Storms: Weather Resilience

Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts

Thursday 11th January 2024 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the impact on infrastructure, homes and farmland of the recent storms, and what steps they intend to take to increase resilience to future weather events.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper and refer to my interest as vice-president of the Association of Drainage Authorities.

[The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, and Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (Lord Benyon) (Con)]

My Lords, I refer to my interests as set out in the register. I know the whole House will extend our sympathies to those impacted by Storm Henk. To date, 2,185 properties have flooded, and over 81,000 properties have been protected due to the Government’s investment in flood defences. The Government’s 2020 policy statement sets out five ambitious policies and multiple actions to improve future resilience to flooding. Between 2021 and 2027, the Government will have doubled investment in flood and coastal erosion schemes across England to a record £5.2 billion.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, does my noble friend agree that we should be doing more between floods? I pay tribute to the Environment Agency and drainage boards for the important work they do in regularly maintaining existing flood defences and dredging watercourses. Will he seek to end the arbitrary division of funding between capital expenditure and maintenance funding that is hampering this work, as advocated in the December report from the National Audit Office? Further, will he confirm that the farming recovery grants will reward farmers for loss of crops and for the fact that their land is effectively being used not for food production but to defend downstream communities from future floods?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I entirely join my noble friend in saying what fantastic work the Environment Agency has done in reaction to these floods, along with the ongoing work it does in between to make sure that we are more resilient to them. Its annual maintenance programme activities are prioritised and timetabled using information from inspections, maintenance standards, levels of flood risk and legal and statutory obligations. Local teams work with partners, including drainage boards, on maintenance and dredging programmes. In 2022-23, the agency spent over £200 million on maintaining flood risk assets. In 2021, we announced an additional £22 million per year from 2022-25 for the maintenance of flood defences, and details can be found in our Flood and Coastal Erosion Risk Management Report.

My noble friend also talked about farming. The flood recovery fund will pay for the uninsured costs of preparing arable land for planting crops or reseeding grass where it has been damaged, and our agricultural transition plan has a range of measures which will support farmers in these matters.