It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Brecon and Radnorshire (Roger Williams), whose speech was comprehensive.
In my constituency, 5 September was a bright, sunny day, as was 7 September. In between, on 6 September, we had 10% of our annual rainfall in a single day. There was heavy flooding all around my constituency. That was not isolated at all; many communities were affected, including both homes and businesses, and some of the affected homes had been completed within the last two years. For some of the people affected, this was the third or fourth time they had been flooded in the last few years, and it was heartbreaking to go around hearing all the stories. There was the story of the 20-year relationship that had finally been broken by yet another flooding incident, and that of John and Margaret Cone, whose house I went to in 2008 to see the watermarks 2-feet up their walls just before they moved out. They had to move out again, now aged over 80, and watch builders taking down part of the outside skin of their house to try to dry out the cavity.
I know that many other Members have similar constituency stories, but Redcar is on the coast and is flanked by the tidal part of the river Tees, yet this flood was not caused by the sea. Just a few months ago we were celebrating the completion of the £30 million sea defences in Redcar, but this incident was all about rainfall on the land.
We might think that being on the coast would help because water can run to the beach and away, but we have problems with natural watercourses and culverts. Some of those natural watercourses are commemorated in current street names: the Fleet, Long Beck and West Dyke. Culverts, sewers and house building have together created environments in which the water cannot get away as it should, the most absurd example being in the village of New Marske, which is halfway up a hill yet has serious flooding problems. Northumbrian Water has been investing heavily in tanks around the town and they are there to hold up excess surface water, to avoid inundating the sewerage system and putting raw sewage into the sea. Of course, given the golden beaches from Redcar down to Saltburn, which are a Mecca for surfers, I very much welcome that I and attended the “Surfers against Sewage” reception in the House just a few weeks
ago. However, I also have to say that I support householders against sewage and many householders in my constituency had raw sewage in their house that day. An investigation is going on into the role of these tanks, and it is concerning that a lot of the major flooding was in the area of these tanks—so-called hydro-break tanks. I therefore think they may well be part of the problem, and I am not convinced that their overflow arrangements work sufficiently well in times of very high rainfall.
My area is suffering from a set of man-made problems. It is by the sea and it is not in a valley, so drainage should be no problem. We need radical solutions. I think of the city of Valencia in Spain where, after serious flooding in the 1950s, the entire river was taken out of the city. If anyone watches the Formula 1 race at Valencia, they can see the cars racing around where the new river is now, and the old river is a very strange-looking park in the middle of the city. It is a nice green area, but with bridges all the way across it. We may need similarly radical solutions to help divert flooding away from towns and villages, and I hope that, once the needs assessment is made, DEFRA will look sympathetically at the possible solutions.
On the wider issues, one of the problems the water industry has is that the benefits of investment are not necessarily aligned with the costs. For example, councils and builders continue to build on flood plains because they benefit from that and do not bear the costs when things go wrong. Who pays if watercourses are not properly kept clear? The people responsible for keeping them clear do not pay the costs if they are not clear. Do developers pay for all the new infrastructure costs of water and sewerage when they do developments? One of the things the Government should therefore look at is the alignment of costs and benefits.
There is no doubt that in the current system, water companies play a very big role in paying for the costs of the whole infrastructure—and so they should. It is not acceptable that they come running to the taxpayer to meet extra costs, particularly when many of them are clever at avoiding taxes. Water companies must be made to pay the full investment and infrastructure costs of the areas they are responsible for.
I very much welcome the part of the Bill dealing with flood insurance. The Bill’s aims and the Flood Re proposals are an excellent way of addressing the issues. I note that clause 47 is going to be fleshed out in Committee, and the Chair of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Miss McIntosh), said that she would like to see more included in the Bill in this regard. I certainly support that, because we should all be concerned that the devil might be in the detail. I hope the Minister will say something about how he sees clause 47 being fleshed out.