Flooding

David Anderson Excerpts

Monday 26th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Paterson]

I am very happy to join my hon. Friend in paying tribute to the Environment Agency and everyone in those different services and councils who have worked so hard on the ground and made an enormous difference.

[Mr David Anderson (Blaydon) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State quite rightly praises the work of the emergency services. What will we do going forward given that fire services in places such as Tyne and Wear are having their budgets reduced by 35%, 1,500 local authority workers in Gateshead have been sacked and the Environment Agency in the north-east faces a 20% cut in resources? How will we manage these situations then? When will he stop putting ideology before practicality?

[Mr Paterson]

We have provided £2.5 million to fire authorities to help on this issue. Under very difficult circumstances—I do not want to make tiresome political points, but we inherited them from the previous Government—we have managed to hold up the investment in flood defence schemes. We are looking at a 6% reduction over the whole spending period compared with that over the previous spending period, which under the current circumstances shows the priority we are giving to these schemes.