Winter Floods 2013-14

Debate between David Heath and Edward Leigh

Thursday 8th January 2015 Westminster Hall

[Mr Heath]

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 the principal local authority did not ask for help sufficiently promptly, but until the Prime Minister intervened there was also a difficulty with the cost of involving the military. That should not happen. The Royal Marines are on our doorstep, so we do not expect that they will not be able to help when we are underwater. They are well placed to assist and would have been happy to have done so, had they been able to. When they were introduced, they were very valuable.

Local authorities worked extremely well to ensure that people were safe and had alternative housing. Enormous pumps were introduced—the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton drew attention to them in her remarks, and they were quite the biggest I have ever seen. A great benefit of what happened is that we now have proper hard standing, so that those pumps can be deployed at short notice in future. However, that raises questions about some of the rather elderly pumping stations on the levels. Those stations saw their best years possibly 50 or 60 to 100 years ago. How much longer they can continue to do their unsung work I do not know.

After the immediate issues were dealt with, next came the new protections, key among which was dredging. There was a great deal of scepticism in my constituency that the Environment Agency would carry out the dredging it had promised. Such was the suspicion that it was felt that the agency would waft a dredger in the direction of the River Parrett and the River Tone and that would be about all that was done. But it was not; the dredging was done with dispatch and real urgency. The initial dredging has been completed and there is now a study looking at other areas of the river system that will need action. I hope that will go ahead in the very near future.

Where necessary, individual communities were protected. For instance, the ring barriers around Thorney and Muchelney pottery will make a real difference. They are not quite finished yet and we look at the skies with some trepidation, but they are well in hand. The Environment Agency has undertaken asset repairs on a wide scale, including at Beer Wall, and many other parts of the system are now improved.

One of the issues that grabbed the media’s attention was access problems, such as those to the village—then an island—of Muchelney. Although there was not as much water ingress into properties there as there was at Thorney, it was cut off for a long time and people found it hugely difficult to cope with that. The county council is attending to that by raising one of the road accesses to Muchelney. Unfortunately, that work has not been finished in the time scale that we hoped would apply, but we can look forward to that happening soon. We have also had a major resilience study on the greater south-west and access issues.

I turn to the big money issues, including the establishment of the Somerset rivers authority. Crucial to the Committee’s report is how we get local expertise, together with external professional expertise, to work on the entire water system. At one point I despaired that we would never reach the conclusion that we should create a Somerset rivers authority, simply because the Department for Communities and Local Government—there is no Minister from that Department here today, so I can say what I think—said that it could not be done, as the creation of such an authority would set a precedent and the funding mechanism was too difficult. I found that frustrating, so I am pleased that the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs managed to find the immediate funding required, but that prompts the question of where such funding will come from in the future. We can get it going, at least, but it is essential that a sustainable funding system is put in place.

There is the question of how we use the Sowy and Kings Sedgemoor drain complex as a major extension to the drainage system. Again, that involves big engineering issues, but feasibility studies have been done, and I hope that we will make progress on that in the near future.

The biggest project of all is the Parrett sluice—or barrage, depending on what people choose to call it—which will keep the sea out at high tide and ensure continuous flow in the right direction rather than the wrong one. That will help us to keep the water levels lower. So, what is not done? Apart from—

[Sir Edward Leigh (in the Chair)]

Order. Before the hon. Gentleman comes on to what is not done, may I remind him that two of his colleagues are yet to speak? Could he keep an eye on the time and perhaps bring his remarks to a conclusion, so that his colleagues can get a decent innings?

[Mr Heath]

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.

[Sir Edward Leigh (in the Chair)]

That is entirely my fault. The hon. Gentleman can go on for as long as he likes.

[Mr Heath]

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 wanted.

I come to the issues that still need to be dealt with. One of them is insurance, which was mentioned, although I think in slightly the wrong way, by the hon. Member for Vale of Clwyd (Chris Ruane). Flood Re is coming along and, even though I did not have personal experience of working on it in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, I know how much hard work was put in by Ministers at DEFRA and the Treasury and everyone else over a long period to try to secure agreement with the insurance industry to get it in place. However, until it is operational, there is a difficulty, in that people’s insurance premiums are increasing substantially.

The Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for North Cornwall (Dan Rogerson), went to my constituency and met local authority members and others recently to discuss insurance; I am grateful to him for that. It particularly irks people to see their premiums going up just as protections have been built. They are therefore paying much higher premiums even though their risk has reduced substantially since last year owing to the work and investment put in by the Government. That cannot be right, but that is, I am afraid, something that has been reported to me too many times. I hope that that will be dealt with.

On the second issue, the Government and their agencies get a partial tick. The Environment Agency has very much improved its relationship and information flow with local communities. It was not good; indeed, most people felt that the management did not really understand their issues. I must say that that was no reflection on local officers, who did an extraordinary job and were recognised for having done so, but there was a “them and us” feeling, which has not entirely vanished.

I will give two examples from a recent visit I made to Aller. First, there was a degree of falling out between the Environment Agency and landowners about appropriate compensation for work done on their land. It would appear that the Environment Agency had a rather high-handed attitude to such work, though that probably came from its lawyers rather than the officers directly involved.

Secondly—this worried me even more—while the floods were still in progress, ballast was put in place, at short notice, to help protect the sides of a watercourse. However, the ballast had just been dumped. The landowner had said, “If you put that there like that, it won’t be there come next winter,” and they were right; it all washed away. That is just silly and a waste of money. The message to be taken from that is to listen to the people who really know the countryside and understand what happens on land that they own and see every day of the week. I hope that the Somerset rivers authority will help to that end.

We then have the upstream issues, which, again, the hon. Member for Vale of Clwyd mentioned. I do not think we yet have a comprehensive and sustainable view on how we mitigate flooding by river catchment planning and by, for instance, using pillar two money to encourage planting on higher ground and changes in agricultural practice where appropriate—all the things that will help farmers on slightly higher ground to farm water to a point at which they reduce the flow and, therefore, slow the ingress of water into what used to be the great mere, the Somerset moors and levels, so that it can be removed in an orderly way. I would like to see much more attention given to that.

Indeed, on urban drainage, we have the sustainable drainage systems, but I am not yet convinced that planning is based on real understanding of concepts of water management. That goes both ways.

Recall of MPs Bill

Debate between David Heath and Edward Leigh

Monday 27th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Heath]

The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right, but that does not alter the fact that the public will not believe that any mechanism mediated by MPs, either in Committee or on the Floor of the House, is not going to protect MPs. I do not think it a fair criticism, but that prejudice is now impossible to remove, so let us accept it.

I want to find a new way to give the public access to the recall process. As was clear from the exchanges between the hon. Member for Richmond Park and the Labour spokesman, we are talking about behaviour that our constituents cannot accept, rather than views with which they disagree. As I think he knows, I have a lot of sympathy with much of what the hon. Member for Richmond Park is trying to do, and I accept his point about 20% being a difficult level to achieve—somebody would really have to incense their constituents—but I do not accept that 5% would be difficult to achieve for a well-funded campaign or even a political opponent who has lost an election and wants an immediate rerun. He blithely says, “Of course, all Members would probably have a petition process against them”, but that is not a satisfactory position for Members to be in. If someone wants to do radical things in the House and represents a socially conservative constituency, they will face problems of this kind. It does not take much to get 3,500 people to say they do not support gay marriage or some other policy on which we have legislated. I want to concentrate, therefore, on genuine misconduct.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

It could be the other way round—a social conservative could be attacked by more liberal constituents—but I agree with everything the hon. Gentleman has said. I presume he is in favour of the amendments from me and my right hon. Friend the Member for South East Cambridgeshire (Sir James Paice) providing that no process could be started based on votes cast or speeches made here. Is he in favour of what we are trying to do?

[Mr Heath]

I am in favour of the principle, but I have my own amendments that would have the same effect.

Ash Dieback Disease

Debate between David Heath and Edward Leigh

Monday 29th October 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Heath]

It was not I who had a problem identifying the pathogen; it was the international authorities, including the Danish authorities that the right hon. Lady mentions, who had reason to suspect that the pathogen was not the one that was initially identified, and that it was less virulent. That was why Europe and the world, frankly, took their eye off the ball to a certain extent and did not recognise the threat that Chalara represented to the Danish forests, for instance. Of course we work closely with our colleagues in other European countries and learn from their information, but I am afraid we cannot second-guess the international consensus.

[Mr Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

The ash tree is known as the Lincolnshire tree. Indeed, my home in Lincolnshire is surrounded by them, and if only a couple fell over, my home would be completely demolished. We therefore take the problem very seriously in Lincolnshire. Will the Minister accept that there have been reports of nursery imports carrying the disease coming into Lincolnshire, and that the reason why such diseases have taken off in the past is that Governments have not had sufficient grip and have not been severe—ruthless even—by stopping them at their inception?

[Mr Heath]

As I have indicated, we need to take tree and plant diseases very seriously. There is of course evidence that saplings have brought the disease into the country, which was precisely why we applied the voluntary moratorium and have now moved to a ban, which comes into effect today. That means that no trees have been imported on a commercial basis since early spring.

Backbench Business Committee

Debate between David Heath and Edward Leigh

Monday 12th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Heath]

As I said when responding to the debate on the original motion to set up the Backbench Business Committee, Wright is not holy writ and should not be treated as such, not least because there are internal contradictions in the Wright report, just as there are sometimes in holy writ. Therefore, the House has to take a view on what is in the best interests of its procedures. That will be for the House to decide. I simply contend that it is a strange situation where the biggest party represented in the House can override the interests and decisions of other parties in deciding who its representatives on the Committee will be. I would have thought that my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex had confidence in the ability of his own party’s procedures —I am afraid I have no specialist knowledge of them—to make a proper determination of who should serve on the Committee on its behalf.

I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex that different considerations apply to the Chair of the Committee, as he set out, which is why we propose that the Chair should continue to be elected by the whole House, with one proviso: we think that the Government should not provide the Chair, for perfectly obvious reasons. The situation is exactly analogous to that of two other Committees—the Standards and Privileges Committee and the Public Accounts Committee. There is a strong argument in favour of the Committee’s decisions not being seen as the result of some sort of internal collusion between the Government and the legislature, and I think that the clearest way of indicating that they are not is to ensure that the Chair comes from a party that is not represented in Government.

[Mr Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

So, the Deputy Leader of the House can of course give us an assurance that the Government are not seeking to change the rules now because existing members of the Committee have proved too independent.

[Mr Heath]

I can give that clear assurance, because I have absolute confidence that the members elected by the party groups will be every bit as independent as those elected by the whole House, and perhaps even identical in person. What I am trying to do is prevent the potential abuse of that process, which could clearly happen under the present rules. I hope that each of the parties, through their internal mechanisms, will have sufficiently robust structures in place to ensure that the Whips, if they come running to Back-Bench Members to have a particular Member elected to the Committee, will be robustly told where to go. But we shall see, because that is internal to the various parties and their internal democratic processes.

Committee on Members’ Allowances

Debate between David Heath and Edward Leigh

Thursday 7th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Heath]

I am extremely grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. Let me make it absolutely clear to the House that the change in wording in no way restricts the ability of the Committee to consider the issue of allowances as it relates to the review of the operation of the Act. The Committee will be free to consider the issue of allowances and to make recommendations as it sees fit. The Government have no intention of seeking to restrict the Committee’s remit in the way that is feared.

[Mr Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

rose—

[Mr Heath]

I will give way in a moment, but let me just say again that the change merely brings the Committee’s title up to date, reflecting the new system that is in operation at the moment.

[Mr Leigh]

I am grateful for what my hon. Friend has said. Of course, I have no idea what the Committee will decide, but for instance—for the sake of argument—if it were to recommend that the current expense-based system on living away should be replaced by a flat-rate allowance, would that be perfectly in order?

[Mr Heath]

It would be in order for the Committee to consider any matter that it sees fit in reviewing the legislation as it is currently worded, so I think the answer to the hon. Gentleman is yes.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Leigh]

And can it make any recommendations as well?

[Mr Heath]

Indeed, it can make any recommendations based on the considerations into which it has entered. It would be a very odd restriction on a Committee if it were to be told that it cannot make recommendations when it has considered a matter. Of course, such recommendations would be the end result if the Committee so chooses.

Motion 9 also brings the Committee’s terms of reference up to date. The Committee has a number of specific functions, set out in Standing Order No. 152G(1)(a) to (d), in relation to the old allowances regime that was administered by the House until the election last year. They include, for example, approving practice notes for the now-defunct fees office. Clearly, those specific powers are no longer relevant—they are, in effect, spent—and the motion provides the House with an opportunity to replace them with a more general power to consider any matter related to Members’ expenses that the House might choose to refer to it.

I sense from the interventions from the hon. Members for Windsor and for Gainsborough (Mr Leigh) that they have received some reassurance from what I have said.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between David Heath and Edward Leigh

Thursday 3rd March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Heath]

I am obviously concerned if the hon. Lady feels that a question has not been answered. It is for Ministers and Departments to determine which Department has responsibility for a particular question. As she knows, the transfer of questions has happened for a very long time. It is important that when a question is transferred, it is done promptly—an oral question should be transferred within 24 hours of it appearing in the notice paper, not of the day for answer, and it is a discourtesy to the House and hon. Members if they are not notified of that transfer. However, if she would like to give me further details of a question that she feels has simply not been answered, I will happily look into it.

[Mr Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

6. What recent representations he has received on the practice of the House of holding daily Prayers in the Chamber.

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Office of the Leader of the House of Commons (Mr David Heath)]

The holding of daily Prayers is primarily a matter for the House. My right hon. Friend the Leader of the House responded to a question for written answer from the hon. Member for Walsall North (Mr Winnick) on 10 February, and the hon. Member for Orpington (Joseph Johnson) raised the matter during a debate in Westminster Hall on parliamentary reform on 3 February.

[Mr Leigh]

It has been suggested in debate that Prayers should either be abolished or moved from the main Chamber on the grounds that they take up a valuable three minutes of our time. Will the Deputy Leader of the House reject this notion, and say that, whatever one’s religious views—or lack thereof—apart from the fact that they are beautiful poetry, what is wrong with meditating on things other than politics for three minutes a day? Anyway, our wonderful Chaplain does them very beautifully.

[Mr Heath]

I know that many right hon. and hon. Members value the few moments that the House spends in prayer at the beginning of each daily sitting. I repeat that I do not think that it is a matter for the Government; it is for the House. I am sure, Mr Speaker, that you will have heard the point made by the hon. Gentleman.