Flooding: Military Deployment

Lord Rosser Excerpts

Monday 24th March 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Astor of Hever]

My Lords, I agree with my noble friend—the work of the Armed Forces is always excellent. The lessons learnt will provide a valuable opportunity to look at how the contribution of our Armed Forces to civil resilience can be enhanced and accelerated in future emergencies. We are working with the Treasury to consider whether there is potential for improvement to the funding processes. We routinely support civil authorities on a wide range of resilience activities, such as support in the event of industrial action by fuel tanker drivers and firefighters.

[Lord Rosser (Lab)]

My Lords, on 12 February the Prime Minister told Parliament that money would be no object in the response to the floods and that local authorities had only to request military assistance, yet the flooding started in late December in the West Country. Why did it take not far short of two months to make that statement on money being no object, and why was it so long before the military was called in? Why was no action taken by the Government in the first week of flooding to consider and determine the potential role that the military could play? Was it because the Government were not prepared to find the funding to enable cash-strapped local authorities to call in the military until weeks later, or was it because the Government just did not get round to doing it?

[Lord Astor of Hever]

My Lords, the department received its first request for assistance on 29 January and had deployed the requested support by the following morning. As the weather continued to deteriorate, defence became increasingly involved in providing support to local authorities.