Speeches by Hardy.

“Thank you, and thank you, Chair. If I may, before I answer the questions, I would like to acknowledge the devastating news coming from Texas and offer the people in Texas my sympathy and support for the appalling flooding that they are facing. My heart goes out to everybody impacted by that. We have all seen the scenes…”

“DEFRA recently did the land use framework consultation, which looked at land use in general. In planning, it is this new mapping. We encourage all local authorities to have a look at this work that the EA has done when they are thinking about what they want to do in their local area and where things will be built. As t…”

“Hull is a floodplain. In fact, just one tiny part of Hull is not constituted as part of a floodplain. If you build anything in Hull, you are de facto building on a floodplain. There are ways to mitigate that because we would not want to say to the city of Hull or somewhere else, “You can’t have anything ever in your ci…”

“On planning for flooding?”

“No.”

“The councils and the district councils are the lead local flood authorities and, as Phil was explaining, they liaise with the Environment Agency. The Environment Agency has been supporting them with training, upskilling and understanding so that they are planning in their local area for what needs to happen or does not…”

“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 …”

“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…”

“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…”

“Yes, you are again totally right. One of the lessons learnt was how to protect the most vulnerable from a flooding event. There are lots of different definitions of vulnerable, and some people who are vulnerable in the event of a flooding might not be classified as vulnerable in other ways.”

“I am happy to go away and see if we can work that out for you because we would have to reset the baseline based on the new mapping and the evidence that we have. Otherwise, you would be comparing apples and pears because we have never before measured the risk of surface water flooding. If you take the surface water flo…”

“Yes, which is why I am saying the evidence that we have had from the Environment Agency is so important. If you are going to set a baseline for how many properties are at risk, that is what it is mapping. What it has done is crucial. As I said, previously that did not include surface water risk. Some people are saying …”

“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…”

“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…”

“It is definitely true to say that most of the people who I have seen involved tend to be retired people who have the time, and of course it is easier to think about the constituencies that we represent and the people there not having the time to be able to involve themselves in that. You are right on that, which is why…”

“Yes. Flood Re sits with the taskforce, and one of the action groups following what happened over winter with the flooding is looking at insurance and the availability and affordability of insurance. That is one of the action groups that will feed back to the taskforce. Flood Re has just recently had to put up the premi…”

“I have seriously looked at businesses, because I know that that is a point that gets raised. As you know, Flood Re works by everybody paying a bit more on their insurance to cover people who otherwise would not get insurance. If you were to involve businesses in this, you would be putting up premiums for businesses. It…”

“We do not want to be having the same conversation about the same problems. Some of the problems about warning and informing will not be solved in a matter of months. It will constantly need to be developed and refined and improved. We need that cycle of continuous improvement. If we are going to build our country’s res…”

“I am a big fan of Build Back Better. In my first week as Minister, or my second week maybe, we had an insurance roundtable and brought together all of the insurance companies, where I said that we want every insurance company to offer Build Back Better, so it has increased. I think that 72% of the home insurance market…”

“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…”