By Hugh Bayley MP - 9th February 2011
To cut funding for flood defences when the risk is increasing is "ludicrous and irresponsible", says Hugh Bayley MP.
The government has admitted, in answer to parliamentary questions, that it is cutting funding for flood defences by 27 per cent even though they know that the risks of flooding are rising.
Floods minister, Richard Benyon MP, says: "The latest UK climate science confirms that rising sea levels and more severe and frequent rainstorms are likely to occur – resulting in increased flood and coastal erosion risk," and, according to work carried out by the Environment Agency, "river flows may increase by 20 per cent by 2080".
I have succeeded in obtaining an adjournment debate and will press the government to reinstate the funding for flood defences in the chancellor's spring budget which I believe should moderate the cuts to public expenditure to reduce the rising unemployment and the risk of a double dip recession.
Although nationally the government is reducing its capital budget for flood risk management by 27 per cent, in the Yorkshire and North East region the government has confirmed that investment on flood risk management will fall by 29 per cent - from £45.8m during 2009-10 under the Labour government to £32.5m in 2011-12.
This, the Environment Agency has warned, means that all the flood defence schemes in the region, including the one for the Leeman Road/Water End area of York, which was going to be built in 2011-12, will be delayed indefinitely.
I have campaigned for improvements to flood defences for York's Leeman Road and Water End areas ever since the big flood in 2000. At the time hundreds of soldiers and local residents worked through the night to build a sandbag wall on top of the existing, but inadequate, flood defences to save a thousand homes from being flooded out. I am appalled and shocked that the spending on flood defences is being cut when the risk of flooding is getting worse all the time.
The government has admitted that the risk of flooding is getting worse every year. The 2000 floods came very close to destroying the homes of thousands of constituents in the Leeman Road area of York. To cut funding when the flood risk is increasing is ludicrous and irresponsible. It will cost more in the long run than the short-term savings that will be made.
The Labour government more than doubled funding for flood risk management from £249m in 2000-01 to £514m in 2008-09. I am appalled and shocked to see the Conservative-led government cutting the budget and I hope they will think again and allow the improvement to flood defences in my constituency to go ahead.
Hugh Bayley was elected as Labour MP for York Central in 1992. The Labour group leader on the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, he currently sits on the Commons international development committee.
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