MARIA EAGLE – Floods

ITV Daybreak

Wednesay, 12th February 2014

Speakers:        Maria Eagle

                        Ranvir Singh

                        Matt Barbet

RS:                  One of the things the PM was talking about yesterday, he said that there were 1,600 troops on the ground, and then he had to clarify that: actually there were 600 on the ground and 1,000 on standby. I mean, many people perhaps in those towns, will think what is the point of having them on standby?

ME:                 Well, I met some of the troops doing a great job on the River Parrett yesterday shoring up the river banks…

RS:                  You were in the Somerset Levels?

ME:                 I was in the Somerset Levels yesterday … shoring up the river banks, but I also talked to Heather who runs a Flooding on the Levels action group. She said that her organisation could do with some troops; she’s still being asked, for example, to take prescriptions to people who are flooded and those volunteers have been doing this for a month, six weeks: they’re exhausted and they don’t have any support from the troops or the police to do those simple things. She said to me ‘what I want to do is spend my time helping the community emotionally’, because people are starting to get very, very distressed by the ongoing problems. She said that’s what they should be doing, not the basic getting help to people that the troops and the police could help with.

RS:                  The Prime Minister says money is no object. We also heard Lord Smith, Chairman of the Environment Agency saying, actually, money is an object because we can’t protect everybody. Where do you stand on that?

ME:                 Well, we need to explore precisely what the Prime Minister meant with what he said yesterday. I mean, we all want to help as much as possible, as politicians. It’s not totally clear to me at which point money becomes an object from what the Prime Minister said, whether it’s just the relief effort; whether it is then putting more protection in place for the future. We need to explore that.

RS:                  What would Labour do?

ME:                 Well, we certainly want to help as much as possible. We’ve been critical of the cuts that have been made to the Environment Agency’s budget for flood protection, because this government have cut the amount of money that they spend on this to try and prevent this kind of thing happening.

MB:                 They would dispute that; they would say they’ve spent more in total…

ME:                 Well, that’s not true and we’ve shown that’s not true.

MB:                 Would you look at perhaps altering the foreign aid budget, because that’s something the Daily Mail is reporting today. They say they’ve got 100,000 people agreeing with them that perhaps cutting foreign aid to spend more money at home would be the way forward.

ME:                 I think the underlying assumption there is we don’t have any money other than the foreign aid budget, and I think even the Prime Minister has said very clearly that there is money available, so I think that’s a false choice.

RS:                  Just a word about Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, who was in I think Purley on Thames yesterday; our political editor Sue Jameson was telling us actually that he had some quite heated exchanges with people who thought perhaps he was just there for a photo opportunity.

ME:                 I think it’s unfortunate, you get accused of not going and then when you do go you get accused of going for a photo opportunity. So politicians, you know, you can’t win. But I think the important thing was he went and he listened to people, he spent some time there and I’m sure some people appreciated that. But you’ve got to recognise when people are flooded, it’s highly emotional and difficult and people want to hit out and I can totally understand that.

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