Flooding in Oxford and Abingdon - Harris

12.00.00am BST (GMT +0100) Wed 25th Jul 2007

Evan Harris MP discusses the impact of the floods in Oxford and Abingdon

The water level was clearly rising sharply when I left Osney Island at 3 o'clock on Tuesday of this week to go to Parliament to hear the Environment Secretary, Hilary Benn's, statement on flooding, respond to it, and then meet him afterwards. I was therefore surprised to hear Mr Benn say in his statement that not only had the Thames in Abingdon flooded on Monday night (it hadn't, the River Oxon had flooded on Saturday night!), but also that he anticipated no additional, significant flooding in Oxfordshire.

I told him I thought that was wrong, and I headed back to Oxford to witness the sad sight of the flooding of homes on Osney Island and in roads off the Botley Road. Why did the Government and the Environment Agency who advises them get that prediction wrong and why was there not more warning of the extensive flooding in the Ock Valley in Abingdon on Saturday night? What I do know is that making such predictions in a complex water system like Oxford is very difficult because of the complex effects of tributaries, the saturation of the flood plain, and the effect of downstream "outflow" factors.

The main point I made to the Environment Secretary was that these floods are not 1 in 40 year occurrences since this has now happened three years in eight (2000, 2003 and now). What we need are proper flood defences to make them rare events again. I asked the Minister to "frontload" the funding of the flood prevention scheme that is planned for the Oxford area so that it can be built as soon as possible.

I am urgently looking into what needs to be done to help the clear-up of flooded areas but for now I want to record my thanks to the Police, Fire and other services for the immense effort they have put in over the last few days and the days to come.