Bigger pot

The words of the Prime Minister and MP for Witney, on the face of it, could have lifted spirits in Oxfordshire at the end of another dark week.

Thankfully, local political leaders, businesses and residents have seen too much flood water pass under enough closed bridges to imagine the way has, at a stroke, been cleared to build the flood defences everyone agrees that the city needs and deserves.

Little more than a week ago, in an interview with this paper the Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg, was informing us: “There is not an infinite amount of money and we have to decide which are the most cost-effective priorities at a time like this. Almost every community in the country is worried about how they can make areas more resilient to the threat of flooding.”

The question of whether Mr Cameron’s pledge will actually extend to a hugely costly scheme like the Western Conveyance Channel or not is far from clear. It was still hard to know even when Nick Robinson of the BBC asked him directly about this at the Prime Minister’s press conference.

Our guess is that Oxford City Council leader Bob Price was close to the truth in his belief that Mr Cameron was really talking about extra spending needed to deal with the current emergency — rather than long-term solutions like the channel.

But there are promising signs, with Mr Cameron inviting local political leaders to meet his advisors to discuss the channel scheme in detail. Equally important is that all political sides locally sensibly accept that the only hope of securing Government funding for a proper scheme is to show the city is determined to help itself to a large degree.

MPs and councillors will need to enlist the support — and indeed money — from local businesses, universities and railway operators, with the Local Enterprise Partnership certain to have a prominent role to play.

Hard up district councils too might be asked to make a financial contribution.

But a widely-supported local partnership is the only realistic option, with the flooding summit presenting an early opportunity to turn visions and hopes into a reality.

Oxford West and Abingdon MP, Nicola Blackwood, is right to suggest that this is an opportunity the city cannot afford to miss. Mr Cameron and Mr Clegg both fully grasp the crucial role Oxfordshire can and should play in securing much-needed long-term growth for the national economy.

With the ink on Oxford’s City Deal, signed by Mr Clegg himself, hardly dry, the point should be hammered home that Oxford is not a city whose transport system can be allowed to dissolve into chaos several times every year.

Insisting that a local economy here, should be balanced against misery elsewhere in the country is both unfair and short-sighted. There simply has to be a much bigger pot to draw from.

The Government seems to be moving to this position, but momentum and local funding will be the key.