asked Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the risks of flooding from inland rivers in the United Kingdom and the role of the Environment Agency as the delegated body for managing it.
The noble Lord said: My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister and other noble Lords for taking part in this debate. Last year, great swathes of this country suffered considerable flooding. I live and farm near Brize Norton, which suffered some of the highest recorded rainfall in the UK. Our river rose around 15 feet in little over five hours, causing much damage to local homes and infrastructure. Indeed, a month’s worth of rain fell in just 24 hours in some places in the UK. The UK flood statistics show that five people died, 600 were injured, 3,500 people were rescued, 27,000 houses were flooded, 6,710 of these households by March this year were still displaced, 5,000 businesses were flooded, 858 schools were damaged, and 42,000 hectares of agricultural land were flooded.
The fire brigade’s rescue efforts were described as the biggest in peacetime Britain. These floods led to the biggest loss of critical infrastructure since World War II. Ministerial estimates last August put the cost of the flood damage at £2.7 billion. The insurance industry has concerns that this is not a one-off but a worsening trend. Claims in the UK for storm and flood damage in the five years up to 2003 were £6.2 billion, double the figure for the previous five years, and it is estimated that these costs could triple by 2050.
Between 1997 and 2005, some 120,000 dwellings were built in England in designated flood-risk areas, which represents some 9 per cent of all dwellings built over this period. In an Answer in another place, the Minister indicated that there had been only four planning applications called in under the Town and Country Planning (Flooding) (England) Direction 2007. A further four planning applications have been called in under the direction where flooding was a main issue. Yet in 2005, 21 major planning applications were approved against the Environment Agency’s guidance. Further, a proportion of the 3 million houses talked about in the Government’s July 2006 housing Green Paper will be built on flood plains, notably in the Thames Gateway. It is laughable, but it is true. I understand that the Government’s stated policy is to avoid inappropriate development in flood-risk areas. Has that policy changed?
The Environment Agency is responsible for strategic overview of all flood and coastal erosion risk management, and, as of January this year, the inland flooding role was still being developed. The management of large rivers and areas of low-lying coastline are its responsibility. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Defra, delegates to the EA the management of rivers in the interest of wildlife and having regard to flooding. There is limited clarity on what course should be taken when the needs of wildlife conflict directly with the interests of human communities. I wonder if those 27,000 home owners who were flooded out believe that the EA has the balance correct. They could be forgiven for thinking that the needs of wildlife come before humans.
Those of us who are riparian owners, or who take an interest in the management of our rivers, cannot fail to observe that our rivers have become clogged up and ill tended in recent years. In its time the National Rivers Authority, the NRA, kept the drainage system of our land—its rivers—in good repair.
Ministers have asserted that the EA will undertake prioritised programmes of maintenance work on watercourses, including cleaning and dredging where appropriate, but that responsibility otherwise rests with the individual landowner. For each urban stream there could easily be 200 riparian owners. Rural rivers too have multiple riparian owners, making inadequate the effective and overall management of a stream or a river. Speaking as a riparian owner, I doubt that most owners have the ability or finance to carry out their responsibilities. I hope that the Minister will commit to review the arrangements and to address this problem.
The Environment Agency estimates that it will have spent £65 million in support of flood-risk management in the last financial year. In the current financial year some £439 million has been allocated to the EA for flood-risk management, and a further £21 million to local authorities and internal drainage boards for capital improvement projects to reduce flood risk. I understand that other funding is available from the Department for Communities and Local Government for non-capital flood-risk management activities and from Defra to local authorities for capital projects to reduce the risk of coastal erosion.
A variety of bodies are producing a multitude of statistics generated by different schemes to deliver various objectives. Surely that cannot be the most financial or managerially efficient way to manage the inland rivers. The Secretary of State accepts that,
“a lot of disparate organisations have responsibility for different bits of the surface water drainage system”.—[Official Report, Commons, 25/10/07; col. 392-93.].
Briefing papers for this debate from the EA, the Institution of Civil Engineers, the Countryside Alliance and the NFU recommend the creation of a single body with strategic responsibility, authority and accountability for all aspects of flood risk. I must say that I welcome seeing the noble Baroness, Lady Young. I look forward to hearing what she has to say.
Not surprisingly, the National Audit Office report of June 2007 found that the proportion of the flood-defence structures in good condition was just 57 per cent, down from 61 per cent six years previously. It also took the view that the agency could reduce the need for additional funding by improving cost effectiveness. Fundamentally, there are legitimate questions to be asked about how the money is spent and what the appropriate regulatory architecture should be.
In response to a Question in another place on 18 February 2008 the Minister stated that:
“Following the summer 2007 floods the Environment Agency continued to carry out feasibility studies to consider the viability of proposed new flood defence schemes, which look to reduce flood risk where it is cost-effective, practical and environmentally appropriate”.—[Official Report, Commons, 18/2/08; col. 267W-68W.]
It is disappointing that there is so much head-scratching going on and little action at this time. Will the Minister say what action is taking place to mitigate future floods?
Sir Michael Pitt’s interim report contained 72 recommendations, of which 15 were considered urgent for action by the Government, their agencies and others to take. Will the Minister provide an update on those 15 urgent actions and on the estimated cost of those 72 recommendations? Will the £34.5 million to fund the work arising from the review announced by the Secretary of State in the ministerial Statement of 4 February 2008 really be sufficient?
Further to this, the Pitt review’s interim conclusions found a number of surprising failings, including no national flood emergency plan, no clear responsibility for dealing with urban flooding, and no systematic stockpiling of emergency equipment, such as boats.
By any definition, last year’s floods were a major disaster for a great many people. A significant proportion of the blame has been attached to the Environment Agency. But how much blame should be apportioned to the Government for designing these muddled and conflicting structures that are responsible for looking after the UK’s inland rivers? One thing is certain: the impact on public confidence is predictable, and the situation is unsatisfactory.
My Lords, we should thank the noble Lord, Lord Rotherwick, for introducing the debate. The floods last year were very serious. There have been a number of reports, including one from the House of Commons Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee.
My own interest in this subject was stimulated when I was director of the Met Office and I visited some Chinese villages which are regularly flooded. They recover and are flooded again. We can learn some things from that. I am also a visiting professor at Delft. In the Netherlands they have some radical ideas. It is surprising that the House of Commons committee went to France but did not visit and hear about these quite radical ideas emerging from the Netherlands.
All these areas of Europe of course will be subject to the changing climate that we now expect. Not only will there be intense rain events, but it is likely that we may have the sort of blocking conditions such as they had in the United States in the 1990s when you have many days of persistent rain, which of course will lead to serious consequences.
The first point to make is that the Environment Agency—the noble Baroness, Lady Young, I am sure will explain this—is not widely understood in the UK. It changed its policy from flood defence to flood-risk management. I was interviewed by Canadian television and asked if this really was the policy. I went to a government department in Whitehall—Communities and Local Government—just a few months ago and many of its officials were unaware of this change, which was surprising because of course it has a very important implication: that there will be floods, and that we have to design our houses, roads and infrastructure for floods. Therefore, we need to have a completely different approach. Building regulations, the community warning systems and the telephone systems will have to be in that form. This is a major change to how communities and individuals need to think about their houses.
I attended a meeting last year of CABE, which is an organisation considering buildings and design. A distinguished engineer from a major consultancy was asking whether we are now really going to build buildings where we are to assume that the ground floor can be flooded, whereas in the past the ground floor of a high-rise was a desirable part for people to live in. Is this really the case? If so, it requires quite a different approach.
As discussed in the report, many of the utilities are only just facing up to running their systems to cope with floods in the streets of London. I have heard that they have had various exercises, which for some utilities did not succeed very well. Imperial College is doing an important study of how the infrastructure will withstand the kinds of extreme events that will happen more in the future, as discussed in the Climate Change Bill.
I refer your Lordships to the interesting Chinese experience. They have warnings, as we have warnings here. Then, in these concrete-type buildings, party workers—who are not trying to get people out for by-elections in China but are helping them in floods—knock on the doors and take people upstairs with their furniture. Of course, all the electrics are at a higher level. The flood comes through and, in some cases, people rather relish this as it provides extra material to go on their allotments and gardens. After the flood has happened, people move down. The community must then restore the city completely on its own. I am not saying that this is a model for how we shall be in the UK, but that is the kind of situation that may happen more often in cities here.
The interesting point about the Dutch exploration of new building concepts is that they are looking for buildings that may be prone to flooding, such as buildings on stilts. Indeed, a suggestion of Dutch engineers, to avoid the high currents between buildings that we saw in Gloucester and in extreme conditions that may happen more in the future, is to have buildings the ground floor of which collapses inwards so that water can flow through them. This is a drastic look at the future but perhaps less drastic than having floating houses, which has also been suggested.
The other important point in the Pitt review was that we need good warning systems. These are developing. The Environment Agency and, originally, the BBC provide warning systems. Now, however, with the use of computers, radar and satellites we should be able to inform people of the kind of flooding that might be expected on a street-by-street level. Street-by-street level air pollution warnings are now provided in London, so we should be able to provide that for flooding by mobile phones to individuals at risk. In India, they provide warnings of flooding in 14 different languages through computer systems. We should be able to follow that approach.
As the noble Lord, Lord Rotherwick, pointed out, the country faces a changed and drastic situation. The Government must be bold in saying that we are moving into new waters. They would do well to encourage individuals, communities and industry to prepare for the future very realistically.
My Lords, I, too, congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Rotherwick, on securing this short debate, which is just one of the ways in which awareness of flooding is being increased. That is partly because of the amount of flooding that has taken place and the threat of climate change.
However, flooding is not an absolute. There is a temptation to believe that flooding happens on flood plains and nowhere else. The excellent briefing from the Environment Agency, however, refers to “flood-risk areas” without qualification. Even the Environment Agency talks about three broad risk levels. I suggest that the whole thing must become much more sophisticated; it is much more complex than that. Any particular place is liable to flood at any time—it is just that the probability and type of flooding is different in different places. Indeed, the same briefing says that the risk of flooding is “ever present”. That is the case.
I live in a village on the edge of Colne that is built on a steep hillside. We were astonished one day to look out and see water pouring out of the front doors of the terrace of houses above us. After a lot of rain, springs had opened up in the steep field above and flowed down into their back yards, through their houses, out of the front doors and then fortunately diverted into the lane going up the hill and avoided us. Nobody in their right mind would have thought that that was a high risk of flooding, but it happened. It can happen anywhere. It is important to avoid hysteria and absolutes in this, although nobody should pretend that when flooding happens, to anybody in any place, it is not very nasty indeed. People who have not experienced flooding may feel that it is just water and you can clear that up, but it also involves everything else that comes in with the water and develops when it is there.
The noble Lord, Lord Rotherwick, referred to rural flooding and the position of farmers. More transparent decision-making is required on farms. The management of farmland and the countryside is crucial, as we know, to the management of catchment areas of river basins generally. That is the strategic level at which the Environment Agency must be particularly involved.
However, many of the problem watercourses which occur during flooding are not the big rivers but the ditches, the little streams and the becks. It is currently far from clear who is responsible for things like weed clearance, tree cutting and keeping the channels clear. The number of these channels is so huge that the Environment Agency would have to be a much bigger organisation if it were to take on those jobs. If farmers are to be involved, the obvious mechanism is through developing farm plans and integrating single-farm payments into what farmers are expected to do on their land. We must remember that in some cases we want the water to leave that farmland as quickly as possible, particularly high quality farmland with key crops. In other cases, we want the water to stay there because it is acting as a reservoir. Not long ago, when I was travelling on the train down the Aire Valley, I heard a conversation among some people who looked out of the window at the floods on the flood plain at the valley bottom, which normally take place in the winter anyway. They said, “Look at all that flooding. It’s terrible, isn’t it?”. Being me, I joined in the conversation and said, “No. That flooding is stopping Shipley and the middle of Leeds being flooded. It is holding the water there, as it has for countless generations past”. It is accepted that farmers understand that that will be the case on that pastureland. However, if far more farmers will be expected to manage their land in ways which hold the water in order to protect areas downstream, perhaps they need to be compensated for that. They certainly need to understand their role. If their job is to clear the watercourses and get the water moving, they need to know that too.
On urban flooding, the Environment Agency has said that it wants,
“a clear overview role for … flooding from all sources”.
That is absolutely right. Equally, however, we cannot expect the Environment Agency, a large national organisation, to do all the work on the ground. There is a strategic role—particularly at river basin and aerial level, and in the case of integrated catchment area management—but local solutions that fit into that general strategic pattern are required in the local areas on the ground in many cases. The obvious bodies to be involved in any area are the local authorities. They can bring together all the other agencies, operating within the strategic role of the Environment Agency.
I am concerned that many of the streams now classified as main rivers are what in our part of the world would be called “nobbut a bit of a beck”; they are little streams. There is a real frustration in the local authority that it has not got the powers to go in and deal with those as it ought to. Like everybody else, I look forward to the Minister’s reply.
My Lords, first, I declare an interest as a former board member and regional chairman of the British Insurance Brokers Association and as the current chairman of an insurance organisation.
At the outset, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Rotherwick on securing this debate on issues concerning flooding and on his excellent presentation. As a practising insurance broker and underwriter, I see at first hand the misery caused to many of our policyholders by the awful effects of flooding. Flood damage is not something that can be reinstated quickly, as it takes many months for the drying-out process to be completed. It is important that the Government do everything that they can to prevent flooding in the first instance and to support local authorities and victims when flood defences fail.
It is essential that we respond to the problems of future flooding as we face the threat of increasing urbanisation and climate change, which means that the problems will unfortunately get worse. In my opinion, flooding is one of the biggest risks to the United Kingdom. The human suffering, financial loss and interruption to business are devastating, and it is estimated that last summer’s floods cost the country £5 billion, of which £3 billion was absorbed by the insurance industry.
My understanding of the current situation is that no single body is responsible for surface-water flooding, yet this was one of the main causes of the problem in the summer of 2007. I feel that the Government should appoint one single body with the authority to take responsibility for the risk of flooding and to co-ordinate with various stakeholders to ensure that action is taken to protect existing and future properties in the UK. I believe that the Environment Agency should be that body and that it should be empowered appropriately.
Providing the Environment Agency with the authority to exercise an advisory and regulatory role may prove to be the best way forward. As an adviser, the agency should prepare a national high-level, surface-water flood-risk map that local authorities can use as the basis for their own efforts and more detailed analysis. This should include the impact of underground water infrastructure on surface-water flooding.
Regarding the regulatory role, the Environment Agency should ensure that local authorities complete surface-water management plans and provide public feedback on them, including identifying areas for improvement. It is imperative that developers and housebuilders consult the Environment Agency and the insurance industry before building on flood plains. Where developments proceed in areas of high risk, the minimum standards should include in-design features to provide protection against flooding with a focus on minimising the effects. Applying routine national standards is insufficient in high-risk areas.
On planning, the Department for Communities and Local Government’s planning guidance PPS 25 is most welcome. I congratulate Sir Michael Pitt on his excellent interim report, Learning Lessons from the 2007 Floods, and I urge the Government to agree to 72 interim conclusions, many of which can be achieved at little or no cost. I also ask for information about flooding to be made available to members of the public on a wide scale and for the information to include details of flood defences. By doing that, we will provide the opportunity for members of the pubic to be assisted in making informed decisions about flood-prevention measures for their properties, and people will get more involved in the national discussions about flood management. I am, however, pleased that an automated flood-warning system is available free of charge.
In regard to construction, it is very disappointing that, against the advice of the Environment Agency, last year planning permission was granted for 13 major developments in areas of high flooding risk. I should make the point that in order for the insurance industry to continue to cover flood-prone properties, along with buildings in high-risk areas, it is important that the Government act now to provide adequate and continuing funding for flood defences and flood-risk schemes. Without adequate flood protection, the insurance industry will struggle to continue to offer competitive insurance for all. I therefore ask the Minister to inform your Lordships’ House of proposals for the current and future funding of flood defences.
Finally, I take this opportunity to acknowledge the lengths that the insurance industry has gone to in dealing with the large-scale floods of 2007 and the excellent efforts that it has made to get people back into their homes as quickly as possible.
My Lords, I rise with a little trepidation because I think that I am probably quite close to the edge of the Addison rules. However, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Rotherwick, for the opportunity to raise particular policy issues on flood-risk management. I do not think that it is appropriate for me to respond in detail to the points that he made about the Environment Agency; that is very much a matter for the Minister.
Before I raise my points, I want to welcome the noble Lord, Lord Smith, who is in his place. The Environment Agency is, indeed, very fortunate that he will be joining it as its new chairman in the middle of July. At this precise moment, he may be thinking that he has made a big mistake in his choice; nevertheless, I can assure him that he will be very welcome, and his environmental credentials are there for all to see.
In spite of the fact that I said that I would not respond to any of the points that the noble Lord, Lord Rotherwick, made, I want to riposte in an overall sense to his remark that a significant proportion of the blame for last summer’s floods lies with the Environment Agency. I do not think that any of the reports outlining lessons learnt at either a national or a local level have come to that conclusion. Indeed, since the summer floods, many of them have proposed additional roles for the Environment Agency, and the Government have granted the overall coastal overview role to the agency from 1 April. That does not seem to me to be the act of organisations, reporters or Governments who think that the Environment Agency was a basket case last year. As I have remarked before, the Environment Agency did not flood the nation last summer; the unprecedented level of rain did.
I should like to use the very valuable opportunity that the noble Lord, Lord Rotherwick, has allowed us to talk about four big policy issues, several of which have been raised already. The first is the issue of prioritising resources according to risk. Inevitably, that means that the built environment, where the higher risk of loss of life and property occurs, will take precedence over agricultural land. That is how government policy currently produces prioritisation results. If that is to be adjusted because of the increasing importance of agricultural land, there will need to be a shift in policy. Therefore, I do not think that the Environment Agency can stand in the dock accused of having abandoned the rural environment; we have been prioritising in line with government wishes.
However, it does mean that in a rural setting the key role of riparian owners is crucial. I think that that needs clarification so that people understand their responsibilities. The same applies to the role of dredging and maintenance. When maintenance and dredging are urged on the Environment Agency, there is often a risk that it will simply speed water downstream and flood other communities, particularly built communities.
Several noble Lords talked about urban floods. Indeed, they are very complex and come from a variety of sources—rivers, ground and surface water, drains and roads—and are influenced by many players, such as local authorities, water companies, developers, redevelopers, highways authorities, and others, as well as the Environment Agency’s own responsibilities for flooding from rivers. There is a pressing need for clarity of responsibility in the urban setting for flooding from all sources, and we very much welcome the Government’s commitment to clarify that responsibility. I appreciate several noble Lords saying that the Environment Agency should have that national overview with local authorities taking a leadership role on a local basis with their ability to hold levers such as the planning, development and redevelopment systems, which makes them key players locally. The Environment Agency could provide a national overview with its tools, techniques and expertise.
The third issue I want to raise is that of critical infrastructure. Noble Lords may recall that we spoke at length in the Climate Change Bill about the importance of protecting our infrastructure from floods in the future. The water and energy companies have taken some lessons from last year and we now need them to be picked up by some of the other critical infrastructure providers, particularly healthcare premises, roads and railways, which were knocked out very quickly in the January floods, causing disproportionate disruption to economic life and society.
Fourthly, the noble Lords, Lord Hunt and Lord Greaves, talked about warning systems. We are increasingly able to consider how such systems can be extended to warn of surface and ground water. We are working closely with the Meteorological Office but we must be careful not to promise more certainty than the technologies can currently provide. We must not overpromise the public on our reactions; we still have a long way to go before the public can have a clear plan for doing something effective when a flood is coming. That is a big ask that we must work on that to improve public response.
I shall finish on some statistics. Last year the Environment Agency exceeded by 20 per cent the number of properties it defended within its capital budget. Since the summer we have built 37 new defences and protected an additional 30,000 homes. We have signed up another 50,000 properties to our flood warning systems. Every flood has a silver lining. The public are now much more alert to the problems of flooding but the four areas of policy that I have outlined need to be addressed.
My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Rotherwick, for this short debate. One thing is clear: we shall be discussing flooding many times in the future. It is a fact of life, I am afraid, and will be increasingly so. As the noble Baroness, Lady Young, said, the issue is about water—precipitation. We shall have not only irregular meteorological events in the future due largely to global warming, but rising sea levels. I was at an industrial conference last week and reminded people that if, as is starting to look more possible, we lose the Greenland ice shelf, there will be a rise in sea levels of something like 6 metres, but that if a similar thing happens in Antarctica, sea levels will rise by 200 feet. That starts to change the whole issue, but we are talking about rivers this evening.
Although 50,000 households and 7,000 businesses were affected by flooding last year, Burma showed the devastation that a combination of flooding and high wind can do to populations. We have never suffered from that, but we can see how important the issue is. It is clear that we cannot just build our way out of this problem. We have miles of sea defences and all sorts of different facilities, but maintaining those is already a stretch for government budgets, which were, quite wrongly, cut recently.
I was pleased that the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, mentioned this. Sir Michael Pitt’s report recommended adaptation not just generally in the economy but in the way in which we build residences, houses and buildings in this country. One of the recommendations that struck me was that building regulations should say that lower floors should allow flooding and recovery at minimum cost. We have to move towards that sort of thinking.
We hear a lot of loose talk about building on flood plains. In the Netherlands, 95 per cent of all houses are built on flood plains because the country is a flood plain. I cannot imagine our saying that building on flood plains must not be allowed, but we have to minimise it where possible. Local authorities under Section 106 agreements should invest in areas that are less prone to flooding, but we will not get away from building on flood plains or the risk of flooding. As my noble friend Lord Greaves said, flooding is a part of life in certain areas. When I travel back to the south-west by train, I regularly see fields flooded in the Somerset Levels, which is part of the ecology and way of life of that area. We have learnt to manage that in the past, so we must regain some of those skills.
Sir Michael Pitt’s report on strategic management is logical and right. At a strategic level, there needs to be a body such as the Environment Agency to ensure that the system works from a national point of view, but clearly the best people in this respect are principal local authorities. They know the local patch; they have the resources and the authority. I was particularly persuaded by my noble friend’s idea of using the single farm payment in rural areas, perhaps through cross-compliance procedures for farmers, as they are the best people to look after their areas and should be remunerated for it. The Government should think about that further, which is rather different from the French view on CAP expenditure.
I ask the Government to consider the recommendations of Sir Michael Pitt on building regulations. Will we start to change those, albeit perhaps not so drastically as towards the idea of collapsing lower walls and floors in flood areas? However, it is important to have something like that. What lessons have the Government learnt from the Netherlands and other parts of Europe? What are they doing about rationalising strategic and local powers? Are they confident that Defra funding on maintenance will not be cut again? I know that the capital expenditure programme was not cut; it is great to build things but, if we do not maintain them, they will be of little use in the future. I should also be interested to know whether local authorities are using Section 106 agreements to make sure that we have better investment in individual projects on flood plains.
My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Rotherwick on securing this debate. The terms in which noble Lords have contributed make it clear that the House has much to offer in providing constructive advice on this subject, as each of your Lordships, not least my noble friend, has had a lot to say. I find myself in the same position. There is a need for action, as Sir Michael Pitt’s interim report makes clear, and a need—in many urban areas, above all—to deal with the neglect and lack of maintenance of storm water drainage, which lay at the bottom of many immediate problems in the flooding last year.
I begin by declaring my interests. I am a member of a family with a high-value, intensive farming and horticultural business in the Lincolnshire fenland silts. None of it lies more than 3 metres above sea level and it is as flat as the sea itself. It has not, however, been flooded for many centuries, so I hope to reassure noble Lords that low elevation and flatness are not necessarily a flood risk. The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, explained that; he also explained the role of wash lands, as did the noble Lord, Lord Teverson. This is a complex issue, not simply a matter of how low-lying the land is.
At home, we are entirely dependent on managed water through the internal drainage board, formed itself some time ago from many smaller bodies. While not active in drainage management, I am reasonably informed and feel that I can contribute to this debate from a practical point of view as well as a political one. I am grateful for the help that I have received from many sources, particularly from John Honnor, a retired drainage board engineer of considerable standing. As noble Lords would expect, land drainage plays an important part in fenland communities, where the skills, experience, knowledge and expertise of the engineering profession are highly regarded. As those communities live more or less at sea level, that might not be surprising, but I hold the view that the key to flood prevention everywhere lies in good management, clear lines of responsibility and engineering skill.
Currently, responsibility is complex and divided. The Environment Agency does the main river and sea defences, having taken over from the NRA, which, in turn, took over from the river catchment-based authorities. At local level in many parts of the country, as I have mentioned, and particularly in low-lying rural areas with a flood risk, responsibilities lie with IDBs. Those have a strong engineering base and, in the main, work well. Currently, they are being encouraged to merge. Although that may be a good way of reducing overheads, it will be disastrous if it is at the expense of local knowledge. In the recent floods, I know for certain of a situation that was averted by local action being taken despite indecision at a higher level.
There is a division of responsibility. We have mentioned the Environment Agency and the internal drainage boards, but much flood control is still in the hands of local authorities—the drainage authorities where there is no internal drainage board. Water companies are responsible for urban storm water systems. Within the complexity of planning systems for sewerage and water there are considerable responsibilities in urban areas. Highway authorities do the storm water systems and dykes adjoining highways, while Network Rail is responsible for culverts under railway lines. Above all, riparian owners are responsible for much of the drainage responsibility at a higher level, although many have no idea that they are. I will praise the Environment Agency for its publication, Living on the Edge. It tries to make clear to riparian owners how they fit into this drainage pattern. Many a situation arises where planning permission is given and a house is allowed to be developed; what then happens, perhaps, is that the dyke gets culverted at the back with nobody realising that riparian owners have joint responsibility for maintaining it.
In my view, the greatest flood risk is not from climate change but from catchment change. Every new building, new road and change in land use produces additional run-off, which is cumulative and not noted until the flood event. Skilled hydrologists can predict it, but they are not listened to. We have either to enlarge the capacity of the watercourses or to retain the water on site and release it slowly—or both. All new building consents should consider the downstream effects of increased run-off, but that is difficult. I wonder whether planning often takes those responsibilities fully into account. I hope that this debate will serve as a useful forum to discuss these issues. Clearly, there is much that we could be saying on this subject and there will, no doubt, be other opportunities to do so.
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Rotherwick, on securing this debate and on how he introduced this important topic. I did not agree with every statement that he made, but he did the House a great service by drawing attention to the challenges that we face. I think that your Lordships would also want to express sympathy with all those who suffered so grievously last summer in the devastating flood events. We all know that flooding is one of the most devastating events that can occur in people’s homes and that many suffered then.
The weather conditions last year were exceptional. We had the clearest indications from my noble friend Lord Hunt of Chesterton of what the rainfall was in a limited period and we respect not just his weather forecasting abilities but his predictive abilities with regard to aspects of climate change. The noble Lord, Lord Taylor, was right to reiterate what several other noble Lords had said. This is about not just climate change but catchment areas, planning and the whole question of how we construct our dwellings with regard to the water drainage problem. Nevertheless, climate change has its part to play in that. We must anticipate, as my noble friend said, the incidence of heavy water flows in regular rainfalls of a continuous kind, which present us with real challenges in managing our environment. It is obvious that the Government need to respond to those challenges.
The part of the speech by the noble Lord, Lord Rotherwick, that I was not so sure about was his criticism of the Environment Agency. The noble Baroness, Lady Young, was reserved in her response, as she is well aware of her responsibilities as far as the Environment Agency is concerned, but I shall take up the cudgels on her behalf. The Environment Agency is not held responsible by the Pitt review or any other body for the problems of last summer, a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Sheikh. We look to the Environment Agency to deal with coastal erosion problems, which are not part of this evening’s debate. I thought that the noble Baroness, Lady Young, indicated that my noble friend Lord Smith might be taking on a poisoned chalice, although a chalice is a rather small vessel for the amount of water that we are suggesting he might have to cope with in his role with the Environment Agency, in which we wish him well. The agency clearly has a significant part to play, but there are important wider government policy initiatives.
I want to reassure the noble Lord, Lord Sheikh, who was very fair and right to congratulate the insurance industry on the extent to which it responded to the flood problems of last year. That does not mean that every citizen felt that to be the case or that everybody experienced prompt attention to their problems, but the flood problems were a massive challenge to the insurance industry and the noble Lord, Lord Sheikh, is right to draw attention to that. I assure him that the Government are in the closest discussions with the industry to ensure that we provide adequate insurance provision for the future. That requires householders to change attitudes. With major problems, agencies can play their part and the Government have a critical role to play, but we need to condition the public’s response and increase awareness of what is necessary so that people can safeguard their properties. We need to have due regard to the way in which construction takes place in order to minimise problems.
The noble Lord, Lord Taylor, is right that this is a question not about hilly ground or level ground but about management. He farms in Lincolnshire, an outstanding example of water management on flat land. I live next to the River Lee, which represents another form of water management. It supplies water to London. It is carefully managed, as it has been over many years. The issues are not the contours of the land, although they are conducive to the creation of problems, but the way in which we manage that land.
I like the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, that perhaps we ought to look at agricultural funding so that landowners are more aware of the necessity for water management in the development of their land. He will recognise that payments to farmers and the structure of the way in which landowners and farmers are remunerated are massive problems. This dimension is yet another complicating factor that causes all Governments to scratch their head. This Government are scratching their head over those issues as much as any other. However, it is an interesting proposal and I assure him that it will be looked at carefully.
The noble Lord, Lord Teverson, is right that, if we look at a country such as the Netherlands, we can see buildings and structures that reflect water management over centuries. They show how to cope with water and still provide civilised living in extensive and often congested circumstances. I hear what he said about the role of local authorities. That is important, not least with regard to water management but also with regard to building policies. I am not going to shy away from building on flood plains. There is no way in which we can house our people and pretend that we will not build on flood plains. The issue is how we manage water matters in areas that we create. Due regard must be paid to this dimension of the problem when building new housing.
I emphasise that the Government are extremely active in efforts to improve the way in which flood risk is managed. We have been for some years, but we need to increase those efforts. I emphasise that we intend to devote the resources. Several noble Lords referred to the resources devoted to this. Defra’s resources are no more unlimited than the Government’s, on which there are many demands. Nevertheless, we intend to increase expenditure in this area, mindful of the fact that the problems require us to address the issues creatively.
The noble Lord, Lord Rotherwick, raised the issue first, but he was not the only noble Lord to mention the Pitt review and to talk about its recommendations in assertive terms. The Government accept those recommendations. Implementing them is a longer-term objective and strategy. We have begun work on 15 pilot projects to identify improvements in surface water drainage, which was, after all, the biggest problem during last year’s floods. I do not underestimate the challenge that that represents. We have a £500,000 pilot project, in partnership with local authorities in six areas, to explore the feasibility of some form of financial assistance for those households where the community defence cannot be justified, but we need to make their homes more flood-resistant.
The Chamber will recognise that, in response to an intense debate on a subject of such significance, the 12 minutes allotted to me, which are already close to being exhausted, are not adequate to cover all the issues. I apologise for that. I emphasise that we intend to spend £650 million this year, £700 million in 2009-10 and £800 million in 2010-11 on resources relating to the problems of flooding and coastal erosion, which the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, was particularly concerned about. That is some indication of the seriousness with which the Government address these issues.
Will we be able to guarantee that all our homes have adequate protection against floods in the future? Of course we cannot. We cannot even predict weather and surface flooding, such as occurred last year. All we know is that such flooding is likely to increase. That is why greater defences have to be erected. We have the agencies in place. I resist the criticism of the Environment Agency; it will continue to do a very good job. We are also spending more money on flood warning, which is a key issue in minimising damage. Householders need to be prepared for the challenges that are presented. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Rotherwick, for this debate, which has thrown light on some important issues.