Extreme Heat: Preparedness
House of Commons · Westminster Hall · 14 Jul 2026 · 40 speeches · Official Report
[Sir Christopher Chope in the Chair ]
[Relevant document: Oral evidence taken before the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee on 23 June, on Climate and Weather Resilience, HC 68.]
I beg to move, That this House has considered preparedness for extreme heat. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Christopher. This issue affects all our constituents, so I will be happy to take interventions. Over recent weeks, Britain has experienced an extraordinary succession of heatwaves that have tested the resilience of our communities and public services. We have talked on our way in today about how we have all been personally affected-we might have been uncomfortable at various points-but this succession of heatwaves poses serious risks. We have seen hospitals declaring critical incidents, ambulance services facing record demand, transport disrupted, schools closed and firefighters battling major wildfires following prolonged hot and dry conditions.
At the moment, there are 19 live wildfires across England and Wales. Last year, a devastating wildfire on the North York moors raged for 40 days over 10 square miles. It was caused by a campfire. Does the hon. Member agree that it is time to ban the use of disposable barbecues in public areas?
The hon. Member’s example highlights just how much of a risk wildfires pose. We need to take greater measures as a country to prevent them, including seriously looking at her suggestion.
The hon. Member said that he wanted to take interventions. He mentioned schools. On my way into Parliament today on the Northern line, which appropriately for today’s debate was boiling, I received a number of emails from worried parents. Schools are closing early in my constituency, a lot of them smaller primary schools in Victorian buildings, because they cannot accommodate children in the heat we are experiencing at the moment. It will not come as a surprise to the hon. Member that it tends to be single parents or parents without secure incomes who suffer the most when schools finish early. Do we need to speak with the Department for Education about getting some funding for extra fans and cooling units for our schools, so that children do not suffer because of climate change?
I agree with the hon. Member. I will come on to the impact on schools, and the fact that extreme heat does not affect everyone equally, later in my speech. Some communities and individuals are particularly affected, so I support her call, particularly because it highlights the need for a cross-Government response. The incidents I talked about were not isolated weather events, but a real-world test of our preparedness for a hotter climate, exposing vulnerabilities across our health service, critical infrastructure, emergency response and natural environment. Britain has entered a new climate reality. The Climate Change Committee’s latest UK climate risk assessment warns that climate risks are increasing faster than our preparedness, with progress described as slow, stalled or moving in the wrong direction. Extreme heat is no longer an occasional anomaly, but an increasingly defining feature of the UK’s climate. The 10 warmest years on record have all occurred since 2002, and the UK has already warmed by around 1.2° since the pre-industrial period. England has experienced four major summer heat events since 2018, and the three warmest Junes on record have all occurred during this decade. UK Health Security Agency projections indicate that heat-related deaths could more than triple by the 2050s without stronger adaptation. Extreme heat is now a growing threat to public health, infrastructure, food security, nature and national resilience. It is already a public health...
On the hon. Member’s point about mental health, does he recognise that a number of treatments for depression, anxiety and other mental health conditions, such as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors and serotonin and norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors, can affect the body’s ability to regulate temperature? It is all written in the small print with the medication, but doctors and practitioners do not always pass on the information. Does he agree that people suffering with those conditions need to be more widely informed?
I thank the hon. Lady for raising that point. It shows the breadth of issues that we need to contend with. Addressing this issue really is a whole-society, whole-Government matter. I very much support raising awareness of her point. It shows the need to review how we can treat people in a way that gives them the support they need but does not make other problems worse in the context of heatwaves. Where people live also matters. Poorly ventilated homes, upper-floor flats, care homes, social housing and densely built urban areas can trap heat for prolonged periods. Poverty compounds the risks. Those least able to afford adaptations are often the most exposed. In my Waveney Valley constituency, Friends of the Earth analysis has identified neighbourhoods that are both highly exposed to extreme heat and socially vulnerable, with around one in 10 falling into that category. I am grateful to one of my constituents for drawing my attention to the risk of overheating faced by her neighbour, whose council-owned bungalow effectively became a greenhouse during the latest period of extreme heat. The consequences extend beyond individuals to our health and care system. The NHS was built for a different climate. During the June heatwave, hospitals declared critical incidents, elective operations were postponed and temporary cooling equipment was required. Ambulance services experienced unprecedented demand, with the London ambulance service recording its busiest week on record. At the...
The hon. Member is making a good speech on the risks associated with extreme heat. I had the good fortune of being a maths teacher in a brand-new school building in 2023 in Leeds. Just before the building opened, the builders showed us around the place, and I asked how the building would be kept cool. They said it is a passive cooling system. I said I was not sure it would hold up in heatwave conditions. They said, “We’ve got this revolutionary new technology, Mr Sewards-you can open the window.” As anybody who has taught or been taught in classrooms during a heatwave knows, opening a window does absolutely nothing for the learning of students. Does the hon. Member agree that it is time for the DFE to consider changing its guidance on new school buildings so that air conditioning is preferred?
I thank the hon. Member for that point. I will come to the question of how we retrofit buildings and how we ensure that new buildings of whatever type, including schools, are fit for purpose for the large numbers of mainly young people who use them. His points are well made. During heatwaves, schools can become unsuitable for learning, hospitals struggle to provide safe conditions for patients and staff, and care homes become hazardous for some of the most vulnerable members of society. The problem does not end when temperatures fall; many buildings retain heat long into the night. One constituent told me her home reached 42.5°, and her young son required urgent care after suffering a severe asthma attack induced by extreme heat in the flat. The Climate Change Committee warns that, by 2050, 92% of existing homes could overheat during summer heatwaves if we do not have a full programme of adaptation measures. Most of the homes that we will live in then have already been built now, which means that national retrofit programmes are essential to keep people safe, including those that deliver shading, cooling, ventilation and green infrastructure. At the same time, every new home, school, hospital and workplace should be designed for a hotter climate through passive cooling measures such as external shading, ventilation, green roofs and reflective materials. Retrofitting later is far more expensive than building resilience from the outset, and every building constructed today...
The hon. Member will know that, with the extreme heat and reduced rainfall, a lot of water companies are introducing hosepipe bans to mitigate the risk of drought. Does he agree that that seems a bit redundant, given that artificial intelligence data centres use between 11 million and 19 million litres of water a day? Does he agree that, as we prepare to experience more extreme heat over the summer periods, there is an urgent need to address the water consumption of data centres to reduce the risk of drought across the country?
The hon. Lady makes an extremely important point. Water conservation, like energy conservation, is critical, and there must be measures to help households to do their absolute best on that. My region is one of those with a hosepipe ban in force at the moment. She is absolutely right that data centres pose a real risk both to our water conservation and energy conservation targets. The Environmental Audit Committee, which I should declare that I am a member of, is currently doing an investigation into that. She is absolutely right that there is limited point in emphasising other ways of reducing water and energy consumption if we allow massive increases in usage in other ways. As a society, we have to get a grip of the environmental risks of data centres and AI before they take hold.
The hon. Member is giving a very powerful speech. Water shortage is a very big issue for our farmers as well. At the moment, it is extremely difficult for a farmer to get planning permission for a small on-farm reservoir. It is a big investment for the farmer, so it is a big deal that it takes so long. We really need to make that process easier because food security is as important as energy security or any of the other issues.
I strongly agree with all the points that the hon. Gentleman made. Food security and water security are absolutely central to this debate, and they are under real threat. I represent a rural area as well, and it is hard to believe that it is so difficult for farmers to get permission to store water on their farms when so many areas have the problem of too much water at some times of the year and too little at others. Surely, we can find an answer by bringing those problems together. As with anything else, Government policies need to support farmers to do things that they want to do that will help with our natural environment and our social preparedness. I thank the hon. Gentleman for making that really important point. Our transport networks were designed for a cooler climate. Extreme heat causes rails to buckle, overhead power lines to sag and road surfaces to deteriorate, and that leads to delays, cancellations and rising maintenance costs. As heatwaves become more frequent, transport resilience must become a standard requirement for infrastructure investment. Every road and railway built today should be designed for the hotter climate that it will face over its lifetime, because building in resilience now is far cheaper than repeatedly repairing failures later. Our energy system was designed for a climate where peak demand occurred in winter. As temperatures rise, demand for cooling increases, while extreme heat reduces the efficiency of power generation and places...
It is always a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Sir Christopher. It was the 1976 New Forest fire in your own constituency that woke me up to the dangers of climate destruction. Just last weekend, on Sunday night, I heard about a fire raging in the area of Acomb, on the edge of my own constituency. A field of wheat had caught ablaze, causing fear to residents; I really thank the police and fire service for their rapid response, but the fire obviously came at great cost to not only the farmer, but the community, and it makes us all so alert to the challenges we face in our time. From discussions about the challenges that our city faces, it is clear that we are not climate resilient. We do not have the necessary strategies and plans to address the urgent needs of our time. The city has done well by focusing on flooding, but heat resilience is a new area to which we must now pay all our attention. Over the last month, schools have had to close, and many of the hospital’s wards have overheated. Across our city, we have felt a real and massively challenging swathe of heatwaves. We recognise that, if we are going to address the issue of flooding in our city, we have to get the hydrology right in the upper catchment area. That means that we have to make certain decisions: can we afford grouse moor shooting any longer, since it drains the land and as a result makes it more prone to catching light? There is much thought that needs to be given to the infrastructure needed, both in...
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak, Sir Christopher; it is a real pleasure to serve under your chairship. Let me say a big thank you to the hon. Member for Waveney Valley (Adrian Ramsay) for highlighting this issue. Whether people like it or not, it has to be addressed. It is a key issue for many people. The temperature rises across the United Kingdom cannot be ignored either, and they set a trend. The experts tell us that we have to be prepared for that. When we think of heat planning, we must think in bigger terms than-I am not being facetious, by the way-having enough ice lollies in the freezer. It is about the pressure of running the freezer, and about the additional fans and cooling systems, which are running in a nation that is better equipped to store heat and not let it escape, which suits us 90% of the time. There are also some practical things we have to address. I want to talk about two things, health and agriculture. I believe we must also highlight a blind spot in our national resilience planning: the unique, devastating vulnerability of rural, coastal and agricultural communities to heat stress events. I want to ground this debate in my own beautiful constituency of Strangford, which stretches across the Ards peninsula and mirrors many coastal communities across the United Kingdom. In the Ards and North Down area, roughly 20% of our population is aged 65 or older, so, from a health point of view, thousands of those elderly constituents live in...
I thank the hon. Member for Waveney Valley (Adrian Ramsay) for raising such an interesting and timely topic as extreme heat. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Christopher. We were warned more than 20 years ago that extreme temperatures would be the consequence of uncontrolled greenhouse gas emissions, and what did we do? Not enough. Not enough to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and not enough to adapt to climate change. Across the UK, new high temperatures are being set. In my constituency, the highest temperature was recorded at a mere 26.7°C in 2018, but I would not be surprised if that were surpassed soon. What used to be a one in 100 or 200 event has, as we were warned, now become the new normal. While we ask ourselves how to get through this summer, I gently suggest that we need to heed the warnings of climate scientists and think about what the heat map of Europe and the UK will look like over the next 20 years. Short-term fixes such as air-conditioning will set the average household back several thousand pounds, but also add to the demand for energy. As a regular visitor to London these days, I can see how much more extreme the heat is here compared with in my constituency of Paisley and Renfrewshire North. My constituency benefits from a more northern latitude, wide open spaces, lower population, lower density and a mix of urban and rural areas. My constituency will always be cooler than London, at least on the thermometer. Having missed the...
It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Sir Christopher. I thank the hon. Member for Waveney Valley (Adrian Ramsay) for introducing this important debate. The reports this week have been horrifying. That thousands may have died in this heat shows how ill-equipped we are as a country to deal with this kind of weather. I represent the rural and coastal constituency of Tiverton and Minehead, with a disproportionately elderly population, and the underlying health inequalities that often go with an area of its character. When the heat comes, my constituents are among the first to suffer and the least equipped to cope. I wish to highlight plainly where preparedness has failed them. In part of my constituency, not only has this period not been managed, it has been completely mismanaged. Some children cooling off in the River Exe on hot summer’s day, as any of us would want to, fell ill because of an alleged discharge into the river. The children’s father kayaked up the river later yesterday evening and reports encountering a pungent sewage odour in the vicinity of one of Tiverton’s sewage treatment work sites. He witnessed what appeared to be active discharge, which the company’s tracker failed to reflect, because it had not been updated. A monitoring system that does not monitor is worse than useless; it is a fig leaf. There is a hosepipe ban, although the company had months of warning. A wet start to the year gave way to weeks of record heat that was forecast and foreseeable....
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Christopher. I congratulate the hon. Member for Waveney Valley (Adrian Ramsay) on securing this important debate. I recently attended a screening of the national emergency briefing in my constituency. One sentence stuck with me, which was, “this is the least extreme climate we will experience in our lifetime.” As we swelter through another heatwave, many people are welcoming the hot and sunny weather, but it is unprecedented to have record-breaking temperatures three months in a row, and that is only set to continue. Experts estimated that there were more than 2,700 excess deaths during the May and June heatwaves attributed to heat-related causes. We are now seeing dangerous climate change-fuelled heat claiming lives, disrupting schools and hospitals, and shutting down transport and infrastructure. We need to adapt urgently. In recent weeks, I have heard from teachers and workers across my constituency who have struggled to keep buildings at a comfortable temperature. Teachers cited the guidance from the Department for Education, which suggested opening windows as a solution, as deeply unhelpful. The National Education Union rightly criticised the Department for underestimating the scale of the problem. Although I welcome the £710 million of funding to improve school and college buildings, which includes funding to install solar panels to bring down energy bills, it must be coupled with measures to provide good ventilation...
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Christopher. I thank the hon. Member for Waveney Valley (Adrian Ramsay) not only for securing this timely debate but for his detailed and comprehensive speech, which took me back a few decades to my school days, when my biology teacher talked about global warming. The chickens have come home to roost. What is happening not just in this country but across the world, with additional flooding and a warmer climate, demonstrates that Governments of all nations need to react. It is interesting that there are no Reform parliamentarians and few Conservative MPs in the Chamber. They often use the phrase “Drill, baby, drill”, not realising that additional carbon dioxide in the atmosphere can increase heat across the globe. I recently visited my local hospital-unfortunately, a family member needed emergency treatment, so I was in an A&E department-and it was shocking. Hospitals and A&E departments are already in crisis. I looked at the live data to see which hospital in the area has the lowest waiting time, and pretty much all hospitals serving the city of Birmingham had an average wait time of four hours, but that data was not live, and in fact people were waiting far longer than what it said online. It was shocking to see vulnerable people, elderly people and people with significant injuries sat in a sweltering waiting area, although the NHS staff were doing their level best by providing water and trying to assist the patients....
It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Sir Christopher. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Waveney Valley (Adrian Ramsay) for securing this extremely important and highly topical debate. Having had three heatwaves in less than three months, we are all more than aware of the reality of extreme heat. We need to talk more about our preparedness, or rather our lack of preparedness, for extreme heat. We do not yet have the figures for the latest heatwave, but we have heard about the figures published this week on the thousands of excess deaths due to the heatwaves in May and June, which spell out in clear terms exactly what impact this has on human lives. Like Members across the Chamber who have spoken today, I have heard from constituents about the direct impact that extreme heat is having on their lives. I have heard from parents who are deeply concerned, both about school closures and about schools not closing when their kids are struggling to learn in conditions of extreme heat, and from people who are desperately concerned about our health infrastructure, social care and homes. They are all struggling to cope with the effects, which is particularly important for the very young and our older community members, who are particularly vulnerable to the effects of extreme heat. I represent North Herefordshire, an absolutely beautiful constituency with farming at its heart. Farmers are at the forefront of the impacts of climate change-not just extreme heat but other...
The hon. Member highlights infrastructure issues, which my constituents are experiencing in Epsom and Ewell. Commuters to London have faced repeated train cancellations and delays, affecting their livelihoods and businesses. Does the hon. Member agree that it is really important that we improve the resilience of transport infrastructure so that people can continue to go about their daily lives and go to work, and that businesses can continue to function?
I completely agree. To do that, we need to think long-term. We do not do well enough in this country at thinking long-term, or beyond the next election cycle. We need to think of the next generation. What sort of world do we want to bequeath to them? What sort of country do we want to bequeath to them, and how will we build the country that is suitable for the climate that will be here in a few decades’ time? As has been pointed out, this is the coolest it will be in our lifetimes: the climate will only become more extreme, with more extreme heat and more extreme floods. We need to change our ways as a country. Experts have been telling us this for a long time. The Committee on Climate Change has pointed out that we are not doing anywhere near enough to meet the adaptation challenge facing us. I call on the Government to grasp the nettle. This is investment in building a better future-it is a win-win investment. Building houses that are suitable for the weather conditions that we will be facing is much cheaper than having to retrofit them afterwards. If we use materials and building methods that enable us to cool buildings naturally, we can create urban areas that are not such huge heat islands as they currently are. By building in such a way, including with lots of tree planting in urban areas, we can cool temperatures locally using natural methods. We have a real opportunity here, and we should grasp it with both hands. Tackling the adaptation and the resilience challenge...
Pippa Heylings, you have three minutes.
It is an honour to serve under your chairship, Sir Christopher. I congratulate the hon. Member for Waveney Valley (Adrian Ramsay) on securing this timely debate. As Britain experiences yet another summer of extreme heat, we cannot ignore the fact that the UK was built for a climate that no longer exists, as we have heard from all hon. Members here today. Climate change is not a distant threat; it is here today. Minister, it is an issue of national security. It affects our constituents, damages our economy and, increasingly, costs lives. On our current trajectory, average summer temperatures in my constituency of South Cambridgeshire could rise by more than 4°C. Days above 30°C are expected to increase six-fold, while summer rainfall could fall by more than a fifth. Those are just statistics, but like others I have heard stories of children struggling to learn in overheated classrooms, older people becoming dangerously ill in care homes, critical incidents in our hospitals, farmers facing drought and water shortages, and communities and wildlife under threat from wildfires, yet despite these growing risks the Climate Change Committee has concluded that the Government’s approach to climate adaptation is clearly not working and we are woefully unprepared. Can the Minister confirm that the Treasury has now accepted the forecast of 2°C warming by 2050, and, if we now have an agreed forecast, whether each Department is doing what it should be doing and setting adaptation goals,...
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Christopher, and I thank the hon. Member for Waveney Valley (Adrian Ramsay) for securing a debate on this very important topic. His wide-ranging speech highlighted the worsening climate outlook that we face; the impacts on physical health, mental health and sleep of the extreme heatwaves we have recently been suffering; and important issues about water storage. The hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) rightly highlighted the impact that extreme heatwaves have on people with lower incomes, who may not be able to go and buy air-conditioning units and so on. As well as highlighting the mitigation of putting ice lollies in the freezer, the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) talked about the impact on the elderly population in older, rural properties. The hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Alison Taylor) added to her comments in last night’s Adjournment debate about the importance of embodied carbon in buildings. My hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Minehead (Rachel Gilmour) joined a number of hon. Members in highlighting the failures of water companies-South West Water’s failings in her case-and the need to improve the reliability of water supply. The hon. Member for Stourbridge (Cat Eccles) highlighted the fact that Department for Education guidance has focused on open windows. I will come on to whether opening windows helps, after some experimentation that I have done in my own house as to...
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Christopher. I congratulate another valley MP, the hon. Member for Waveney Valley (Adrian Ramsay), on securing this debate. He excellently outlined how many people have been affected by extreme heat over the last few weeks both in a personal capacity and in their work in schools, hospitals or farms. All of us will have had the experience of helping vulnerable groups in our constituencies in the last few months. Just last Saturday, I met an elderly couple with no fans or water who were not in the system. We have all helped vulnerable residents, and I commend everybody in this Chamber for the job that they do. During the hon. Gentleman’s opening speech, I noted that a Doorkeeper was bringing in another fan. The irony of the Doorkeepers wearing very heavy woollen suits was not lost on me. I hope that we think about them as much as everybody else when we talk about the extreme heat.
Just before the debate, we hosted a solar-powered ice cream van from the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Minehead (Rachel Gilmour) in Speaker’s Court . Given the heat, it was very nourishing, and it was lovely that the Doorkeepers and those who work with Mr Speaker were able to come out and have some. It was fantastic to see Electrify Britain’s campaign to get bills down while we reduce emissions, and Styles Ice Cream’s fully solar-powered ice cream production and ice cream vans gave everybody a bit of comfort.
I will leave that for the Minister to respond to, but I entirely agree that it is good that the Doorkeepers and House staff who support us so admirably were allowed to have a brief break. I did not manage to get a solar power-produced ice cream, but perhaps I will pop down afterwards. The hon. Members for Birmingham Perry Barr (Ayoub Khan) and for North Herefordshire (Dr Chowns) said that there had not been enough focus on mitigation over the last few years. They are absolutely correct, but I remind Members that we have seen a 40% reduction in total carbon emissions since 2010 and that the United Kingdom represents only 0.8% of total global emissions. If they had had longer to speak, I know they would have said that we have to tackle this internationally as well as domestically. Last summer was the warmest on record in Britain. The UK Health Security Agency estimates that 1,504 people died as a result of the heat. Behind that figure are families who have lost loved ones. What is particularly striking is that the overwhelming majority were elderly: more than 1,300 of those deaths were among people aged over 75. Fortunately, that number was lower than the more than 3,000 deaths that had been predicted, thanks in part to the successful implementation of the adverse weather and health plan introduced by the previous Government. That demonstrates an important point: preparation saves lives. As our climate changes, extreme heat can no longer be regarded as an exceptional event. It...
Does the hon. Member recognise that it is not unusual for NESO to issue emergency measures? There are normally peaks and troughs during the day, such as when people come home from work, put the kettle on and turn on the air-conditioning. NESO has stated that that is quite normal.
It may be quite normal, but it should still concern people that our electricity supply is vulnerable and that we are becoming increasingly dependent on weather conditions. Preparing Britain for a changing climate means much more than setting emissions targets. It means protecting vulnerable people, ensuring that Government Departments are properly prepared, building homes that are fit for hotter summers, embracing practical technologies that improve resilience and maintaining an electricity system that is capable of supporting them. Adaptation is not an alternative to tackling climate change; it is an essential part of responding to it, because whatever path the climate takes over the coming decades-and we all know what path that will be-our responsibility today is to ensure that Britain is ready.
It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Christopher, in this debate on a matter that has affected a great many of our constituents and all Members who are struggling through the London heat. I am grateful to Members for their valuable contributions. I thank the hon. Member for Waveney Valley (Adrian Ramsay) for securing the debate. I hope to give all Members some confidence that we are making progress in what is an extremely complicated and interconnected problem. It is not only interconnected in this country; it requires action locally, nationally and internationally, and it cannot be solved easily or quickly. Despite some of the issues and considerable challenges-they are considerable-that hon. Members have pointed out in their contributions, I want to cheer people up slightly with the statement that the Nature Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry East (Mary Creagh), made on the Floor of the House yesterday. She pointed out that before the Paris agreement, the world was on track for 4% of warming, but we have now got it down to 2.5. That is still way too high, but I use that example because I want to inject a little bit of confidence that if we can get our processes right-internationally as well as nationally-we can do something about this. Such issues are so complex and interrelated that it is easy for people to think that the problem is too great and we cannot possibly deal with it, and then be despairing about it, so I wanted to inject that...
Might the Minister comment briefly on the Government’s approach to water? In the recent heatwaves, South East Water reported that water usage went up by 15% because people were taking extra showers and so on. She will know that South East Water has had huge problems with resilience in the network; that pushed it right to the brink. What are the Government doing to get a grip on this so that we build in resilience to areas such as Kent, which will be in a water deficit by the end of 2027?
My hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Haltemprice (Emma Hardy), the Minister for Water in DEFRA, is probably in a better position to give the hon. Member details on that. The water White Paper will seek to create a more coherent system than the one that we inherited, which we know is inadequate. The Government are strengthening long-term climate adaptation by setting stronger objectives based on common planning assumptions, informed by the guidance that we requested from the Climate Change Committee. Yesterday, in the statement given on the Floor of the House by my hon. Friend the Nature Minister on the state of climate and nature, she announced on climate adaptation that we are building our resilience for a minimum of 2% of warming by 2050 “and supporting combined authorities to increase their resilience to climate change, too.” -[ Official Report , 13 July 2026; Vol. 789, c. 649.] The Government will take forward that minimum temperature increase as an assumption in our adaptation planning; I think that is what the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire (Pippa Heylings) was asking me about.
I presume that we are talking about degrees of warming. I want to confirm that we are looking at going beyond-keeping warming below 1.5°C, and that 2°C is not a minimum but a forecast that we would not like to see but is probably happening. If we do not do more, it will rise by 4°C by the end of the century.
I absolutely accept that, and so do the Government. It is not ideal that 2% is the minimum that public authorities must plan their adaptation assumptions on. We want to avoid getting to 2%, but the fact is that the way things are going, that is a realistic assumption for our planners to incorporate into their work.
It is so important to clarify that we are talking about 2°C of warming, not 2%. The average pre-industrial temperature was 14°C; it is way more than 2%.
I was hoping to deal with a lot of these issues, but I want to leave the hon. Member for Waveney Valley enough time to say a few things. I have many more things to say, so perhaps we can resume this debate in the future.
I thank all hon. Members who have come along to take part in today’s debate. It shows how much interest there is across the House in this issue, which affects our constituents’ day-to-day lives now, and that is before the changes that could come in the future. I thank the Minister for that information. She suggested that she has more to give, and I would welcome a written response to see what more there is, especially if she has gone to the trouble of preparing it. In particular, I would like to hear more about the cross-departmental work that is planned. That is why I called for the Cabinet Office to be the answering Department in this debate. As much as I respect and work with DEFRA Ministers, this is a cross-Government issue, and it is extremely important that it is led by the Cabinet Office. I was also looking forward to the Minister talking about what immediate actions can be taken this summer, given that many measures that will take longer to deliver-in particular, increasing support for tackling wildfires and for A&E departments. If she has more to add on that, I would welcome it. I want to underline what two or three other Members said. I too hosted a screening of “National Emergency Briefing” in my constituency recently. It would be immensely powerful if the Government got behind a public information screening of that film. Alongside that, information could be provided about measures that people can take to adapt as best they can to the changes. We need systemic...