Parliament
Draft Flood Reinsurance (Amendment) Regulations 2022
Published date : 09 March, 2022
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Robertson.Sadly, I can speak with some personal experience of how much of a violation it can feel like when people’s properties are flooded. In many ways, it is worse than a burglary: all the stuff is still there, but it is damaged beyond repair. People have the heartache of throwing it out themselves and seeing everything done to their home to improve it damaged beyond recovery.
The often tortuous process that one has to go through when it comes to making insurance claims—getting the works done, reacquiring the goods that are replaceable and trying to forget about what is not replaceable—is as absolutely nothing compared to the agonies people have gone through in years past, when they were unable to get insured because of the risk that the properties were felt to be in. We therefore very much welcomed the flood reinsurance scheme when it was introduced. It has been a vital intervention in the market to ensure that insurers are able to serve the public in the manner that we would all hope they are able to. Also, the operation has successfully managed to increase the uptake of flood protection measures for those covered under its auspices.
Clearly, the draft regulations are designed to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the existing scheme, and to create greater opportunities to improve quality so that what goes back in structural repairs to properties is better than that which was damaged and required replacing.
We hope and believe that that will be the effect of the measures. On that basis, the regulations enjoy the support of my party. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s answers to the questions posed by the Labour spokesperson, the hon. Member for Leeds North West.
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