The Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has defended his decision not to travel to northern England until today - five days after the flooding began - insisting he "didn't want to get in the way". Corbyn praised Environment Agency staff for their "superhuman efforts" to protect homes and businesses from floods and said the Government must now look again at the cuts it has imposed on the agency and he called for more spending on flood defences up and down the country. Corbyn met EA staff at the Foss Barrier, which was knocked out by flooding, to see if lessons could be learned. He said: "We have got a lot of very hard-working engineers and workers for the EA who have made superhuman efforts to try to protect this city, as they have tried to protect other cities all around the country, and I think we should be grateful to them for that." Asked what Labour would do to help, he said they will pressurise the Government to "fully fund the Environment Agency, not cut its budget" and pay for flood defences where necessary. When he was asked why it had taken him five days to come to York, he said: "I didn't want to get in the way of people doing an emergency job at a highly critical time. "I think to turn up in the midst of all that is distracting engineers."