Source: BBC Radio 4: Today Programme
URL: N/A
Date: 10/02/2014
Event: EA document from 2008: "Take action to increase the frequency of flooding..."
Credit: BBC Radio 4
People:
Evan Davis: Well, when things get bad, there is a tendency to point a finger of blame at someone - anyone, perhaps. Sometimes, of course, that's reasonable and we must hold people to account for the mistakes they've made. Sometimes it's unreasonable - you can't blame people for unusually heavy rain. Well, you can - but it's always not very constructive. In the case of the floods, there is no doubt who has been at the end of the finger - the Environment Agency and its embattled chairman, the peer Lord Smith. Communities Secretary Eric Pickles was on the Andrew Marr show yesterday, and he certainly wasn't defending Lord Smith.
Eric Pickles: Oh, we made a mistake, there's no doubt about that. And we perhaps relied too much on the Environment Agency's advice. I think we recognise now that we should have done - we should have dredged, and I think it's important now we get on the process of getting those people back into their houses, once we're able to really do some serious pumping - at the moment, the level's too high.
Andrew Marr: So, don't you think that ministers, including the Prime Minister's office, should apologise to people like Edwin White, the farmer who said "You need to dredge, now".
Eric Pickles: Well, I'll apologise. I apologise unreservedly, and I'm really sorry that we took the advice of what we thought we were dealing with experts.
Evan Davis: Eric Pickles yesterday, with a kind of apology, I suppose you'd say. So is it reasonable to blame the EA, the Environment Agency, for problems now being suffered? Or is that simply an unhelpful response - politicising an issue that should be beyond party policy? Lord Smith, Chairman of the Environment Agency, joins us now. Good morning.
Lord Smith: Good morning.
Evan Davis: Did you watch the Andrew Marr show yesterday?
Lord Smith: I didn't, but I have read the transcripts and I've heard what Mr. Pickles had to say. And I have to say I've kept my council, up to now, about issues like government funding and government rules about what the Environment Agency can spend and what it can't spend. But when I hear someone criticising the expertise and the professionalism of my staff in the Environment Agency, who know more about flood risk management - a hundred times more about flood risk management - than any politician ever does, I'm, I'm afraid, not going to sit idly by. The Environment Agency is bound by the rules that are laid down by government, so when someone says that they followed the advice of the Environment Agency, what they were actually doing was following the Treasury rules which are laid down that say how much we can spend and how much we can't spend, on any individual flood defence scheme.
Evan Davis: Can you explain those Treasury rules, because you say in the Guardian today you did put £400,000 on the table to help with dredging in Somerset, the maximum amount the treasury rules allowed us to do. So what is the rule that says you couldn't have said "Look, we need to do more, there. We want to spend more, there"?
Lord Smith: It's a cost-benefit rule that we have to abide by with any flood defence scheme that we do, whether we're building millions of pounds' worth of flood defences round a city or whether we're looking at the dredging of a river. And it has to come to at least £8 of benefit to every £1 of cost. And on the basis of that calculation, it's determined what we can contribute to any particular flood scheme. Now, in Somerset, the maximum that we were allowed, under those rules, to do, was £400,000. We put that money on the table 12 months ago. We said "Yes" - because of the local concern about the lack of dredging and the impact of the floods back in 2012 - we said "Yes, we will put the maximum we can do on the table - here it is". And now we need other people to come to the table as well. That didn't happen. We weren't able to start the full dredging that would have been able to start if that extra money had come into play. What the situation, of course now has completely changed, because not only has the government come up with some extra money for Somerset, but they've also said the Treasury rules won't apply, for the Somerset Levels.
Evan Davis: Right. Can I just ask: have you spoken - I don't know if you've spoken to Owen Paterson, he's obviously - he had a detached retina, has been in hospital. But is he supporting you? We understand that he was against Pickles and was defending you. Is that your understanding?
Lord Smith: I have indeed spoken with Owen Paterson by text, and - because, of course, he's still recovering from his operation - he has been hugely supportive throughout of the Environment Agency staff and its work, and I very much appreciate that, and I've passed that message on to our staff. We have enormously dedicated, professional, hard-working staff, who've been out, night and day. They still are -
Evan Davis: I understand that, I mean -
Lord Smith: - with the Thames rising, at the moment, we've got our staff working their hearts out, to try and do what we can to cope.
Evan Davis: But I listened to Eric Pickles - sorry to cut in - but I listened to Eric Pickles and took that as an incitement to resign, on your part - he said he wouldn't wear a "Save Chris Smith" T-shirt, in the event that you went.
Lord Smith: Well, I have absolutely no intention of resigning, and I've had messages from our staff all around the country, saying "Please don't. Thank you for supporting us - we are going to carry on doing our very level best, to cope with the absolutely extreme weather that we've been having." And this is the wettest winter on record, that we've ever had. And that's - that's the reason that places are being flooded. We need to try and help the people in those tragic circumstances, as very best we can.
Evan Davis: I wonder whether your line on dredging in Somerset, which has been, I suppose, the focus of all the criticism - where it all started - I wonder whether your line on that has changed. Because what you've just said, what you've written in the Guardian, implies that it was Treasury rules what stopped you dredging. Yet when you were on the programme a couple of weeks ago - I'll play you the clip, actually. I'll play the clip, because it didn't sound like you were keen to dredge, but the Treasury were binding your hands. This is what you said at the time.
Lord Smith: Dredging, er, would probably make a small difference. It's not the comprehensive answer that some people have been claiming it is. It's why we began, back in October, November last year, to dredge some of the particular choke points on the River Tone and the River Parrett, because it can, I believe, make a contribution to solving some of these problems.
Mishal Husain: All right. If -
Lord Smith: It's not - it's not a wholesale solution. And we need to look at a whole range of other things, as well.
Evan Davis: Right, now I'm not suggesting there's, sort of, a complete contradiction with what you're saying now, to what you were saying then. But it does sound now as though you've changed the story. Then, it was... go on.
Lord Smith: I wouldn't disagree with anything that I said there. Dredging the Tone and the Parrett will - and we've always said this - be able to make some contribution to getting the water away faster, once the flooding happens in the Somerset Levels. But it has to be only part of a much more comprehensive solution. And that's what I've always said. And indeed, when I was talking with the local residents, back last Friday, down there - when the media scrum allowed me to have some conversations with local residents - I - they were absolutely in agreement with that, that we need to look at land management higher up the catchment, we need to look at the pumping stations, as well as looking at dredging.
Evan Davis: But you're talking as though money is a big part of the issue, that the cost-benefit analysis rules provided that you couldn't actually spend an unlimited amount of money -
Lord Smith: Money absolutely is part of the issue.
Evan Davis: Well, I'm looking here - I'm looking here at a document, it's called "Flood Risk: Parrett Catchment Flood Management Plan". It's an Environment Agency document from March 2008. it has a map of Somerset. It has areas, "units", as it calls them, of different actions. "Somerset Levels and Moors" - this is what it describes: "Take action to increase the frequency of flooding, to deliver benefits locally or elsewhere". This was the strategic plan. It wasn't some accident. This wasn't about saving money on dredging - it was the plan, to let this part of the world be flooded more often.
Lord Smith: No, that certainly hasn't been the - certainly since I've been Chairman of the Environment Agency, which was after that document, which I have to confess I've never seen and I've never taken any notice of. The important thing with the Somerset Levels is trying to protect the way of life that's been there for hundreds of years, and - the Somerset Levels tends to flood in the winter. What we have to try and do -
Evan Davis: This was taking action - sorry, this was the plan, this appears to be Environment Agency policy - unless you tell me it isn't - it appears to be a written document -
Lord Smith: It certainly - it certainly is not -
Evan Davis: - that says: take action to increase - increase the frequency of flooding.
Lord Smith: It's - that certainly is not Environment Agency policy, as of now. Hasn't been, for the last five and a half years, while I've been Chairman.
Evan Davis: So isn't it rather odd that there wasn't dredging, while the policy changed from whatever the policy was, in this document to the one we have now. Was there an announced change of policy? I mean, you could make the defence that this is a sensible policy, that maybe you do have to sacrifice some parts of land in order to save others. But that's not a defence we've really heard, from the Environment Agency, or not one we've heard set out very well. But we do have a document that says this appears to have been what people who've thought about it think ought to happen.
Lord Smith: The, um er - when you're talking about sacrificing some areas of land in order to protect others, that is the case in some places around the coast. We've been lambasted by the local MP for what he calls a "bird sanctuary" at the Steart Peninsula, which is also on the Somerset coast. That is actually a flood defence scheme. It's where the original sea defences were eroding. We moved further back to create new, much more robust, sea defences, in order to protect quite a large part of Somerset from flooding from the sea. In the process, we happened to be able to create rather good inter-tidal habitat, which is good for birds, in the middle. That's an area - that's a very good example of where you can retreat a little bit, in order to defend better.
Evan Davis: Lord Smith, thank you very much indeed. And I'll tweet the document, and people can read it and make of it what they will. But Lord Smith, thank you very much.