Today in @skynews #CampaignCheck we investigate whether Labour are right to claim that government spending on flood defences is heavily skewed towards London and the south-east of England.
Specific claim from Labour: "the government's planned spending on flood defences until 2021 heavily favours London and the south-east of England". And on the basis of the overall regional per head spending numbers, they're right. End of? Not quite... 
Problem with this chart is it includes an exceptional slug of spending on Thames Estuary, budgeted from now til end of century. Pushes up London/SE dramatically. Bars for other regions only cover until 2021. So what let's see what happens if we only look at spending til 2021...
Here's the answer. In fact, the region with the most planned flood spending per head up til 2021 is actually Yorkshire & the Humber. Where much of the current flooding is happening. SE comes next and London a long way down the list. So Labour is wrong #CampaignCheck
Trying to apportion flood defence spending to particular areas is fiddly for all sorts of areas. But broadly speaking, the reason London & the SE do get a lot of flood spending, albeit not as much as Labour suggest, is because a lot of ppl live there & flood risk is quite high
But it may make more sense to look at the national picture where there is a clear pattern. Spending on flood defences decelerated dramatically after 2010. And bear in mind the coalition govt planned even deeper cuts til the floods of 2013/14 and then 2015 changed their plans
As for Jeremy Corbyn's suggestion that govt should declare a "national emergency" over floods, bear in mind that this has NEVER happened before (at least not since Civil Contingencies Act of 2004). Not for previous episodes of flooding, or indeed any major event of the past 15yrs
