As many hon. Members have made clear in powerful speeches this afternoon, the floods have had a devastating impact on their communities. I am sure the whole House’s thoughts are with those who face personal loss and those who are now confronted with an uncertain wait and do not know when normality can return. Our thoughts are also with the workers who are straining to clear floodwater and repair our bridges, roads and railways. They have done an outstanding job under great pressure, and we owe them a debt of gratitude.
I would like to start by saying a few words about the enormous damage that has been done over the past two months to the rail network. Great Western services have been severed south of Exeter since Brunel’s sea wall at Dawlish was washed away. Flooding has disrupted services in Wales. Crewe station was evacuated after suffering damage, and landslips have led to cancellations and delays in the south of England. At Bridgwater, in the Somerset levels, the line from Taunton to Bristol is still under several feet of water. Almost 300 Network Rail sites have been flooded.
Even when the water has cleared, further damage can follow, as embankments collapse. Many such earthworks date from the Victorian era and not enough research has been done on their stability. There have been 50 landslips in Kent alone over recent weeks. My constituents in Nottingham have also experienced delays, following a landslip between Chesterfield and Sheffield, and in the south-west, embankments have given way outside Exeter, compounding the damage caused at Dawlish.
Ministers cannot always prevent disruption, but they can put more pressure on train operators to provide timely and accurate information to passengers and open up first-class seating to alleviate overcrowding. The railways are a vital economic artery for the south-west. While the immediate challenge is to reconnect those rail services, we must also question whether the south-west’s rail infrastructure can withstand future pressures. The Transport Secretary has given Network Rail the task of producing a report on the future of the Dawlish link, considering “all the options”, and we will hold him to his pledge. The report is due by July. Can the Minister assure us that it will be made publicly available?
Sadly, such reassurances need to be put on the record because of the lack of transparency on the Government’s part, particularly in regard to the funding provided. Following the extreme weather in late 2012 and early 2013, the Government announced that they would fund the greater part of a Network Rail package of improvements in the Exeter area: they would provide £26 million, and Network Rail £5 million. However, that funding disappeared in the autumn statement. The Peninsula Rail Task Force group of local authorities wrote to the Transport Secretary on 27 January, stating that the funding’s
“omission from the Autumn Statement has…become a cause for real and sustained concern.”
On 12 February, the £31 million was re-announced as new funding, although yesterday the Secretary of State seemed to suggest to the Transport Committee that it had been the same money all along.
At best, Ministers have failed to communicate their intentions to local authorities, causing anxiety to those who have to plan locally for improvements in the south-west’s flood resilience; but if this is indeed new funding, as we were told just two weeks ago, they must explain what will be cut, or how more money will be made from passengers, to make up the balance.
It is already clear that Network Rail has been left with an extensive bill. The south-west’s local authorities estimate that last winter’s weather caused about £140 million worth of damage; this year’s storms have cost Network Rail about £170 million, and that figure may yet rise. As Network Rail must find 20% efficiency savings over the next five years, it will not be easy for it to absorb a further loss of nearly £200 million—and that does not include the cost of the additional resilience studies that the Government have ordered or further resilience measures in Dawlish.
The Minister dodged my question in Westminster Hall this morning, but I am going to give him another chance. First, can he assure the House that projects will not be cancelled or pushed back beyond 2019 as a result of the additional expenditure? Secondly, if Network Rail concludes that a new line is needed, or that substantial improvement works should be carried out on the Dawlish sea wall, will those works be funded by central Government, or will they be paid for out of Network Rail’s already pressured budget?
Of course, local authorities whose budgets have already been severely cut have had to commit emergency funding, much of which is not reclaimable under the Bellwin scheme. We have been told by the Prime Minister that “money is no object” when it comes to meeting the cost of the floods, but two weeks after he made that statement, we are little closer to knowing what he meant. For all
the claims that investment in flood defences has increased during the current Parliament, that is correct only if inflation and local authority funding are ignored, as was pointed out by my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Clwyd (Chris Ruane). We need a different approach, based on long-term planning and proper regard for the scientific evidence. That is why Labour has set out proposals for a national infrastructure commission, with strategic flood defences at the heart of its remit.
We are living with the reality of climate change, and the flooding over the past two months has brought the scale of that challenge into sharp focus; but, as part of the Prime Minister’s accommodation with the radical right of his party, he has allowed the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to become a voice for scepticism within the Government. Preparing for and managing flood risk has been dropped as one of DEFRA’s priorities, and, as I mentioned earlier, the Government’s draft national policy statement on roads and railways contains no reference to ensuring that our transport network is resilient. Budgets have been slashed, staff cuts planned, and scientific advice ignored. Progress reports on the Pitt Review’s recommendations have been scrapped, and exaggerated claims have been made in Parliament about spending on flood defences.
All that amounts to a poor record for a Prime Minister who once said that he wanted to lead the greenest Government ever. The Prime Minister may have changed his colours, but Britain still needs action to protect its transport networks and communities that are at risk of flooding. With clearer leadership and carefully planned, long-term investment, we can be in a much stronger position when Britain next faces floods on this scale.
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