You know how it all works. A natural disaster occurs, the emergency services and armed forces come to the rescue and a few days later the prime minister turns up in a pair of wellies to offer his full support. And so it is, once again, following the terrible floods in Cumbria in Scotland. Actually, I support 100% David Cameron’s presence in the flood zones. Like him or not, it is a primary duty of the top politician in the land to be in attendance and he has fulfilled that duty. But it is when it all descends into politics that I get annoyed.
You could have predicted, almost word for word, what the politicians would say. The government says they have spent more on flood defences than ever before and the opposition says they have cut spending.
Only a few weeks have passed since the Chancellor of the Exchequer was announcing savage public spending cuts to various government departments, breezing through a myriad of statistics with barely anyone noticing. For example, the Department of the Environment saw day to day cuts of 15% removed from its budget, although £2.3 billion would be kept for flood defence emergencies. Now, we have no idea whether that is sufficient money. It certainly sounds a lot, but it doesn’t seem to have done much to help the poor people who have been flooded out, their second “once in a lifetime” flood.
I watched the House of Commons debate, such as it was, and I wasted valuable minutes of my life. Liz Truss, the environment secretary, didn’t have to try too hard given the paucity of the so-called opposition and didn’t even feel the need to answer questions, the best of which was from Dennis Skinner who said the firefighting jobs should not be cut given the importance of the work they do at times like these. He was wasting his time too.
Better still was the PM again, saying that “money is no object” for the flood victims. My first and overwhelming reaction is good, money should be no object but second reaction is this: what? One minute Cameron and Osborne are, laughably, comparing the UK to Greece, saying that the credit card has been maxed out, and the next the government has money to burn, lots of it, as much as you need, the money pot goes on forever.
I am more inclined, or perhaps it is less disinclined, to believe Cameron than I am Osborne. Sometimes the former acts as if he really does get how ordinary people live their lives. The occasional ray of honesty shines through, but when Osborne speaks I find myself reading between every line for each subtle, misleading nuance. But here we go again. We must cut public spending except at times when we don’t.
And it’s this public spending malarkey that matters. Put in the round, cutting public spending sounds harmless enough, cutting out waste, concentrating on the frontline; that sort of thing. Except that it never works out like that. Public spending for flood defences, as well as funding local councils to protect and maintain the infrastructure, is needed, unless you don’t really care about flood defences, for example.
Whilst the government cannot spend, spend, spend forever, the money has not run out. And assistance for flood victims, immediate damage control and future improvements to defences are both needed.
As climate change takes full effect, “once in a lifetime” extreme events will become more frequent. I do not know whether the £2.3 billion sum set aside, for the whole country, is enough. I’d like the government properly held to account because figures seem to equal spin to me and not solutions for those whose lives are being ruined, again.
