Examination of Witnesses (Questions 796
- 799)
WEDNESDAY 30 JANUARY 2008
MR PAUL
TEMPLE, MR
ANDREW CLARK,
MRS ANNA
HALL, MR
ANDREW WOOD
AND MR
JAMES MARSDEN
Q796 Chairman:
Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Can I welcome everybody
here to this on the record evidence session of the Environment,
Food and Rural Affairs Select Committee on its inquiry into flooding.
My name is Michael Jack, I chair the Committee. I am joined by
other colleagues of the Committee on both sides of me and you
can see their names in front of you. Can I just deal with one
rather important housekeeping matter before we go into our evidence
sessions? Could I ask everybody who has a mobile phone—I
see one or two are already anticipating—if you would be
kind enough to turn them off it would be very much appreciated.
Can I say at the outset that the Committee has been very warmly
welcomed in Lincoln. We had a very good tour this morning looking
at the City's flood defences, so we have had a look at the situation
in practice and this afternoon we are going to take evidence.
This particular inquiry has brought forward an unprecedented number
of contributions, not just from professional organisations like
the National Farmers' Union and Natural England, from whom we
are going to hear in a moment, but from members of the public
and those who represent them, either at local council level or
in the House of Commons. In addition, for those of you who listen
to Radio 4 you may have heard last week's You and Yours
programme on Tuesday was dedicated to the inquiry that we are
undertaking and, again, that triggered further contributions from
the public for which we are very grateful indeed. A number of
those people who have been kind enough to give us evidence are
going to form the second part of our inquiry this afternoon. We
are under quite a lot of time pressure so we will try and be brief
with our questions and I hope those who reply will be equally
succinct with their answers, but I do not want to turn off any
really good thoughts that people may have. Finally, can I thank
in advance Sue Few, the lady who is sitting here. She has the
difficult task of recording all the words that we say because
what we do say this afternoon by way of our formal evidence session
will form a part of the inquiry. These words will be published
in due course when the Committee publishes its conclusions and
its evidence. This is a proper on the record parliamentary occasion.
For the record, let us move into our evidence session. I would
like to formally welcome from the National Farmers' Union, Mr
Paul Temple, their Vice-President, Mr Andrew Clark, the Head of
Policy Services, and Mrs Anna Hall, their Water Policy Adviser,
and from Natural England, Mr Andrew Wood, their Executive Director,
and Mr James Marsden, their Director of Policy. We are going to
start off with some specific questions targeted to each of your
organisations and then colleagues from the Committee will put
other questions to you. Can we start with the National Farmers'
Union. I think it would be helpful, given the pictures of flooded
farmland from all over the country, in particular with reference
to last summer's flooding, if you could give us a brief synopsis
as to how those floods actually impacted upon agriculture in general
and, more specifically, which parts of the country were most affected.
Sector-by-sector, was it livestock or arable that took the brunt,
or was it spread evenly across those parts of agriculture?
Mr Temple: Thank you very much.
It is not so much a pleasure to be here but we are really pleased
to be able to give evidence. Thank you for introducing my colleagues
but there are also several farmer members behind me who have been
severely affected by the effects of this flooding. There is no
definitive pattern or no definitive sector. The flooding occurred
in more than one part of the country. It is difficult to define
exactly what the details are, but I will give you one specific
example that has been absolutely verified. The East Riding of
Yorkshire Council has compiled a map of flooded land and it was
25,500 acres. At first sight it was difficult to distinguish where
this flooding was because crops were on the ground. The estimated
loss to agriculture in this area that has been verified is £18
million. That is a huge and considerable loss. For many farmers
it was the individual impact that was most severe. Some of them
lost complete crops in terms of potatoes and vegetables and these
were uninsured losses, you cannot insure these crops. Cereal crops
were also lost. We saw grassland badly affected, so we saw the
loss of winter feed, which has been very expensive to replace,
and we also saw farmers struggling to ensure they did not lose
stock because of the flooding. These are some of the really severe
effects that occurred. For different reasons in different parts
of the country, and we can maybe go into the details as to why
it happened, by and large all of them have real frustration at
the process. They do not expect to be able to prevent every flood
but some of the key aspects of drainage and water management have
been ignored for too long, and we will maybe explore those details
later.
Mr Clark: If I can just come in
there. One of the frustrations many farmers have felt is the long-term
impact of this flooding which has caused real concerns. We very
much appreciate the fact that there was some limited support through
the Rural Development Agencies but what we have found is that
support has been very insignificant in relation to the total cost
to many farmers which has been approaching hundreds of thousands
of pounds. The long-term impacts in terms of recovery from that
and the sort of support that we have seen made available has been
very variable from RDA to RDA. West Midlands RDA, for example,
provided business support and consultancy, other RDAs had the
same state aid limits but assisted in terms of a cash handout.
Many of the farmers we were talking to this morning were saying
long-term what they are looking for is not cash handouts but business
support and certainly proper maintenance of watercourses because
that is the key to getting the long-term sustainability of farming
in those areas.
Q797 Chairman:
Can we turn to Natural England and I would like to put a point
to you perhaps in general terms to start us off. From your standpoint,
what impact did the floods have on the natural environment and
were there any particular habitats or species that were particularly
and adversely affected?
Mr Wood: We cannot and we have
not tried to quantify that, Chairman. Certainly the environment
benefited from the fact that these floods happened in the summer
rather than the spring when populations of breeding birds would
have been much more significantly affected. We anticipate that
there will be losses of small mammals and invertebrates but we
do not monitor those closely enough to be able to know numbers.
Its more generalised impact on soil runoff into watercourses and
the impact there on water quality and fish stocks is likely to
have been considerable but, again, we are not able to quantify
that.
Q798 Chairman:
Mr Marsden, do you want to add something on that?
Mr Marsden: Just to add, we do
have some specific evidence of not the summer flood but of the
storm surge that occurred in this part of the country during November.
That had a significant impact on some of the coastal protected
sites. There was damage to the shingle ridges, there was damage
to the dune frontages and the bittern specifically will suffer
a potential decline in breeding range as a result. The impacts
will mostly be felt in Norfolk and Suffolk. One specific example
if I may, very briefly, of the summer floods was in north Yorkshire,
the Derwent Ings, where the flood meadow grasslands were quite
badly affected and that is a Natura 2000 protected area under
the Habitats Directive.
Mr Williams: Perhaps I could say to Mr
Temple that we wish you well in your election for the NFU and
to carry on the good work that you have done for the Union.
Chairman: Are you voting for him?
Q799 Mr Williams:
I do not think I have a vote in that election. Natural England
said that it was lucky for nature conservation that the flood
took place in the summer, but for the agricultural community this
was the worst time that a flood could have taken place and probably
the least likely time for flooding to take place. Could you make
any assessment of how likely this is to take place in the future?
If this had taken place in the winter then the losses to agriculture
would have been considerably less, would they not?
Mr Temple: Absolutely, and that
is a key point. A lot of this should be about looking forward
and could this be a regular occurrence. If we are going to take
climate change seriously the patterns of rainfall that are falling
seem to be larger and are unpredictable. It really does call out
in many ways for the need to enhance the level and ability to
drain land and move water, understand the issue and make sure
we try to prevent the worst effects. For many of the farmers behind
me it was a complete and catastrophic crop loss. The public is
feeling that now in the sense that vegetable prices are higher
than they would have been otherwise. We have to be aware globally
that soils are under greater pressure than ever before and the
resource we have in this country is more valuable. Forty per cent
of this country's vegetables are produced from the Fens. Fifty
per cent of our most productive soils are on floodplains.[1]
It is really relevant that we look at this as something that might
occur more frequently and upgrade and take seriously some of the
things that have come out of this, learn the lessons from this
year to try and avoid the worst of the effects and manage the
water more effectively.
1 Note by witness: Having checked the statistics this
sentence should read "Fifty per cent of our most productive
soils are below the 5 metre contour". Back
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