency?

We know that more could have been done to ensure that our fire and rescue services were fully equipped to deal with this national emergency; that more could have been done to put in place long-term flood defences; and that more could have been done to slow down the impact of the climate emergency.

We know that the Prime Minister was missing during the floods, but he now has an opportunity to create a lessons learned review to learn the lessons of what has happened. However, he has decided against doing that. We know that the Conservatives’ political choice to implement a programme of brutal austerity over the past 10 years has made the fight against the climate crisis so much harder. The Environment Agency has again and again asked for extra money—£1 billion a year just to mitigate the impacts of floods and defend our communities. We need long-term structural change if we are to combat future floods, including restoring nature in uplands, ending the rotational burning of peatlands, implementing proper catchment area management strategies and building proper flood defences where appropriate. All these changes need genuine funding and a long-term plan.

We also need to recognise the need for change on match-funding. I have raised this matter before. Poorer communities should not be asked to match the same as wealthier communities, because we know that in that situation the wealthier communities have their flood defences funded and the poor ones do not. My hon. Friend the Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves) has raised this in relation to her city time and again, but she has still not had a satisfactory answer. The Budget next week is an opportunity for Ministers to fund flood defences properly. I would like to see the Budget used as a climate budget to recognise the true scale of the climate crisis and have funding directed accordingly. I suspect we will not have that, but I hope there will be some mention of flooding. I hope that funding will be directed at those communities that are currently under water and that a long-term plan will be put in place.

We have our criticisms of the Government, and the Prime Minister in particular, for failing to act with the seriousness that the climate emergency requires, but setting that aside, we have before us in this motion a modest proposal to learn the lessons of the three storms and to conduct an independent review into what happened. We owe it to those communities that are currently under water, those that have been flooded and those that are repairing the damage from the storms to listen to them and to do everything in our power to learn the lessons to ensure that it does not happen again.

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13:14 The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (George Eustice)

It is interesting to hear the individual cases, but does the Secretary of State not accept that it is 12 years since the Pitt review and that it is only another 10 years—less than that period—until we expect and predict that climate change will result in a 1.5° increase in temperature? Therefore, we want not a microcosmic look at individual demountables, but an overview of the strategic difference climate change will make—namely, where can we and should we defend? Where can we not defend? Where do we have to change land use management? Where do we have to have rain water capture in urban environments? Where do we have to have underground tunnels and so on? We need an overall review. We face massive and growing risk. He says, “Oh, let’s hope we don’t have more bad weather.” That is—

The Government amendment also corrects another omission from the Opposition motion, relating to funding. Climate change means that extreme weather events are becoming more frequent.

We are determined to be ready for the future, and we know we must expect more frequent extreme weather in this country. So as well as investing even more money in flood defence, the Government are committed to leading a global response to climate change through our work around the world. As host of the next climate change conference, COP26, we will urge nations to achieve net zero in a way that helps nature recover, reduces global warming and addresses the causes of these extreme weather events.

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13:44 Jonathan Reynolds (Labour)

On mitigation of climate change and flood risk, the restoration of peatland is very important, and I know that the Government are committed to that. The burning of peatland by the grouse shooting industry is damaging, and businesses that counteract good measures have to be addressed. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that it is important to engage with industries that are counteracting climate emergency measures?

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14:19 Rachel Reeves (Labour)

Climate change is only going to make these matters worse and more pressing. We know that water levels are rising. We know that ice caps are melting. We know that our weather is becoming more unpredictable, as my hon. Friend the Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Jonathan Reynolds) pointed out. So in future we will need to be better protected and better prepared for floods. That is all that people in Leeds are asking for. We are asking to be better protected and better prepared, because it is a case of when and not if we get flooding in Leeds again. We have done everything we can in Leeds to ensure that we get the flood defences we need. We now look to the Government to come up with that £23 million to ensure that we do level up the flood defence spending so that the people of Kirkstall and Burley get the flood defences we need. That can only happen if the Government deliver on their promises.

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14:25 Ben Spencer (Conservative)

Prevention is better than cure. It is clear that the Government are leading the way with the Environment Bill and our commitments on the environment—meeting net zero by 2050, and introducing long-term, legally binding targets on biodiversity, air quality, water, and resource and waste efficiency—but we still need to get our defences built.

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14:41 Alex Davies-Jones (Labour)

As a new Member of this House, I never imagined that my first few months as an elected representative would be spent visiting local businesses and residents who have seen their livelihoods and their lives shattered. The flooding that communities such as mine and others across the country have experienced is surely a sign that the climate crisis has gone far enough. I pay tribute to the fantastic way in which our community groups throughout my constituency and all over Rhondda Cynon Taf have come together to support one another, but we really should not be facing such unprecedented and unexpected natural disasters in the first place.

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14:51 Yasmin Qureshi (Labour)

We have all heard about the fact that—and everyone recognises this—with climate change we are going to have more and more and more rain; it is not going to lessen. There is going to be more and more flooding and devastation. More and more people and properties are going to be affected. So why do the Government not take the bull by the horns? All the areas in the United Kingdom that have been affected by the floods and are going to be repeatedly affected by floods must be provided with the money they need now, so as to prevent future damage. It makes no sense not to do that. It would help to regenerate our economy if these contracts were provided and it would rebuild areas, so in every aspect this is a win-win-win. I really do not want to see the sadness and the devastation on my constituents’ faces again, so I urge the Minister to grant us the funding that we need to construct the walls on the two banks.

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14:58 Dan Jarvis (Labour)

There is no doubt that we are in the midst of a climate emergency, and in the past few months, flooding has swept through communities right around our country. It is becoming a tragic fact of life that more and more families and businesses are now experiencing the consequences of flooding.

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15:21 Stephen Morgan (Labour)

It is only right that I begin by paying tribute to our blue light services, volunteers and local government workers who helped Britain to weather the storm of unprecedented flooding. With three major storms, Storm Jorge being the latest, February saw record rainfall. We also know that the last 10 years have been confirmed as the warmest decade on record. As a representative of a coastal community, which bears the brunt of the rising sea levels resulting from climate change, I find that deeply concerning.

Another point that must be addressed is the current Government’s failure to recognise the interaction between flooding and heritage sites. A case example is Southsea castle in my patch, which is a major cultural English heritage asset. As expected, sea defence works surrounding the Henry VIII-constructed fortification require extra care and diligence in stabilising its groundwork, but the way that the Government currently give out funding fails to recognise the increased cost incurred to protect heritage sites. I fear that other local authorities will no doubt encounter that problem as the climate crisis worsens. I would like to ask the Minister if she will address the way that Government funding is structured to consider the extra costs of protecting cherished heritage sites.

Coastal communities such as my own are not only facing additional threats of flooding due to climate change: they are also at risk because they have been hit hardest by austerity. As the House of Lords Select Committee report shows, communities such as Portsmouth are dealing with a toxic cocktail of even less funding than their neighbours and being forced to face more climate change challenges. There is a clear imbalance that needs to be redressed. The Prime Minister has previously committed to hosting a flood summit, bringing together regional partners and stakeholders, and I echo the concerns we have previously heard that we need to ask the Minister when this summit will take place.

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15:28 Beth Winter (Cynon Valley) (Lab)

The issue of climate change is central to this debate. I have three children, and I want a future for them. While some moves have been made to appear to be addressing the issue, they have been inadequate. Targets remain too long term and plans remain thin on detail, and action is needed now. We must keep up the pressure on central Government to act quickly to tackle climate change.

Putting care for our fellow human beings at the top of our agenda is a political choice, just as pursuing austerity policies was a political choice by the Tory Government. We need to put this right now, because what will happen next time floods occur? The science is clear on this: our valleys can expect to see 50% more rain over the next decade. Unless we act now to redress the imbalance of wealth in the country and to properly fund a green industrial revolution, people in Cynon Valley and the rest of Wales will continue to suffer from the double whammy of poverty and the increasingly frequent and forceful effects of climate change.

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15:34 Anna McMorrin (Labour)

We are seeing the climate emergency at first hand, and not only this; we are seeing flooding as a social disaster, too. While furniture can be replaced and homes can often be repaired, it is the devastating human impact that flooding has on individuals, families and communities that has been most striking—everyday lives uprooted by flooding; families left in temporary accommodation; days of lost schooling; shops, cafés, businesses, the heart of communities, lost and submerged; treasured possessions ruined; and the fear and continual uncertainty each time the rain returns and the rivers rise. It is the human damage that remains.

We owe it to our constituents across the country to address the environmental and social tragedy that we witnessed last week and two weeks ago and which we are witnessing time and again. We must mitigate the risks of climate change and the climate crisis. We should already be transitioning to a society, natural environment, infrastructure and economy that allows us to combat and reverse climate change, but the Government’s policies, including their austerity policies, have hampered that transition and our ability to upgrade our infrastructure to prepare properly for the future.

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15:43 Ruth Jones (Labour)

A number of Government Members said that we do not need a review; we just need to get on with things. I say to them that a review is not a public inquiry. It is different, and it has a different remit and function. We need to learn lessons and get things right for the future as the disastrous effects of the climate emergency become more and more evident. That is why the motion calls for a review.

Beyond the walls of this Chamber, our world and our planet are experiencing a dangerous, unpredictable and evident climate emergency. We can no longer sit by and watch the world burn, communities flood and people die. I say to Ministers and all the Members sitting behind them that it is now time to get a grip. It is now time for them to show leadership and demonstrate to the families of those who lost their lives, their livelihoods, their homes and their cherished memories and belongings that they care, will do their job and will do what is necessary to save lives.

We know, as my hon. Friend the Member for Cynon Valley (Beth Winter) eloquently stated, that austerity has had and continues to have a devastating impact on our environment and natural world. The lost decade of Tory and Lib Dem cuts to local authorities in England, and also to organisations across the country such as the Environment Agency, has seriously undermined our ability to tackle the environmental crisis and deal with the impact of the climate emergency.

Let us show that we care about those affected, let us rededicate ourselves to the fight against climate change and, once and for all, let the Prime Minister show that he cares, that he is up to the job and that he will not let down hundreds of thousands of people when they need their Government more than ever. I commend this motion to the House.

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