As someone suggested, I wrote to my local MP (Owen Paterson) in connection
with BW getting some of the £110 million being allocated for the cost of
floods. I suggested he might suggest to those in charge that BW should get
money. (Especially as his constituency has canals which are suffering due to
DEFRAs cutting grants and that the maintenance on said canals might be further
compromised if BW have to spend money on floods.)
Unfortunately my MP is now getting on in the Conservative party so his
standard tactic is to send any letter sent to the Government department
responsible and send their reply back with a 'There you are' note. And this is
what happened in this case...
This means I am now in possession of a letter on DEFRA note paper from...
Jonathan Shaw MP, Minister for Marine, Landscape & Rural Affairs and
Minister for the South East.
The letter is interesting in two ways. The first is it was obviously written
by a human or computer waffle generator and the Second is how little interest
the Minister seems to have in BW and the waterways in their charge...
Owen Paterson is told, 'BW spend £6 million on dredging and may need to
spend more on flood damage. (?) This is an operational matter for BW and their
approach must be proportionate: it has to consider priorities and draw up a
programme, which balances the needs of the network.'
The Minister continues, 'BWs contribution to flood management on a national
scale is quite limited as locally canals are not designed to take flood flows,
but locally its contribution can be quite significant.' (Does he mean the -
quite significant - River Severn?) 'BW is currently working on a national
flood management plan which will set the framework... This is due for
completion at end 2008'
Finally on the money for floods the Minister informs that, 'It has not been
decided how the money will be allocated but whilst BW's claim will be taken
into account, given the scale of wider impacts it is unlikely that any
allocation to BW will be a significant sum'
From the tone of the letter one gets the impression that the Minister is not
exactly striving to help BW in their money problems and has, indeed, distanced
himself from them as in merely wanting occasional required reports on his desk.
Given this I wonder if this Minister is any better than the last no-hoper as
far has furthering waterways causes are concerned. Certainly there is a lot of
room for improvement but at the moment I award the Minister Null points!
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