River Severn Flooding

Debate between Daniel Kawczynski and Owen Paterson

Wednesday 11th March 2020 Westminster Hall

[Daniel Kawczynski]

I could not agree more, and I am sure that all of my right hon. and hon. Friends from Shropshire will join him in paying tribute to those people.

The River Severn partnership is a strategic coalition of 18 organisations, including local authorities, local enterprise partnerships, water companies and the Environment Agency. It has an agreed memorandum of understanding aimed at working collaboratively to develop a comprehensive long-term approach to management of the River Severn. Here, we have an established group of all the relevant and appropriate bodies, working together on an innovative and forward-looking holistic solution that could literally be a game-changing approach to flood management.

[Mr Owen Paterson (North Shropshire) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is to be congratulated on having secured this debate at this timely moment, and it is good to see fellow Members from further down the river present. “Holistic” means the catchment area. Does my hon. Friend agree that we should look at the whole catchment area? The River Vyrnwy runs into the Severn in my patch, and this afternoon Melverley is flooded, protecting Shrewsbury. We need to look at holding water much further back in Wales, possibly paying landowners to hold water back, building new reservoirs and giving farmers the right to catch water. As Mr Bryan Edwards, head of the Melverley internal drainage board, has said, we want to slow it up at the top, hold more back and plant more trees—exactly as the Government are proposing to do—but when that water gets into the river, we want to speed it on down.

We should remember that the river used to be navigable and took a lot more water. We had a meeting in Shrewsbury a few years ago, looking at getting more out of the river, having more capacity, opening up the weirs and locks and generally making more of it, but also getting more water away. Once the water is in the river, we want to get it away, as Members from further down the Severn know. We need to look at a catchment area solution that goes right back to the hills and includes both the Vyrnwy and the Severn.

[Daniel Kawczynski]

I agree with my right hon. Friend. That is the flavour of what we are trying to get across to the Minister. Of course, individual flood schemes can help—we have one in Shrewsbury that protects Frankwell, the town council and the area around it—but in reality, although those small schemes protect parts of Shrewsbury, they just push the problem further down the line, which affects my right hon. and hon. Friends down the river.

By the way, the River Severn is the longest river in the United Kingdom at 220 miles. That accolade certainly means that the Government need to look at the river in its entirety and come up with a solution to manage its flow across all our constituencies.

Adult Social Care in Shropshire: Government Funding

Debate between Daniel Kawczynski and Owen Paterson

Wednesday 22nd January 2020 Westminster Hall

[Daniel Kawczynski]

Shropshire Lad. The clear message from Peter Nutting, the leader of our council, from the chief executive, and from the other senior councillors is that social care is their top concern. The Minister will know—she played a part in it as well—that in the last Parliament, MPs from rural shire counties worked constructively together to get a change to the funding mechanisms for our schools. Rural shire counties were unfairly discriminated against in comparison with inner-city, metropolitan areas. In this Parliament it is my intention, and that of many other Members, to make social care the No. 1 issue, because we have to listen to what our councillors are telling us.

There is no doubt in my mind that the black hole of approximately £20 million a year that the council faces is affecting not only adult social care costs but many other services in our county. The leader of the council has to take money away from repairing potholes, and all the other things for which the council is responsible, in order to manage the black hole that is staring them in the face.

[Mr Owen Paterson (North Shropshire) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on landing the debate and on the powerful case that he is making. As he said, we have all been working very closely on the matter for some time. I think he would agree that the situation is going to get worse. Currently, 23% of Shropshire’s population are aged over 65. That will increase by 50%, to 33% of the population, by 2036, compared with the projection for England of 24%. That is an increase from 74,029 to 110,926.

I am sure that, like me, my hon. Friend is an avid reader of the Shropshire Star. On Monday there was a story titled, “Dramatic rise in dementia cases”, which reported that dementia cases have gone up by 57%. Dr Karen Harrison Dening of Dementia UK said:

“We are going to have a huge increase in population of older people, and one of the main risk factors of dementia is age. There is also going to be a reduction in the number of younger people who will be able to care for them.”

Would my hon. Friend like to comment on the inevitability of this getting worse?

[Daniel Kawczynski]

I would, but I will first give way to my right hon. Friend.