Energy and Climate Change and Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

As ever, the hon. Gentleman makes an excellent point on behalf of his constituents, mine and others. Those in private rented accommodation are often ripped off the most, and I know that, as ever, Ministers will be listening to his wise counsel. I echo most of the comments that the hon. Member for Tewkesbury (Mr. Robertson) made on flooding. I will not repeat them, but it was a superb contribution. I recall sharing flood telephone conferences with him, during which we pushed for and got a responsiveness from Government that we found admirable and a good example to Departments on how to respond in times of crisis. Ministers should be congratulated on that. I was delighted to hear the Secretary of State announce that the concept of speaking of floods as one-in-100-year or one-in-30-year happenings is to be changed. That was a profound announcement, and I attempted to say something on it but my intervention was unfortunately not taken. Perhaps we can tease out more of what it means. Those numbers determine where flood defences and money go and what local authorities feel obliged to do, and they have a significant impact on the planning process and decisions on where new houses and other buildings are unwisely built. My house was a little flooded on one occasion, but nowhere near as badly as my neighbours' and other people's. Things change over time, and I have shipwreck timbers from when the river came all the way up into Bassetlaw. The Pilgrim Fathers went to America on a boat from Bawtry. Planning for flooding clearly needs to be overhauled, and the change in the language used will simply and easily create a new understanding. Of course it will not provide resources—that will require Treasury moneys—but there is nothing more frustrating for someone when their house and their neighbours' houses are flooded than to be told that it is a once-in-100-year event when they can plot exactly when it last happened. The change will be a major step forward, and I hope that the ministerial team will expand on it. I have one more little suggestion for Ministers. A small number of schools have been flooded—I believe that one in Tewkesbury may have been, and two in my constituency were. There needs to be a better system for ensuring that when a school floods, decisions on rebuilding it are not just insurance fund-led. If they are, we get cheap and cheerful patch-up jobs on the assumption that the school could flood again. If it is in a floodplain, it either needs to be rebuilt higher up or moved slightly—not to another village or another area, but in most cases it will be possible to move it slightly. It may be difficult and expensive, but the power ought to exist for schools in particular, as they are the key public buildings most likely to be affected by flooding. A little amendment to the Flood and Water Management Bill would give Ministers the power to intervene to override the natural tendency of those in officialdom to chase insurers immediately and replace like with like. That can be a weakness, and the power to intervene directly in such cases would be a wise addition to the Bill. The huge omission from this debate, as it will be in Copenhagen, is population. To my mind, there is no question but that the world cannot continue to expand and expand its population. The notion that Britain can manage with an extra 10 million people living here is nonsense. That has something to do with the immigration debate, but it is far more widespread than that. It is not about the composition of the people here—I have no problem with that, and the more diverse the better, in many ways. However, the increasing number of people and the requirements for housing and other services that go with it, if not irreversible over the centuries, is irreversible within our lifetime and that of the next generation. I do not want my constituency, rural Bassetlaw, to be a suburb of Doncaster or Sheffield, with ever more housing stuck in for the so-called needed increase in population. I am an economist, and when I question other economists such as those at the Monetary Policy Committee and the Bank of England, they do not want to discuss population. However, it is fundamental, and we must consider where those people who move across the world are coming from. Our immigration is a trickle compared with most countries in the world. There are huge population moves, sometimes led by war but more endemically led by food and water shortages. Those are the key factors that will determine where the wars of the next 30 or 40 years will be. The British Mountaineering Council, of which I am an active member, is meeting today in this building, and one can examine the big mountains and glacier shrinkage to see the impact on the environment. It is not just about the damage that has been done. One can map out where the water supply will not go when it is reduced, and therefore where the next major wars will be. The Himalayas are the biggest area for the provision of drinking water, so that is a frightening prospect. Population needs to be part of our equation. It is the great unspoken, and not just in this country. It has an effect on consumables. One of my political opponents, a Conservative, bemoaned the fact that I had raised locally the point that the situation could lead to the extinction of animals that the world needs for the quality of our life. A good example is that there are virtually no tigers left in the wild. That is a direct consequence of population growth. What kind of world will it be if the animals that we see only on occasion, or through the BBC, disappear because population has crowded them out? That is what is happening, at such a fast rate that there will be nothing left for future generations. That is irreversible, and it should be at the heart of our thinking. My final point is about the new nuclear power stations. Already, we are hearing that those responsible for one of them want to bring in foreign companies to do the build. In this country's economy, far too much investment has gone to the south and south-east, particularly London. I say to the ministerial team that with new nuclear build, British companies must get the vast majority of the contracts, so as to build skills in this country by using large numbers of apprentices and by upskilling the existing work force. There should not be, as with Crossrail, American competition coming in, cherry-picking the labour, leaving no skills benefit and damaging our economy because of it. We got it right on the Olympics and wrong on Crossrail, and for nuclear power stations it is vital that in the subcontracting we buy British. If we do not, our manufacturing industry and much more will rue the day.