Speeches by Hardy.

“The consultation—and, as I say, it is a consultation at the moment—is on looking to fully fund the first £3 million. Lots of smaller projects that are happening up and down the country, under the current system, have to find partnership funding. It is quite difficult to find partnership funding for smaller projects, es…”

“We will consider those major projects separately to the rest of the flood budget and the rest of the projects that we are looking at. When you are looking at what is happening with what would need to be done with the Thames, you are talking billions. They need to be considered away from the rest of the budget that we a…”

“Not at this moment but, as soon as I have something more definite, of course I will inform the Committee.”

“Yes. I met an amazing man called Peter who ran a flood action group. I was so impressed by him. One of our colleagues, Michelle, took me down to meet him. There is an amazing role that volunteers play, and he showed me what he does in a local flood action group to convene everyone and get everyone together. He is an ex…”

“Yes, part of it. The public are not as aware. After the flood events at Christmas, the taskforce did a paper collecting evidence from everyone to look at lessons learned, what went well and what did not. One point that come out that I am trying to find the best way to address is that, even if they sign up for flood ale…”

“We are investing a record amount of money, the most money that has ever been invested by any Government into flood defences. We are investing £2.65 billion over the next two years. We have put money into maintenance, the most money, again, that has ever been put into maintenance. We are investing £4.2 billion over the …”

“No.”

“It is not enough, I can say that. When you look at the numbers of properties flooded in the last year and the numbers of properties that have used Build Back Better, it is nowhere near enough. I am really keen to drive that forward, which is why we are doing another insurance roundtable. From talking to people on the g…”

“Yes. As I say, because you are convening such a large number of people and it is looking at it as a whole, I think that the number of times that it has met is right to bring together that many people. There is the action group on warning and informing, the action group looking at insurance and problems on insurance and…”

“The EA’s strategic overview role is different, as Phil said, from its operational role managing flooding from rivers and seas. As Phil also explained, it does not have the operational role for surface water flooding; that is done by the lead local flood authorities and the councils, because they should be responsible f…”

“I definitely agree with you in that local people are not always clear about what they need to do. A few things came out from the lessons learned work we did through the taskforce from the flooding that we had over Christmas. One was local response arrangements and people. One acknowledged that the flood emergency respo…”

“As Phil mentioned, you are quite right, the Pitt review said that there should be an overview role. The Environment Agency was given that strategic overview role over all the different types of flooding. The EA interacts with all the different bodies that are responsible for looking at flooding. As Phil mentioned, they…”

“We are looking at whether they need a statutory responsibility. I went to see them in Liverpool at their training centre, which was amazing and incredible. The fire service was showing me some of the work they do with rescuing people from flooding, the boats that they use and the dog, Luna, who was very sweet and went …”

“Yes, I agree with you. As I was saying, at the moment people can look at this NaFRA2 document. It is publicly available. They can put in their postcode and find out the exact flood risk for their property. That information is now available. It came out at the end of March. People can put it in and they can see what lev…”

“For example, if we were to put in a new flood defence somewhere, it would be shown through the modelling to reduce the risk for that area. The EA has done an important piece of work there.”

“Forty-three were implemented, 40 were implemented with work ongoing in 2012, six were ongoing with work on track, and only one was not completely implemented or taken forward.”

“What is the phrase? You might say that but I could not possibly comment.”

“I have a huge amount of respect for Flooded People UK and the trauma that they faced as a flooded community. I am interested to talk to them about their experiences and how we can better support people recovering from flooding. However, do I stand by the figures we are using? Absolutely.”

“Climate adaptation is a feature of the infrastructure strategy and what we are doing for the next 10 years and looking at the impact of climate for everything, which is not just flooding of course but what we do if everything is hotter and various other things. We need to be thinking about where we have our schools. I …”

“With the new data we have from the national flood risk assessment, the mapping that the EA has done shows us for the first time the surface water flood risk. Previously it was only looking at risk from sea and from river and so now we have surface water risk. In the evidence we have done on the money that we are puttin…”