I completely agree with the hon. Lady that affordable insurance needs to be available. Speaking from personal experience, as I said, I was flooded in 2007. My then insurance company did an amazing job of paying out to remedy the damage, but then said the year later that it did not want me as a client, so that is an important point.
Sometimes, I wonder why flooding in London does not attract more attention. When a member of the general public thinks about flooding, they probably think about flooded fields in Shropshire or coastal communities in Cornwall and Devon, but the reality is that flooding in London is a huge issue, and there are many reasons for that.
We have a Victorian sewerage system that was built for way fewer people. We have clearly seen climate change, with warmer air that can carry more moisture, hence more rainfall. We have also seen densification and concreting over in London, especially central London, so there simply are not as many places for surface water to flow. This is a very real issue; it is certainly one of the top issues in my constituency, and it will continue to be so, because the risks of these flooding events will continue to grow—because of climate change, as I have mentioned, but also because of population growth and the need for more housing.
I have set out the magnitude of the problem and the frequency of these events, and have said that we need short-term and long-term solutions, but it is worthwhile looking back at what has happened, because as I say, this has been going on for 20 years. After the devastating flood in 2007, Thames Water decided to put into effect a strategy to deal with the Counters Creek catchment area, which includes Kensington and Chelsea and Hammersmith and Fulham. Its proposal, which it put to Ofwat and which Ofwat agreed to, was for—in effect—a 5 km relief sewer tunnel, and to add lots of individual flood defence mechanisms to houses, called FLIPs. It was agreed that that should take place in the period 2015 to 2020, and the expenditure was going to be £300 million. It was all agreed to and the work was due to be completed by 2020. However, Thames Water decided not to proceed with that relief tunnel. Indeed, it said that one of the reasons for not proceeding was that the