The events of 2007 demonstrated to us all just how important our flood defences are and how reliant our region is on protection from the forces of nature. Those events should have served as a warning to the Government that the taxpaying residents of East Yorkshire expect their flood defences to be improved, not abandoned to the elements.

Under the Environment Agency’s proposals, in the East Riding alone, over 28,000 acres of high grade agricultural land, worth £180m, could be lost. The decision to sacrifice such important agricultural land at a time of spiralling food costs is short-sighted in the extreme.

However, the plan does not simply end at sacrificing farmland. Over 1,000 homes in the East Riding will also become unprotected and possibly uninsurable. These properties have a present value, we estimate, of £150m.

Many of these people bought their properties 10 or 15 years ago, when the official Government policy was to hold the line, to defend the Humber Bank. They will now find that the value of their homes is blighted and a generation of people will be left paying off their mortgages knowing that they will have little or nothing to show for it at the end. At the very least, if the Government is determined to pursue its flawed policy of abandonment, then they must offer suitable compensation to affected homeowners and landowners.

We are saddened that the Government has chosen to implement policies which directly threaten our homes and farmland. The Government could offer protection if it wanted to, instead it chooses simply to surrender large parts of the East Riding to rising sea levels. This is in stark contrast to Holland where their Environment Agency is under an obligation to protect homes and productive land. Importantly, they also back it up with appropriate resources.

We believe that the defence of the Humber Bank is both practical and cost-effective. The Environment Agency says that the cost of maintaining the defences in the East Riding which the Government says should be abandoned, would be about £30m over 25 years. So for £1.2m a year the Government could protect more than £300m worth of assets.

Other areas of Government expenditure require far lower cost benefit ratios, so why should flood protection and rural areas be the poor relation?

We will continue to work with the East Riding of Yorkshire Council and parliamentary colleagues to convince the Government to change course and give our residents the protection which they are right both to expect and demand.

Graham Stuart, MP for Beverley and Holderness and David Davis, MP for Haltemprice and Howden