Flooding

Mark Pritchard Excerpts

Monday 6th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Paterson]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for raising that important point. The Under-Secretary of State for Transport, my hon. Friend the Member for Wimbledon (Stephen Hammond), is in the Chamber, and as the question is about a transport matter, it is probably more appropriate for the hon. Lady to write directly to him.

[Mark Pritchard (The Wrekin) (Con)]

I commend the Secretary of State for his personal commitment and energy over the Christmas and new year period; while many of us were enjoying our holidays, he was working in his Department. I should also, of course, mention the hard work of the emergency services and the Environment Agency. What discussions has he held with the Association of British Insurers to ensure that those affected by floods will be reimbursed as quickly as possible?

[Mr Paterson]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his comments and for reflecting the tremendous work of those in the Environment Agency and the other services. We raised this matter early after the first flood, and ambassadors of the Environment Agency went to check that members of the public were getting satisfactory responses from their insurance companies. The Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for North Cornwall, spoke to the ABI on several occasions to ensure that that was being followed up, and the matter was raised at Cobra this morning. I am pleased to say that, at the moment, we have not heard of any complaints that insurance companies are being slow in sending out assessors. However, at that very difficult time when someone’s property has flooded, the one thing that they want is to get their insurance sorted out, so we would obviously welcome hearing from hon. Members about any cases where there have been problems.