FactCheck: flood spending cut?

Background

As large areas of central England stand under water, with people forced from their homes and many others left without power, the search soon starts for someone to blame.

Could anything have been done to prevent this? Were flood defences adequate? The environment secretary Hilary Benn was called onto the BBC Radio's Today Programme to defend the government's efforts.

He was asked if the government had cut spending on flood defences. He maintained that it had not.

Benn: "The capital budget for investment in flood defence, Sarah, has not, repeat not, been cut. It has increased over the last decade from £300m to £600. I announced to the house of commons a couple of weeks ago that we will increase it to £800m to 2010/11."

Presenter: "Yes but overall, money that should be used in flood defences has been moved away from the environment agency. Is that not true?"

"No it is not the case that the capital budget for actually investment in flood defence works has been cut. It has not been cut."

What about the whole budget for flood defences, the presenter asked.

"There was some reduction last year for advance planning, preparing for new flood defence schemes. But that would have had no impact at all on what we have seen."

And finally, he was asked the question again: "Has any money been moved away that could have helped with this?"

"No," he answered. "Because the capital budget has not been affected and if you go back and compare with ten years ago there had been a very significant increase."

Analysis

His claim that the capital budget was not cut checks out. But according to the DEFRA website, the budget for 'flood risk management' for 2006-7 was cut. The site says:

"Ministers have decided to reduce spend on flood risk management by £15m in 2006-2007. This will be applied to the Environment Agency's flood risk management grant in aid which will be reduced from £428m to £413m."

As Hilary Benn says, this has not been taken from capital spending - the portion of the budget which covers the construction of new defences. So what does this money come from?

It includes "staff costs, operational spend, maintenance of defences etc." It's that final element, maintenance of defences, which sounds most worrying - and which doesn't exactly tally with what Hilary Benn said.

A spokeswoman for DEFRA confirmed that some of the cuts could have applied to the maintenance budget.

This recent spate of flooding, however, has not been caused by faulty defences - it is more to do with the effects of excessive rainfall. And the department was not aware of any flood defences that had failed - though there was one possible incident they were looking into.

FactCheck rating: 4

Verdict

The government may not have postponed or cancelled plans for new budget defences, but Hilary Benn's claim that the cuts only apply to preparing for future defences is at odds with the Defra website, which specifically mentions maintenance.

This is a small cut in percentage terms, but it could prove highly embarrassing politically - especially if some of the flood defences in the Severn and Thames valleys are shown to have been poorly maintained.

Sources

Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
Today Programme, 23 July 2007

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