I pay tribute to my neighbour, my right hon. Friend Philip Dunne, with whom, in May, I will have had the privilege of serving for the last 19 years. This may be one of the last times—I hope it is not the last time—that we will be in a debate together, because my right hon. Friend is standing down at the next election. I take the opportunity to pay tribute to him and all the work that he has done, in a very collegiate way, with me and other Shropshire MPs. Over the last 19 years, there has not been a cigarette paper between us; the only time we have ever disagreed was over the referendum on our membership of the European Union. Apart from that, we have been as one in fighting collectively to secure resources for Shropshire.

The devastation that flooding causes, to which my right hon. Friend referred, is an extraordinarily emotive issue. Towns such as Shrewsbury were built at a time when we were fighting with the Welsh; they were fortifications that were built along the border. Shrewsbury therefore has a beautiful castle, and we have more listed buildings than any other town in England—that is our USP. It is a beautiful, historic town. Of course, the problem is that, for fortification and defence purposes, it was built right in the middle of a river loop. We would not do that now, obviously, because of the consequences of flooding. That is the historical context that we are grappling with.

In February 2019, I brought the then Secretary of State for DEFRA, my right hon. Friend Michael Gove, to a very flooded Shrewsbury. The anger, misery and frustration from the business owners that the Secretary of State met was palpable. We met with a local butcher, a local hairdresser and local residents. Those people are now being flooded annually. When I became MP for Shrewsbury 19 years ago, floods happened perhaps every five or 10 years. That is why I invited the Secretary of State to see at first hand the difficulties that we were facing.

As a result of the visit, we secured £50 million to help us with some small flood defence schemes, as well as an intention to set aside resources and work together to find, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow indicated, a long-term solution to managing the River Severn—Britain’s longest river. I have formed a caucus of 36 Members of Parliament who have the River Severn flowing through their constituencies. If there is one thing that I have learned as a Member of Parliament over the last 19 years, it is that it is difficult to achieve anything when operating in a silo by oneself. My strongest advice to the next generation of politicians who come in at the next election is if they really feel passionately about something, they should form a caucus and go in mob-handed and with large numbers to lobby DEFRA and the Treasury. That is why we have that caucus of 36 or 37 Members of Parliament who represent communities all the way down the River Severn.

Bizarrely but fortunately, our local Shropshire Council has done the same thing, reaching out to all the councils further downstream to form a consortium of councils that represent communities all the way along Britain’s longest river. We are therefore in a unique situation. We have a parliamentary caucus of all the Members of Parliament representing the communities in Parliament and we act collectively and in tandem here in the House of Commons. Our council has also taken control and is leading and managing, in a collaborative spirit, other councils along the River Severn to promote the River Severn Partnership and its work with the Environment Agency.

I want to thank the Minister for coming to Shrewsbury just before Christmas for an extremely welcome visit. He had the opportunity of visiting the Frankwell flood defences right in the heart of Shrewsbury and meeting the Environment Agency and River Severn Partnership representatives who included Mark Barrow and others from Shropshire Council. I was extremely grateful to the Minister for his remarks and his thanks to the hardworking people at the Environment Agency who do so much to alleviate and help my local residents. I hope that he will get a chance to visit Shropshire again before the end of this Parliament.

As my right hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow said, after four years of work we have finally submitted a business case to the Exchequer. We are not just asking DEFRA for a little bit of the money that has already been allocated to the Department, competing with other communities for that money: no, we are doing something different. We feel so strongly and so passionately about the issue that we are going above DEFRA and putting a business case directly to the Treasury. We are not pleading for money. We are not pleading for the £500 million required to tame Britain’s longest river. Rather, we are putting a methodical, carefully scripted and watertight—if hon. Members will pardon the pun—business case, worked in conjunction with the River Severn Partnership and the Environment Agency, which explains why and how Britain’s longest river can be managed and tamed for the benefit of all the communities in the catchment area, for that £500 million.

The Chancellor has asked me to continue to engage with one of his most senior civil servants, Simon Finkelstein, and I have had the opportunity of presenting that business case to him in conjunction with my right hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow. The Chancellor has said to me that we are unique, to his knowledge, in the sense that we have created a cross-party caucus and that our councils are operating as a consortium. Some other Member of Parliament may contradict me here—I would be interested to see what they are doing—but according to the Chancellor, there is no other project of this kind, where all the MPs and councils along a river are working together to put forward a business case to manage it holistically. I think that is extremely important.

It is important to point out that the business case outlines a gross value added uplift for the west midlands and our region of between £100 billion and £150 billion, if we tame the River Severn. You do the maths, Mr Efford—I am sure your maths is better than mine—but that is for an investment of £500 million. Yes, some people say to me, “My goodness me, £500 million sounds like a lot of money. Crikey! Are you realistically going to extract that much from the Treasury?” Well, look at the business case: for an investment of £500 million, we get a GVA uplift of £100 billion to £150 billion.

Where will that GVA uplift come from? I can take the Minister to hotels in my constituency that cannot get insurance because they flood every year—all the goods have to be thrown out and cannot be replaced through insurance. I can take him to huge areas of land in my constituency that are ripe for development, such as the brownfield sites that we simply cannot touch because of flooding. I can take the Minister to many residents who are flooded every single year, or to see the council so that it can explain the sheer cost of the clear-up every single year. I believe that Shropshire Council, just in the last flooding alone, spent £2 million on clear-up. If we add that up along the whole of the River Severn, we start to see how that number grows.

Only a few of us here in the House of Commons have done business studies at university and worked in the international commercial world. I am one of them, and I am very proud to have come from commerce into the House of Commons. I am passionate that more people from business come here. As somebody who has studied business studies and worked in commerce, I feel very strongly that lobbying Government should be done from a commercial, business-case perspective. That is why I very much hope the Minister will look at our business case and work in conjunction with us to secure that funding from the Treasury.

We need a holistic solution to managing the River Severn, which could of course be replicated across the whole of the United Kingdom. If we succeed on the River Severn, and we demonstrate that we can manage and tame a river by paying farmers and landowners further upstream to hold on to that water, they will be incentivised. A key concept of emotional intelligence is interdependence. From an interdependence perspective, we need to give a financial incentive to people further upstream to hold on to water by paying them for that.

Of course, we have all built little flood defences in our constituencies, but think about how counter-intuitive it is to say, “I am going to protect myself and push the problem further downstream and let you deal with it.” That is not interdependence—“I’m alright, Jack. I’m going to protect myself, but you can deal with the problem.” No, that is wrong. We have to think in a more interdependent way for the whole of our communities. Hold on to water further upstream, and pay those farmers and landowners to protect the whole of the area.

If we succeed in Shropshire and on the River Severn, it would not just be a prototype for the rest of the United Kingdom; it could be a massive export opportunity. I went to places in the world when I worked in commerce, as I am sure the Minister has, such as Bangladesh and others. I have seen not only the sheer devastation of flooding in countries such as Bangladesh, but the sheer number of people who have lost their lives as a result of flooding in communities and societies even more vulnerable than our own. I would like to see greater collaboration between the Minister’s Department and the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office on how our aid budget is used for scientific research and technology development, not only to help ourselves here in the United Kingdom, but for that work to then be either exported or given in international aid to other countries. I would be interested to see if the Minister agrees and if he can give any additional information on that.

Finally, I pay tribute to Mark Barrow from Shropshire Council, who takes the lead on the River Severn Partnership. He has been enormously supportive to me, my team and the River Severn caucus here in the House of Commons. Having represented a border community, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow has done, for the last 19 years, I am extremely cognisant of the importance of the Union, as I have already alluded to. I am one of those politicians who fundamentally believes in the Union of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. We should not cut up the individual parts of this island, but do everything conceivable to bring it together. I believe that this is one of those projects where working in conjunction with our friends and neighbours across the border in Wales could send a very powerful signal that we will transcend the artificial borders between us and work collaboratively to find solutions for helping our residents.