Environment secretary Hilary Benn has defended the government's funding of flood defences after MPs said that the amount of money pledged was "inadequate".

The Commons environment committee said on Wednesday that preparations to deal with the kind of flooding seen in parts of England last summer were in "an unclear and chaotic state".

It said that the extra £800m for flood risk management "looks far less impressive under close analysis and is not fully adequate to cope with the risks the country faces".

Committee chairman Michael Jack called on the government to come up with a "comprehensive and well funded" response.

"The public will not forgive the government if it is not seen to be responding to the lessons learnt from the floods of last summer," he said.

"Our report has shown how confused and chaotic was the infrastructure when it came to preventing and dealing with surface water flooding.

"The government must bring clarity to this situation so that the public, wherever they live, can have peace of mind that every effort is being made to avoid a repeat of the fiasco of last summer."

Benn told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme: "We have doubled the spending on flood defence in the last 10 years; we are increasing it by another £200m a year by 2010/11."

Pointing to the Association of British Insurers' recommendation that the government should be spending about £750m a year, he said spending would reach £850m by 2010/11.

"That's going to mean the Environment Agency has more money to spend on more flood defence schemes to protect more people's homes," he said.

Action

Recommendations from the report included giving the Environment Agency a role in dealing with surface water flooding and automatic registering of households for flood warnings in high risk areas.

Jack also called for the Environment Agency to appoint Sir Michael Pitt as "flood supremo" and said ministers should set out how it would pay for his recommendations.

Shadow environment secretary Peter Ainsworth said last summer's floods "revealed institutional confusion" and warned that the government must take "decisive action" or risk "sleepwalking the country into another flooding disaster".

"With climate change and increased risk of flooding, the government cannot simply cross its fingers and hope that we don't have a repeat of last year's rainfall," he said.

"The state of our flood defences present serious cause for concern and with 6,500 households still unable to return home after last year's floods, there is little hope we are better prepared for further flooding."

Liberal Democrat environment spokesman Steve Webb said the current levels of funding for flooding were "totally inadequate".

"The ABI, the government's own Foresight report and the agency responsible for flood defences are all calling for spending to be increased to £1bn, but their advice is falling on deaf ears.

"The £200m increase the government announced last year does not stand up to scrutiny when inflation and rising costs in the building trade are taken into consideration.

"It is too little to cope with the increasing risks the country faces, and doesn't even come fully into effect for another two years."