Parliamentary debate on flood defences in Norfolk by Mr. Keith Simpson MP for Mid Norfolk in Westminster Hall 6 May 2008:
I requested the debate because flood defences in Norfolk are a crucial local issue. It must be seen, of course, against a wider background. We are all conscious today that whatever problems we face, they pale into insignificance compared with the news of what has happened in Burma, where a cyclone has killed a minimum of 15,000 people. We know that many other low-lying parts of the world face appalling threats. I think in particular of the people of Bangladesh.
For many of us, the Norfolk coast is about being at the seaside. I can recall, when I was a child—it may be difficult for some people to believe that I was once a child—of about seven or eight, with glasses and an incipient moustache, being on the beach at Cromer. Later, I was with my son George, perhaps on the beach at Heacham with the tide out, building sandcastles. As you know, Mr. Martlew, however well one builds sandcastles—as a military historian, I did so in depth, using stone and with as much defensive preparation as possible—when the tide comes in, it always sweeps them away. There could be a sense that the flooding that we face from both the sea and on the land is somehow inevitable, and that there is therefore nothing much that we can do about it. I do not believe that that is so.
Read the full transcript of the debate in the Commons Hansard
