Torrential rain and gale force winds battered northern Britain yesterday, cutting power to thousands of homes and forcing some to evacuate flooded streets in the third major storm in a month.
The environment agency said Britain had faced an extraordinary period of severe weather and flooding in December.
Further heavy rain was predicted to fall as the latest storm swept across northern England, Scotland and Northern Ireland, sparking warnings of more significant flooding.
A Chinook helicopter was being used to deposit sandbags. In the North Yorkshire town of Tadcaster late on Tuesday, part of an 18th century stone bridge crumbled into the racing river.
“The weather remains hugely challenging, with more rain threatening to cause further flooding in Cumbria and Yorkshire into New Year’s Eve,” said Craig Woolhouse at the environment agency.
Around 6,700 properties were flooded in northern England in the last week as river levels reached all-time highs, while three severe flood warnings remain in place, meaning there is a danger to life.
In Northern Ireland and the Republic, roads flooded, flights were delayed and thousands went without power while in Scotland, local media reports said people were being evacuated from their homes in the north east town of Ballater by dingy.
Earlier shadow chancellor said trying to save money by cutting back on flood protection was a false economy, suggesting that flooding this winter could have been averted if just half the estimated bill for the cleanup had been spent on defences.
Speaking on Sky News, McDonnell said: “Overall we have got to find the resources, and we find the resources for all other matters. If there is a banking crisis of if there is a war we find the resources from our contingency funds, that’s what we have got to do now.
“But the most important thing is actually all of us now signing up to a long-term programme taking this out of party politics and making sure that we all consistently, no matter who is in government, implement the experts’ recommendations.”
McDonnell’s comments came after the Floods Minister, Rory Stewart, attempted to answer criticisms of a north-south divide in spending on flood defences levelled by northern politicians and newspaper editorials.
Stewart insisted on BBC Breakfast that funding was allocated via a “very fair system” on the basis of “how many houses are protected and what the risk is to those properties”.
Elsewhere he defended the cuts made in the previous coalition government to flood defences, saying that £1.8bn had been spent in the last parliament.
Touring the region on Monday, David Cameron defended spending levels amid mounting criticism from MPs and council leaders. But Judith Blake, the leader of Leeds city council, said a flood prevention scheme for the city was ditched by the government in 2011, and warned that there was “a very strong feeling” across the region that the north was being short-changed.