Severe flooding continues to affect parts of southern Britain, triggering a political storm over the response to the floods, how prepared the country was and – essentially – who’s going to carry the blame, politically speaking.
Voice of Russia hosted a discussion on the subject featuring:
Sunny Hundal, political commentator, editor of the Liberal Conspiracy
Ben Harris Quinney, chairman of the Bow Group – a Conservative think tank, director at Tory Grassroots
Jane Guise, chief executive of the Royal Bath & West Society, based in Somerset
John Rentoul, chief political commentator for The Independent on Sunday
Karl Davis, writer, stand-up comedian, train driver & trade union activist
Soundbites:
Sunny Hundal: “There is one key measurement that the government is always judged on: competence. I think there will be some people questioning whether the government is competent enough to cope with crises when confronted… This government, when it came to power, immediately massively cut the budget of Defra and the Environment Agency because it felt that investment into floods and dealing with the effects of climate change was unnecessary spending…
John Rentoul: “The underlying causes of flooding are that sometimes it rains quite a lot in Britain. If you want to spend as much as it takes to defend every house in Britain from the possibility of flooding then it’s going to be too expensive. There’s an awful lot of hypocrisy and nonsense being talked about… To say money is no object is a peculiar thing to say… It suggests that the period of austerity is over and that the Conservative Party is now the party of free-rein public spending.”
Ben Harris Quinney: “[The cost of the floods] isn’t going to run to more than five or ten billion pounds, which is relatively small in government terms. As Nigel Farage pointed out, it’s roughly the same amount of money that we’re spending on international aid. If we can afford to do that we can certainly afford to take care of our own citizens in our rural communities. If we can’t afford to do both we should take care of our rural communities first before sending international aid abroad.”
Karl Davis: “Nobody would begrudge any rural citizens being protected but let’s not allow this to be turned into pointing the finger at other groups of people. We’ve got to choose whether we look after rare wildlife or people but having said that wildlife plays a pivotal role in any ecosystem. This all comes down to a complete lack of medium to long-term planning. Our Environment Agency… is too expansive: they can’t adequately keep their eye on the ball. We can’t make that a party-political point.”
Jane Guise: “It’s been recognised for a long, long time that there needed to be some serious water management of the Somerset Levels which are reclaimed land anyway. Nobody’s really taken any notice despite in 2012 there being over 12 months of flooding on some farmlands and roads with disastrous consequences. We tried to start stirring up some enthusiasm to manage the water levels but it wasn’t until a second disaster took place that people really sat up and paid it any notice.”