Speeches by Hardy.

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

“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.”

“The previous Government had a straightforward funding formula based on numbers of properties protected. The difficulty with that particular formula is it made it hard for natural flood management, because it was hard to evidence that you had moved from one risk band to another. If you put a wall up or you do an enginee…”

“You can almost see that by what the previous Government did in creating these separate pockets of funding, because the formula was not working. We know that the formula was not working for natural flood management because they had to create a separate fund. We know it was not working for people who were frequently floo…”

“No, this is genuinely about me looking at the best way to do this. You are right, this piece of legislation was written 15 years ago. It is right that we look at the best way to do this now. Are we looking at doing it with partnership projects? As I say, water companies are hugely interested in this because it helps th…”

“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.”

“Yes. The Cabinet Office led on this, because the taskforce is joint chaired with me and the Minister for Resilience from the Cabinet Office. It has led an initiative to map vulnerable groups and provide a clearer definition of what vulnerable means. It has created an incredible tool, which can be used not just for floo…”

“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…”

“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…”

“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…”

“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.”

“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 …”

“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…”

“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 …”

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

“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…”