Clegg admits that the quango he and the Lib Dems boasted of saving made the floods worse than they needed to be

At Lib Dem conference last autumn, the Liberal Democrats couldn’t tell you often enough how they had saved the quango Natural England from the Tory axe. Both Nick Clegg and Ed Davey made a big deal out of it in their conference speeches, portraying the Tory desire to abolish it as evidence of their coalition partner’s anti-green agenda.

But at the inaugural meeting of the Cabinet Committee on flooding, Clegg admitted that Natural England had made the situation on the Somerset Levels worse than it needed to be. According to a civil service record of the meeting, he said that Natural England and the Environment Agency’s approach of letting nature take its course ‘was nonsensical for what were essentially artificial environments such as the Somerset levels.’

Clegg’s acceptance that philosophy underlying the work of Natural England and the Environment Agency is flawed should be welcomed. It means that there is now a coalition consensus on completely overhauling these disastrously-run bodies.