John McDonnell says cutting foreign aid to pay for flood defences would make matters worse in the long run

The shadow chancellor called for a cross-party consensus on increasing spending

The shadow chancellor John McDonnell (Getty)

Cutting the overseas aid budget in order to spend money on flood defences would be a false economy, the shadow chancellor has said.

John McDonnell warned that much of the spending send to developing countries was targeted at helping them green their economies and that it was already playing a role in preventing future flooding.

“If you look at a lot of the money that we’re spending overseas it is to tackle climate change,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

“We’re tackling the issue at source – we’re reducing dependency on fossil fuels. If we do that it would be a short-term saving but a long-term cost.”

Mr McDonnell said the problem was that spending on flood defences had not been consistent across governments.

He called for all political parties to sign up to a long-term spending plan drawn up by experts in concert with local authorities who knew their at-risk areas best.

“We’ve got to take this issue beyond party politics. People don’t want to hear party-political knockabout from this,” he said.

“We cannot be a situation where there’s this stop-start approach to investment.”

Rochdale MP Simon Danczuk this weekend called for development aid to be cut and diverted to flood defence spending .

"Why do we spend money in Bangladesh when it needs spending in Great Britain?” he said.

“What we need to do is to sort out the problems which are occurring here and not focus so much on developing countries. That has to be our priority."

Mr McDonnell’s overall fiscal plans do not restrict investment in infrastructure and under them he would not have to cut money from elsewhere in order to increase spending on flood defences.

He has argued that such investments pay for themselves in the long run.

George Osborne has however pledged to also rein in capital spending as part of his overall surplus target and would have to cut money from elsewhere in order to boost provision and stay within his targets.

A House of Commons Library note published in November 2014 found that spending on flood defences during the last Labour government – between 1997 and 2010 – increased by three quarters in real terms.

It however said central government spending from 2010 onwards had been cut by around 20 per cent compared to the previous spending period.

David Cameron defended the Government’s record on flood defence spending, however, arguing that more cash was on the way.