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DERMOT MURNAGHAN: The focus of the floods of 2014 is all here, this is the symbol I suppose of what’s been going on here on the Somerset Levels but there was major flooding seven years ago, back in 2007 you may remember and the focus then was not too far up the road, up the M5 in Tewksbury and the then Environment Secretary was Hilary Benn who joins me now, I’m glad to say, from our studios in Central London and a very good morning to you, Mr Benn. You had a report after those floods in 2007, the Pitt Report, do you feel the lessons haven’t really been learned?

HILARY BENN: Well I think we made some real progress. For example, one of the recommendations that Michael Pitt made was that we should bring together the Met Office and the Environment Agency to issue a single flood warning and I put that system in place and we saw the benefit of that and we’ve seen the benefit here in getting better information about where flooding is likely to occur. The second thing we did was to look at some of the critical infrastructure, in particular electricity substations and water treatment works. You’ll remember from those floods in Gloucestershire about 340,000 people lost their water supply when the Mythe Water Treatment Works were flooded. We came very close to losing electricity for half a million people when the Wallam Substation was under threat and the Environment Agency and the military and the police worked really hard to protect it, so the people responsible for that infrastructure looked at what the risks were and they made some changes but look, there are always lessons to learn. We are dealing here with nature’s raw power and what’s the priority at the moment is to make sure that people who are affected, and it’s awful when your home is flooded and your business is affected, we’ve got to give practical help, get the electricity supply back on, make sure that people are cared for if they have had to leave their homes, get those railway lines restored because with Cornwall and Devon cut off it’s a huge impact on the wider economy.

DM: What do you make of the performance of the Environment Agency and in particular your former colleague, Chris now Lord Smith?

HILARY BENN: Well I think the Environment Agency staff have absolutely worked their socks off and I know that from my own experience. I think there is something a bit rich I have to say about government ministers, who when they came into office in 2010, and I increased our investment in flood defence when I was the Environment Secretary, cutting that budget, cutting the resources that go to the Environment Agency and then trying to pin the blame on Chris Smith as Chairman. The truth is, as the man you were interviewing a little earlier from Khalsa Aid – and what a great job they are doing together with local people, giving practical assistance – finger pointing isn’t going to get us anywhere. Of course there are lessons that need to be learned but the fact is we should support people who are working hard.

DM: Well no finger pointing but what about the analysis from Lord Smith that choices have to be made, that there isn’t an unlimited pot of money and when it comes to flood defences it’s better spending money that will protect large built up areas so you get more bang for your buck?

HILARY BENN: Well the truth is, as we saw in the 2007 floods, when what, 55,000 people I think or so had to leave their homes, when it is urban areas that you’re seeing flooding – in that case there was a lot of surface water flooding in Sheffield and Hull in particular as well as in many, many other parts of the country, then people say well it’s really important that we protect our towns and cities and there is, as in many things in life and governments have to make those decisions, a balance to be struck. What government can do is to make sure that they put the resources in and that’s why cutting the flood defence budget back in 2010 was a mistake.

DM: Did almost this shift in policy I suppose you can call it, did it happen on your watch, did it happen on Labour’s watch when somebody decided, well it’s a lot of agricultural land, we don’t really need our farmers very much, we’re an industrialised society, let’s leave it for the birds, let it turn into wetland?

HILARY BENN: No, that was very much not the policy that I followed. Indeed, ironically since we’re talking about floods here, after the effects of draught in other parts of the world in 2008 which had the effect for example of putting up the price of bread in Britain, I came to the conclusion that we needed to look at the resilience of our land, of our agricultural infrastructure. I don't think we can say and it wasn’t a view that I took, well Britain can always go shopping in the global supermarket because the climate is changing and it is going to have effect, drought in some places at some times, torrential rain and flooding in others. I think the warnings from the scientists have been pretty clear and pretty accurate and we need our agriculture, we need to make sure that we’ve got domestic production. There is obviously a particular question on the Somerset Levels, we understand that last summer there was a specific request made in relation to dredging to the Rivers Parrett and Tone, it seems that the government didn’t act upon that. I’m sure that is something that will need to be looked at when the flood waters have receded, how often the pumping takes place, when it starts but other broader changes, Dermot, because you know, planting trees for example helps water to filter away into the soil better than it does on just plain grassland. The way in which rivers are managed, a lot of rivers have been straightened in the last hundred years and if you go back to where the rivers were when they meandered, what that does is slow down the water and if you slow down the water, you reduce the erosion of the river banks and maybe less silt comes down and has subsequently to be removed. So this is about how we as a society prepare for the changing climate which can see already upon us and how we take sensible decisions about how we’re going to manage when huge quantities of water fall out of the sky.

DM: I had a couple of questions to put to you arising from my interview just a little bit earlier with the UKIP leader, Nigel Farage. One of them was on climate change, he’s not entirely sure this is down to climate change. You’ve answered that but what about his other point, and of course you were International Development Secretary as well, but the money that Britain spends overseas on foreign aid would be better spent in this country and helping out people like the ones suffering here?

HILARY BENN: Well we of course should be spending money in Britain helping out those who are suffering and the fact that the government belatedly last week decided to announce some further investment, trying to make up for the disastrous decision they took in 2010, well of course that is welcome and when I was dealing with the 2007 floods we created the Flood Recovery Grant that we gave to local authorities and said look, you know locally what the priorities are, who needs help, there were a lot of people of instance who didn’t have any insurance at all, you decide how to spend it but frankly the idea that we should take money away from children being vaccinated, lives being saved, treatment for Aids, children who are in primary school because of the generous support of the British people and the money that goes when disasters strike in other parts of the world, frankly I don't think that’s the right thing to do and I’m sorry that Nigel Farage has suggested it. If government wants to find the money to help its own people it can do so and it should.

DM: Okay, Hilary Benn, very good to talk to you, thank you very much indeed. The former Environment Secretary.