After Hilary Benn denied the Environment Agency had fallen down on the job by not keeping enough water courses, drains and ditches in good condition when I asked him about it, I now hear he is going to have a full enquiry into what went wrong before this summer’s floods.

The Enquiry should ask the Agency why more than half the flood defences were not in a satisfactory or good condition last year. It should ask what action is now being taken to clean, widen and improve ditches and surface water pipes and conduits. It should ask if there can be more agreements with farmers over flooding water meadows and other low lying land rather than flooding homes, with suitable compensation for farmers if there are crops on the fields. It should ask why this government over the last ten years has demanded so many homes be built on the flood plains of the south-east, and whether this will now change given?? the warning we have had this summer about the folly of such a course.

It is not good enough for the government to say the weather is to blame. The Dutch in the sixteenth century skillfully kept out the?? waves of the North Sea from their low lying land by good flood management. Surely the UK five hundred years later can manage to do the same when it rains heavily?

??The other government response is they will increase the amount of money they will spend on flood defences. The prior question to ask,?? is why do we get so little for the ??1000 million plus a year we spend through the Environment Agency already?

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