Winter Floods

Rehman Chishti Excerpts

Thursday 6th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Pickles]

My hon. Friend is perhaps one of the cleverest people to lobby a Minister. I got the message.

[Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) (Con)]

Will the Secretary of State confirm that the Government have put forward £4.6 million for better weather forecasting by using space technology, and that we are only one of three countries in the world doing that, so in future the Met Office will be able to predict these incidents better?

[Mr Pickles]

I have been involved with Cobra right the way through this process, and one thing that has genuinely surprised me is how frighteningly accurate the weather forecasting has been. If that is because of space technology, it is money well spent.