Maria Eagle MP, Labour’s Shadow Environment Secretary, responding to the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee report on the winter floods, said:

“In February David Cameron said ‘money was no object’ when it came to flood defence funding yet today the Select Committee says that the funding the Government describe as additional is actually only re-allocated. David Cameron’s ‘promise’ has predictably proved totally false.

“The Tory-led Government’s response to the winter floods was slow and chaotic. Ministers cut the funding Labour provided in government and the Select Committee says they are now unable to deal with the long term flood risk.

“They failed to prepare for the floods, they don’t take the threat of climate change seriously and they don’t have a coherent strategy to deal with the problem in the future.”