TWO South West MPs have called to rid the flooding terminology "one in 100 years" for fears it is misleading. 

Rebecca Pow, and Neil Parish, MP for Tiverton and Honiton and chairman for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) Committee, spoke during a House of Commons debate on Defra spending. 

MP Neil Parish said that flood prevention work is "fragmented" and warned of the threats posed by very high levels of rainfall in a short period of time. 

MP Parish said his committee had examined the term "one in 100 years flood". 

He said: "One of the problems is that if you have been flooded now and you are in a one in a 100 years risk, if you're not careful people are inclined to think for another 99 years they'll be safe from floods.

"Of course that is not the case - it's very much the case if you're in a high flood risk area you remain in that high flood risk area either until better defences are created or there is resilience measures put in place.

"But you'll probably always remain in a pretty high risk area."

Rebecca Pow, said: "Communication is very important in the case of flooding.

"One of the things that came out of that select committee report was perhaps we shouldn't use this terminology any more - calling things a one in 100 years flooding incident.

"We should have a different way of warning people about how serious floods are without these years attached to them, as it's misleading."

Mr Parish said Ms Pow was "absolutely right".