Diana Johnson: Communities are left to sink or swim as support over floods starts to dry up

I will never forget that fateful week in late June 2007. I was at the House of Commons when the initial flooding started to happen. It was Tony Blair’s last few days as Prime Minister.

The news that I was hearing from Hull on the Monday was increasingly worrying. It culminated in the very sad death of Michael Barnett. The television pictures of that tragedy are seared into my memory.

The damage that I saw in parts of Hull North and elsewhere upon my return home was shocking. I met families forced to live in caravans for many months and saw people heartbroken by the damage to their homes and the loss of cherished possessions. It was a terrible time.

The weeks, months and years that followed saw a huge increase in my casework relating to the after-effects of the flooding. This included problems around the availability of affordable home insurance cover with reasonable premiums and excesses. There was also the dispute with Yorkshire Water over the failure of Bransholme Pumping Station, which led to many homes being flooded in the Kingswood area of Hull North.

Hull MPs were involved in discussions with the Government about Flood Aid and the investment needed to avoid future flooding. This would be to minimise the risk from coastal flooding or surface water flooding caused by exceptional rainfall overwhelming drainage systems – the cause of Hull’s flooding in 2007. The Coulthard and Pitt Reports followed.

The latest Environment Agency figures reveal that the cost of a major coastal flooding event could reach £16bn by 2040 and that spending on national flood defences must be increased by £20m each year to at least £1.04bn annually by 2035.

In 92 constituencies, there are 1,000 or more homes in high risk of flooding, according to the Association of British Insurers (ABI) analysis of the latest Environment Agency flood data.

There is currently great concern about the future availability of affordable insurance cover for these flood risk areas.

The previous Labour government negotiated a voluntary Statement of Principles with the insurance industry to guarantee universal flood insurance coverage for homes in affected areas in return for guarantees about the level of government flood defence investment. Premiums and excesses went up, but insurance cover just about remained available.

Labour increased funding each year after the 2007 floods from £264m in 2007-08 to £354m in 2010-11, to ensure that adequate progress could be made in protecting homes and businesses. However, the Tory-led Government is cutting flood defence spending by 27 per cent.

State funding of flood defences has dropped by a sizeable £95m since 2010/11.

Before the 2010 election, and in full knowledge of the deficit, Lib Dems demanded even more flood defence funding than Labour was allocating. Now Lib Dems back the 27 per cent cut.

The Statement of Principles is due to expire in June 2013. Up to 200,000 homes in England and Wales have been warned they will struggle to obtain adequate flood insurance cover after this date.

In March, the coalition Flood Minister, Richard Benyon, indicated that the Government would not renew the Statement of Principles with the insurance industry.

He said that households should instead be encouraged to invest in their own flood defences, including the installation of air brick covers, non-return valves and seals for cat flaps. This is simply an inadequate piecemeal response to the threat of flooding to communities. The message to flood risk area such as Hull is that “you’re on your own”, certainly not “all in it together”.

It is alarming if the onus for flood protection is now moving from the state and communities onto individuals and households. Even the most free market economists see infrastructure such as flood defences as a public good.

Other advanced nations have various schemes in which the state takes a measure of collective responsibility for flood protection and ensuring insurance cover for its citizens in flood risk areas. The coalition is going in the opposite direction.

Five years on, flooding is still a worry for Hull people – indeed across Yorkshire – and one which still has the potential to hold back the local housing market and the wider economy. Science tells us that climate change is the primary cause of the volatile weather and rising sea levels means that flooding is predicted to be a more regular occurrence in future.

With the imminent arrival of Siemens and the wider green energy industry into Hull our region could play a leading role in our national effort to fight climate change – the cause of flooding – as well as giving us a broad-based secure energy supply for the future.

We just need the Government to maintain proper support for renewable energy and for communities in flood risk areas.