Spending on flood defences

Yesterday in the Commons Gordon Brown said "expenditure on flood defences is being increased from £300 million to £600 million, and it will reach £800 million by 2011" and I have heard the same line being repeated without challenge on the radio by other Labour spokesmen. I thought I would check, so here is an article from The Guardian in August 2006, I have reproduced much of the article as I find it so interesting and so much at variance with the Government line, the emphasis is mine. "The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs was in financial crisis last night after being told to cut its budget by nearly £200m over the next six months. The Guardian has learned that the 7% savings are expected to bite deeply into flood defence work, nature conservation and canal repair schemes as well as a host of scientific bodies and research groups.
Some of the most swingeing cuts will be borne by the Environment Agency, which is expected to cut £14.9m on flood defences and £9m on environmental protection. Last night it emerged that many people living in vulnerable areas may not get additional flood defences this year and could end up paying higher insurance rates. The cost-cutting has been ordered largely to make up for losses incurred in a disastrous revamp of the farm subsidy system.

Leaked letters seen by the Guardian from Baroness Barbara Young, chief executive of the agency, show the government is seeking urgent cuts in budgets across the department. "The fact that they [the cuts] have to be achieved in just over half the financial year will mean that some of the reductions will involve delaying things we would really have preferred not to delay. The work we need to do is challenging", says Baroness Young in an email to senior staff. The cuts are expected to be mainly in the management and maintenance of flood defences, which can become weakened in storms and extreme weather, increasingly forecast for Britain. The agency has already had to cut its budget for flood defences heavily this year.An agency spokeswoman said details of where the cuts would be made had yet to be finalised, but that no capital projects would be cut. "It will be done in the least damaging way possible," she said."

Looks to me as though the flood defence budgets had already been heavily cut before this August 2006 leak and were then further cut. Why is this not put to Gordon Brown or his cronies? Why is the British press and media so supine? See my last article for the answer...