"I am very sorry to hear that. In the previous year the Prime Minister did not put in an appearance in Somerset, so perhaps it was a case of hitting the right moment and of the strength with which representations were made. Certainly we had the Government’s attention, which had …..." David Heath - View Speech
"I hope the hon. Lady will accept my grateful thanks on behalf of my constituents, because that was literally a life-saver for people and livestock in my area.
There was, I have to say, a belated response from the military, an issue that might need to be looked at. Perhaps …..." David Heath - View Speech
"I will happily do so, Sir Edward. Is this not a three-hour debate, though? In which case, they would have a further hour each...." David Heath - View Speech
"I am most grateful, Sir Edward. Having been encouraged to go on for as long as I like, I probably will not, now. I am sorry to have reminded you of that, but I did feel that an hour was probably sufficient to allow hon. Members to say what they …..." David Heath - View Speech
"I do. We need a much more aggressive statement of concern from the Environment Agency and, where appropriate, the water companies, that says that there is an issue that the planning authority must address, and the planning authorities would need to respond to that.
"I am still a great believer in folk memory. People who have been around for a few years can point to where the water level reached in their grandad’s day, because we remember that sort of thing. We can say, “You build there, and it may not be this year …..." David Heath - View Speech
"I make the observation from my years of leading a county council that sometimes a certain fuzziness in that definition is helpful. Being able to wrap up some revenue expenditure as capital or capital expenditure as revenue, depending on the rules applied by the Treasury that year, is extraordinarily helpful …..." David Heath - View Speech
"Before the hon. Gentleman gets too carried away with the idea that, somehow, the flooding in Somerset was all the result of the current Government’s misguided decisions, I remind him that the rivers in Somerset, the Parrett and the Tone, have not been dredged not for four years but for …..." David Heath - View Speech
"I am telling the hon. Gentleman that not a penny was spent on dredging in Somerset, which is where the floods were. Does he remember?..." David Heath - View Speech
"It is the understatement of the year to say that the Parrett is not the swiftest-flowing river. It is probably the slowest, and has a gradient of 1 foot every mile, which makes it all the more nonsensical that so-called experts told us that had we dredged it, an unstoppable …..." David Heath - View Speech