Oral question asked in the House of Commons, by Chris Huhne (Liberal Democrat). It was answered on Thursday, 20 July 2006 on behalf of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

Local Environment Quality

Question: Local environment quality depends crucially on the Department’s expenditure on policing environmental crime and on flood defences. However, there have been reports recently that the Secretary of State has asked for expenditure cuts in the environmental parts of his budget in order to offset overruns in other areas, perhaps particularly single farm payments. Will the Minister say whether the Department is asking environmental budget holders, including the Environment Agency, to reduce their budget allocation? Will he tell the House the implications for the understanding that the Department reached with the Association of British Insurers to continue to provide insurance cover for more than 100,000 home owners at risk of flooding? Will he assure them that the allocations for flood defences will not be cut?

Answer: On the hon. Gentleman’s latter point, my hon. Friend the Minister for Climate Change and the Environment met the ABI recently. On his more general point, like all Departments, ours is constantly looking for ways of spending our money more effectively and efficiently. Inevitably, things come up such as the recent preparations to deal with the possible outbreak of avian flu and the problems of the single farm payment but, since we have been in power, the Government’s grant in aid to the Environment Agency, another issue to which he referred, has increased substantially from about £160 million to over £600 million a year.

Secondary information