:00:00. > :00:16.Who knows best when trying to protect Britain from adverse
:00:17. > :00:19.weather. The media, the people whose homes have been wrecked or the
:00:20. > :00:24.Government. There is a substantial number of right-wing MPs who are
:00:25. > :00:30.privately climate sceptical, and who are even more sceptical about the
:00:31. > :00:34.spending of money to deal with the problem. Also tonight this:
:00:35. > :00:39.With the social services I need to have food in, and I need a separate
:00:40. > :00:42.bed for my child. What happens when benefit claimants break the rules
:00:43. > :00:45.and the Government stops their money?
:00:46. > :00:48.David Bailey will be taking me around his exhibition of the
:00:49. > :00:53.National Portrait Gallery, a few of his many millions of snaps he's
:00:54. > :01:02.putting on display for the first time. Snaps? Snaps, is can he do
:01:03. > :01:06.that again! ? Good evening. I will make sure we learn all the lessons,
:01:07. > :01:13.it is what a politician usually says when he or she has made mistakes.
:01:14. > :01:17.David Cameron promised that today while visiting another flood-hit
:01:18. > :01:20.areas, while announcing a fund for businesses who have had a
:01:21. > :01:26.significant loss of trade from all the bad weather. Politicians from
:01:27. > :01:31.every party have been rushing to show their best plans so it doesn't
:01:32. > :01:33.happen again. We track the course of the River Thames in search of the
:01:34. > :01:45.lessons the politicians should be learning. What's normally a trickle
:01:46. > :01:50.is now a river. What's normally a river resembling a lake. Stubborn
:01:51. > :01:53.water with nowhere to go, and everywhere it is not wanted.
:01:54. > :02:00.But if the country's journey through weeks of flooding will change
:02:01. > :02:04.anything, this is where it begins. You can even see bubbles coming up
:02:05. > :02:08.to the surface as the water comes above ground for the first time. And
:02:09. > :02:12.it might not look like much, but this stone marks the start of the
:02:13. > :02:16.River Thames. This isn't just another flooded field, but the
:02:17. > :02:21.beginning of a river that has caused such chaos for thousands of families
:02:22. > :02:27.and businesses. An awful lot of political trouble for those 180
:02:28. > :02:32.miles further along. Nearby the PM is still cramming in
:02:33. > :02:34.visits after his colleagues spent the start of the crisis pointing
:02:35. > :02:44.fingers rather than pointing out what might help. Desperate to --
:02:45. > :02:47.show he knows which ways the wellingtons are pointing. The army
:02:48. > :02:54.are on the streets and the call has gone out for favourite political
:02:55. > :02:58.past time, are you ready... There was always time to ask what could be
:02:59. > :03:04.done, what schemes should be looked at and I will make sure we learn all
:03:05. > :03:08.the lessons. But if we have had the heaviest rainfall in more than two
:03:09. > :03:13.centuries is it reasonable, even if feasible, to expect the Government
:03:14. > :03:17.to defend all our homes using our money? Much, much more than the ?10
:03:18. > :03:22.million promised for affected firms today. One former minister at the
:03:23. > :03:26.stable when some spending was cut believes it is. The decision in 2010
:03:27. > :03:29.to cut flood defences in, in retrospect, clearly a mistake. I
:03:30. > :03:35.think the Government has to face up to a key role, which is to protect
:03:36. > :03:38.this as best they can from the natural disasters. The Prime
:03:39. > :03:42.Minister has gone right to the other extreme by saying money is now no
:03:43. > :03:49.object. Well it is a shame that there wasn't a bit more money back
:03:50. > :03:54.in 2010. Spending is now being dragged up, and some of the
:03:55. > :03:59.environment agencies' efforts have made a difference, they have kept
:04:00. > :04:02.water from the door but far from making the problem disappear. This
:04:03. > :04:07.is a part of Gloucester David Cameron didn't visit today. Sandbags
:04:08. > :04:11.are piled as high as the hip outside every front door. Locals have been
:04:12. > :04:15.fighting off the water for days. But for many people we have spoken to
:04:16. > :04:21.the risk isn't just from the rain, it is also from years of bad
:04:22. > :04:29.political decisions. Flood defence walls were built in people's back
:04:30. > :04:34.gardens here after 2007. I'm Laura from Newsnight, this must be a
:04:35. > :04:39.lovely garden without the River Severn. What has happened? It came
:04:40. > :04:44.to the top of the wall but not over. Richard said the agency and army's
:04:45. > :04:50.help has been better, it took three days for pumps to arrive. While he's
:04:51. > :04:54.protecting his 19th century home, he's furious new houses are being
:04:55. > :04:59.built nearby. Stew pit, this was build in 1851, they didn't know
:05:00. > :05:11.about things then, we have advanced since then, therefore people know it
:05:12. > :05:14.floods on the floodthings then, we have advanced since then, therefore
:05:15. > :05:16.people know it floods on the flood pla they know it and shouldn't be
:05:17. > :05:19.building. Two thirds of this flood plain is gone, covered in houses
:05:20. > :05:23.since 1947. Round the corner another local sketched out why he believes
:05:24. > :05:30.more roads and more houses don't leave enough room for more water. A
:05:31. > :05:33.lot of it is down to historical Government incompetence. They
:05:34. > :05:37.allowed the landfill site to the south of us, in excess of 300 acres,
:05:38. > :05:45.blocking out the whole of the exit of where all the float warders of
:05:46. > :05:49.1947 went. The problem is that -- flood waters of 1947 went. The
:05:50. > :05:54.problem is the Government is allowing building on flood plains.
:05:55. > :05:57.Even though a person who thought the Government have been excellent
:05:58. > :06:00.thought there was enough. Rivers need to be dredged again, which they
:06:01. > :06:06.are going to be, very positive, very, very positive. Dredging won't
:06:07. > :06:11.be reintroduced everywhere, it is expensive and can hurt as well as
:06:12. > :06:16.help. And senior politicians are now vying to be seen to accept climate
:06:17. > :06:19.change is part of the problem. The coalition's actual commitment to
:06:20. > :06:24.following policies that might make a difference have ebbed and flowed at
:06:25. > :06:29.best. But some senior sceptics have been rather less vocal. So with some
:06:30. > :06:33.of the wealthiest parts of the south-east under water, a powerful
:06:34. > :06:39.constituency, is this the moment where Cameron will cleave again to
:06:40. > :06:43.his original promise, vote blue-go green. I'm surprised that anybody
:06:44. > :06:47.can really dispute with 98% of climate scientist who is say that
:06:48. > :06:51.climate change is a reality. Actually even the climate change
:06:52. > :06:55.sceptics are only sceptical about whether it is man made or not. All
:06:56. > :07:01.of us need to unite behind the very, very clear plan of mitigation and
:07:02. > :07:04.adaptation. Insurance firms are perhaps inevitably being called to
:07:05. > :07:08.Number Ten tomorrow. Emergency payouts have started. But what will
:07:09. > :07:12.matter is not just how this Government deals with this crisis,
:07:13. > :07:16.lapping at the banks of Westminster. What will matter is what happens
:07:17. > :07:23.when these waters finally recede and what will really be different the
:07:24. > :07:26.next time. One of the few areas of consensus among the politicians on
:07:27. > :07:31.the floods is the role of climate change, a Tory cabinet minister said
:07:32. > :07:39.it was clearly a factor, while Labour leader, bland, said floods
:07:40. > :07:46.meant -- Ed Miliband said that floods was a priority. What should
:07:47. > :07:53.our response be? Let's discuss with Kevin Anderson, Professor of Climate
:07:54. > :08:01.Change, and Andrew Montford, author of Hockey Stick Illusion which
:08:02. > :08:03.critques the science of climate change. What we know from the
:08:04. > :08:07.climate modelling we have and science and physics and observations
:08:08. > :08:11.is as we warm up the atmosphere we can hold more moisture in the
:08:12. > :08:15.atmosphere and get more intense rainfall. We can see and the records
:08:16. > :08:18.show this over the last 50 years the intensity of the rainfall in the UK
:08:19. > :08:22.has increased. What we are seeing now by this sequence of unusual
:08:23. > :08:25.events, this is consistent with the fixes, the modelling and with the
:08:26. > :08:31.observations. But we will never be able to say that any single event is
:08:32. > :08:35.a climate change event. Some politicians have pretty much said
:08:36. > :08:39.that, are they exaggerating? If they say that they are misusing the
:08:40. > :08:42.science, that is the case. It is fair to say this is consistent to
:08:43. > :08:45.what we think about climate change. It is fair to say that the scale of
:08:46. > :08:49.the challenge and the impacts will have been exacerbated by climate
:08:50. > :08:52.change. We know the sea level rise has gone on because of the
:08:53. > :08:56.atmosphere and the oceans have warmed. We know therefore that some
:08:57. > :09:01.of the impact in Sandy in New York and the impacts we are seeing now
:09:02. > :09:05.are partly due to the increased sea level rise. It makes the situation
:09:06. > :09:09.worse, even if the overall event is not a climate change event. When
:09:10. > :09:13.Philip Hammond says climate change is a factor and Ed Miliband saying
:09:14. > :09:17.if you keep throwing sixes and they roll the dices are loaded. You say
:09:18. > :09:21.that is exaggeration, but it might be useful for somebody like you. You
:09:22. > :09:25.want to mobilise people to do something don't you? We want to
:09:26. > :09:29.inform people to decide if they want to make the changes necessary. When
:09:30. > :09:33.it was said it was factor, I want to point out from the sea level rise it
:09:34. > :09:37.is a factor, it is not the cause but it is a factor. Andrew Montford, you
:09:38. > :09:51.are not a scientist, you have been writing secretarically about this
:09:52. > :09:55.for -- secretary -- sceptically for a while now, what do you think?
:09:56. > :10:00.Everybody seems to agree, at least scientifically they seem to agree
:10:01. > :10:04.that you can't link these floods to climate change. When he says that
:10:05. > :10:08.sea level rise has been a factor, yes, I suppose it probably has been
:10:09. > :10:13.a factor in terms of the sea level has gone up by, you know, a few tens
:10:14. > :10:19.of centimeters over the last century. You have to remember that
:10:20. > :10:23.sea level rise was occurring before man made carbon emissions were big
:10:24. > :10:27.enough to effect climate change any way. We have seen perhaps a tiny
:10:28. > :10:30.amount of acceleration, but sea level rises have been going on any
:10:31. > :10:38.way, so it is something we have had to adapt to in the past and probably
:10:39. > :10:43.we will just go on adapting to it in the future. My concern is actually
:10:44. > :10:49.all we have seen so far in terms of global warming is about 0. 88 can he
:10:50. > :10:54.greet of -- 0. 8 degree of a rise. If we radically don't reduce our
:10:55. > :10:59.emissions it will he issed up to four, five, six degrees. We have a
:11:00. > :11:03.taster of where we are heading, we have a choice between now and 2025
:11:04. > :11:07.we have a choice about radically reducing emissions ordeal with the
:11:08. > :11:13.impacts of climate change. If we look at people's homes who are
:11:14. > :11:19.wrecked, pools of sewage across the ground floor, trying to persuade
:11:20. > :11:25.them to spend millions on emissions and decarbonisation now? They won't
:11:26. > :11:30.buy that? We have spent ?350 billion on bailing out the banks, we could
:11:31. > :11:35.have greened all our infrastructure, and made all the houses in the UK
:11:36. > :11:39.low carbon and resilient to climate change for less than we put into the
:11:40. > :11:43.banks. It would have employed more people and better for the
:11:44. > :11:47.engineering base, it would have helped with fuel poverty, everything
:11:48. > :11:52.was a tick on that, we gave that much to the banks. We are not short
:11:53. > :11:55.of money, wealth or capital to overcome climate change. What do you
:11:56. > :11:59.think of that? There is certainly things we can do to spend money
:12:00. > :12:04.better than we have been. I must say I'm not entirely convinced that
:12:05. > :12:09.spending it on decarbonisation is the best way of doing it. We have
:12:10. > :12:14.seen that the concern that people in the south west have about dredging,
:12:15. > :12:20.and I think usefully money could be spend on dredging rivers. I know
:12:21. > :12:24.there is a factor in the Thames floods as well. This is something we
:12:25. > :12:29.can do for very small amounts of money. Let alone the amounts that
:12:30. > :12:34.Kevin's talking about spending. We could do a lot to mitigate against
:12:35. > :12:38.the risk of future flooding. Because flooding has always been a risk. We
:12:39. > :12:44.talk about these, the rainfall in recent weeks having been completely
:12:45. > :12:48.unprecedented. In fact it isn't completely unprecedent. You may find
:12:49. > :12:53.odd places where it is unprecedented, over the south of
:12:54. > :12:56.England it isn't, more infall in the 1920s for example. We have dealt
:12:57. > :13:00.with these things in the past, we could deal with them in the future,
:13:01. > :13:03.spending really quite small sums of money. Let's not talk about spending
:13:04. > :13:09.billions, let's deal with the millions first. You think global
:13:10. > :13:14.temperatures will rise by three, four, five degrees by the end of the
:13:15. > :13:18.century? If we don't reduce our emissions. What will Britain look
:13:19. > :13:22.like then? We are talking about a metre of sea level rise towards the
:13:23. > :13:26.end of the century, if you put on top of that increased severity of
:13:27. > :13:30.storms and possibly increased frequency of storms. What would
:13:31. > :13:34.Britain be like? It would be a different shape. It doesn't matter
:13:35. > :13:38.how much dredging do you in the Somerset levels they simply wouldn't
:13:39. > :13:42.exist. Neither would large parts around the Thames as well. The shame
:13:43. > :13:45.of the UK map a lot of East Anglia would go, and many islands in the
:13:46. > :13:51.north of Scotland. Humberside as well. Many parts of the UK would
:13:52. > :13:56.suffer and we would see, you know, major problems in terms of rehousing
:13:57. > :14:00.people. Same this is a global problem, we would be having problems
:14:01. > :14:06.with imports of food from anywhere else in the world. Our energy system
:14:07. > :14:10.is not able to cope with this, we have a system that is really
:14:11. > :14:16.Victorian. The future of welfare will be a fee -- key battleground in
:14:17. > :14:23.the next election. Getting people off benefits is a key
:14:24. > :14:31.part of the Government's plans. What impact are the changes having. They
:14:32. > :14:34.Maundy Relief drop in centre they provide support and food to some of
:14:35. > :14:38.the poorest residents in the town. We spent a week there finding out
:14:39. > :14:56.about their experiences of benefit sanctions. Maundy Relief, can I
:14:57. > :15:01.help? Hiya Keith. I have still got six days left on my sanction, I
:15:02. > :15:07.wanted to know if I can get help with a food parcel and can you sort
:15:08. > :15:13.a microwave for me. I'm not sure if we have a microwave I can do a slip
:15:14. > :15:17.for you. Ever since we opened in 1998 we have always given out food
:15:18. > :15:22.parcels. Now we are giving out twice, possibly three-times as many,
:15:23. > :15:24.of those probably 70% are going to people whose benefits have been
:15:25. > :15:29.sanctioned, that means they are left without any means of support. I have
:15:30. > :15:32.got six days left. And then everything back to normal. Are you
:15:33. > :15:44.run out of everything? I have got nothing. Could we have dinner here?
:15:45. > :15:49.Dinner is at 1.00, can you stay for dinner. We are almost like a
:15:50. > :15:54.mini-welfare state here. But we're being asked to do more and more. It
:15:55. > :16:00.is forcing people into destitution, that's the word for it. You know we
:16:01. > :16:03.can do what we can here, family and friends, but family and friends are
:16:04. > :16:11.often in a similar position themselves. You can have people
:16:12. > :16:15.sitting in the dock in -- in the dark with no food because there has
:16:16. > :16:20.been a minor infringement of benefit rules, or in my opinion no
:16:21. > :16:23.infringement at all. John was sanctioned last October, he says he
:16:24. > :16:32.was told he hadn't been applying for enough jobs. This is the living room
:16:33. > :16:38.and that is the kitchen there. This is where it is supposed to be doing
:16:39. > :16:44.this up, but I have been living in this for a long time. The sanctions
:16:45. > :16:51.are about basically saying you are not making enough of an effort to
:16:52. > :16:57.look for work. So is that not fair? I turned around to them and said I'm
:16:58. > :17:02.61 now, there is no jobs for somebody at my age, there is young
:17:03. > :17:06.people, how can you sit there a young person, 25 years old and tell
:17:07. > :17:13.me about work. You haven't had the experience I have had. So I said
:17:14. > :17:17.don't make me laugh. This was a bigger bedroom, as you can see it is
:17:18. > :17:21.really damp, I was living in this, you can imagine breathing that in. I
:17:22. > :17:27.started getting really ill, ended up in hospital with it, with pneumonia.
:17:28. > :17:35.This was the smaller bedroom I found were warmer, easier to keep, to get
:17:36. > :17:41.warm in. You can see it is not right good. Sometimes when, if I'm really
:17:42. > :17:48.desperate I will go and do a bit of shoplifting, which sometimes it can
:17:49. > :17:53.be too busy and you are not able to do it. It is one of them things. You
:17:54. > :17:57.take that risk, you might get caught. But you don't think that
:17:58. > :18:14.when you are doing it. You just thinking of something to eat,
:18:15. > :18:23.mainly. Look after yourself and ring the numbers if need be, all right
:18:24. > :18:31.then, OK Jim see you Monday goodbye. Another one in crisis. We see people
:18:32. > :18:36.here with extremely complex needs who suffer from mental health
:18:37. > :18:43.problems who have been brought up in very, very bad circumstances, who
:18:44. > :18:46.have been in care, who have not had the support at the beginning of
:18:47. > :18:54.their lives that some of us would have expected. Many of those people
:18:55. > :19:00.can move through that and have fulfilled lives, and some can't. And
:19:01. > :19:03.they are too damaged, but they are not an attractive group of people to
:19:04. > :19:08.many people. They might be people that you wouldn't want to sit in the
:19:09. > :19:15.same room as. But they are vulnerable. I have been job
:19:16. > :19:19.searching, but I even said to them I said that I had obviously would
:19:20. > :19:25.bring it in to show them that I have been looking for the work and that.
:19:26. > :19:33.But well they still sanctioned me and I were meant to be paid today.
:19:34. > :19:39.You have not been? No. Zach's just been sanctioned. He's 25 and hasn't
:19:40. > :19:55.worked since he was 16. Come in here, no. Shut that door. Bella,
:19:56. > :19:59.chill out. There are jobs out there, why aren't you applying, or why
:20:00. > :20:09.aren't you getting those jobs, what is going wrong? Well, I don't know,
:20:10. > :20:14.some jobs they are only taking on certain qualified people, things
:20:15. > :20:21.like that, I don't have no qualifications. I left school before
:20:22. > :20:29.all my GCSEs and all that. But, most jobs are for qualified people and
:20:30. > :20:36.like yeah, I do apply for it, even things that you need qualifications
:20:37. > :20:42.for. But it is just, I don't know, obviously there must be better
:20:43. > :20:47.people like qualified people for it. Because I just don't seem to be
:20:48. > :20:54.getting anywhere at all. I have got a son to pay for, basically. And I
:20:55. > :21:01.might not even be able to have a place. Breakfast, eat it up. With
:21:02. > :21:06.the social services like obviously I need to have food in, I need to have
:21:07. > :21:13.the gas and electric and things like that, and that's basically who has
:21:14. > :21:23.told me I need a separate bed for my child. But obviously without being
:21:24. > :21:29.paid I can't do that. Eat it up? We know people are trying, really
:21:30. > :21:34.trying hard to get work and are unsuccessful. There is maybe quite a
:21:35. > :21:37.low-skilled labour pool here. The sort of jobs that people
:21:38. > :21:42.traditionally did aren't available any more. They don't have the means
:21:43. > :21:43.to travel to another part of the country because they don't have the
:21:44. > 0:14:47money to