Building more flood defences could boost UK’s post-pandemic economic recovery

Your recent editorial “Flood victims must not be forgotten during crisis” is highly appropriate because we are very likely to be entering a severe economic recession.

The Keynesian way out of recession is for governments to spend on infra-structure. Rather than spending on glamorous projects like HS2, small-scale measures to prevent future flooding could provide a double benefit.

They would provide work for local people as well as stopping the heartbreaking damage that inundation causes, these could include a variety of measures like tree planting and introducing beavers.

Many Pennine valleys have water-control measures dating from a time when wool and cotton mills provided the basis of the economy.  

My local beck has 10 mill dams, ponds and sluices along its length, many little more than glorified garden ponds now, some partly silted up.  

Modest expenditure could enable them to act as buffers, retaining water during downpours.  A drop of a hundred metres along its course means that adding small-scale hydroelectric generators could make the project pay for itself.

In the same vein, providing incentives for people to improve the thermal efficiency of the houses and to add solar panels to their roofs would also provide environmental benefits as well as economic ones.

Will a government that is well to the right of centre change course from current orthodoxy of Milton Friedman’s economics?  

From: Nick Martinek, Briarlyn Road, Huddersfield.

Much of our country’s economy is now in lockdown due to the Covid-19 disease. Figures beginning to emerge indicate the annualised hit to the UK may be a reduction of as much as 30 per cent of UK GDP.

That is unprecedented in peacetime. To put it in context, the UK’s entire exports to the EU were worth about 12.4 per cent of UK GDP last year. Right now the EU still controls the UK. We abrogated the main EU treaties on January 31, but immediately signed the Withdrawal Agreement treaty instead.

That requires obedience to EU rules and courts, and continuing payments to the EU – money we need to fight the coronavirus threat.  

Remain politicians like Sir Keir Starmer are very shy of admitting this. Consequently, it makes sense under current conditions to leave the EU immediately and finally. 

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