Substantial cuts to the government’s environment department budget will hamper its future ability to cope with emergencies such as flooding, MPs fear.
They called on Environment Secretary Owen Paterson to clarify which policy areas faced the biggest cuts. Mr Paterson has said resources will be shifted to respond to changing needs. The Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) budget has been cut by £500m since 2010 and must find £300m in savings by 2016. Defra spent just under £2.5bn during 2012-13, the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Efra) Select Committee said in its annual report on the department. The department oversees a network of 28 agencies – including the Environment Agency and the Food and Environment Research Agency (Fera) – that delivers its policies. Substantial cuts to the government’s environment department budget will hamper its future ability to cope with emergencies such as flooding, MPs fear. They called on Environment Secretary Owen Paterson to clarify which policy areas faced the biggest cuts. Mr Paterson has said resources will be shifted to respond to changing needs. The Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) budget has been cut by £500m since 2010 and must find £300m in savings by 2016. Defra spent just under £2.5bn during 2012-13, the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Efra) Select Committee said in its annual report on the department. The department oversees a network of 28 agencies – including the Environment Agency and the Food and Environment Research Agency (Fera) – that delivers its policies. The environment secretary said on Monday that seven people had died and 1,700 homes had been flooded in England alone due to storms and flooding in December and January. Thousands of homes have suffered power cuts since strong winds and heavy rain began before Christmas. The Met Office said last month was the windiest December in the UK since 1969 and of any month since January 1993, while the Environment Agency said recent storm surges were the highest since 1953. The Efra Select Committee report also said the department faced a number of other high-profile emergencies during the past parliamentary year. These included the outbreak of ash dieback in the wider environment and the horsemeat food contamination scandal. The MPs observed that the allocation of resources to tackle these problems would be at the expense of other areas of policy. They added that the forthcoming year was also shaping up to be another challenging one, with a range of issues on the agenda, including: its policy on badger culling to tackle TB in cattle; Common Agriculture Policy reforms; biodiversity offsetting; GM technology and flood defence funding. – BBC Environment
