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 barbeques in public areas?

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?

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?

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?

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. 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.

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 agriculture and across our buildings, our public services and so much more. I want to focus on a few points around health, that being my speciality, and to look at the scale of what we are talking about. We have heard already about the 2,700 deaths so far this year from the climate emergency due to heat alone. We think particularly of the most vulnerable—babies, children under the age of four and older people, whose bodies find it harder to regulate—and those who have cognitive dysfunction, who will find it difficult to make the necessary adaptations to keep themselves safe. Of course, we also know that the challenges bear down hardest on those in lower socioeconomic circumstances. As a result, we need to look at this in a way that ensures justice, equality and real fairness. Many people can go out and buy an air-con unit or a fan to keep themselves cool, but those without resources clearly do not have that advantage and their health is placed at even greater risk. We know about not only the distress that this causes—respiratory or cardiovascular distress—but the serious risk of kidney dysfunction and so much more we could name. We have heard about the pharma impact and the impact of exhaustion cramps—and then there are the risks of cancer; we have not heard about that in this debate, but greater UV exposure will increase those risks, too. We also have to think about the environments that people then go into. Our hospitals are just not equipped for this heat. York hospital, built in 1977, is just not heat resilient—it is a greenhouse, as has been highlighted. Anyone struggling to breathe will find it massively challenging in those environments. Therefore, the urgency with which we need to make our public buildings resilient cannot be overstated. I therefore call on the Minister—I appreciate that this goes way beyond her brief, but it is a cross-Government function—to look at how we build resilience across the board. What resources are we going to invest in our climate resilience? Will we have a single Minister, leading cross-departmentally, to ensure resilience? How will we ensure that we are not just looking in Westminster? We know that real change and impact happen on the ground in localities, so how are we empowering our local authorities with the resources and the plans to make a difference now, not just in the future? How are we ensuring that the people working in those facilities have the support they need to say, “Tools down, we can’t work any more”? Of course, that is very difficult when we are talking about health facilities—we think back to covid and the conditions in which people were working in extreme heat there—but we need plans to support workers who are at risk of many of the same health challenges. What I am really asking from the Minister is this. What are the resources and how will we ensure that devolution is part of that? How will we institute comprehensive planning, so that we do not continue to face the risks, the closures, the real discomfort and, tragically, the deaths that we have seen this year?

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 older traditional stone or poorly ventilated rural properties, which act as little storage heaters during a heatwave. In my office in Ards, when it is warm in the summer, it is like a sauna bath, and when it is cold in the winter, it is like a freezer. That is the nature of the building; the walls are about a foot and a half thick, and they were built for a purpose—to hold the roof up—but they were never built for ventilation or for heat. We have those buildings across the Ards peninsula, where I live. An isolated pensioner living in a village in the Ards peninsula cannot just pop out to an air-conditioned shopping centre or a cold public building, so there is a personal health concern as well. Furthermore, our agricultural sector, the very backbone of the Strangford economy, faces unprecedented strain. Vegetable and crop farmers are already grappling with intense summer droughts and skyrocketing water demands to keep yields alive. Our livestock are also highly susceptible to heat stress, threatening food security and farmers’ livelihoods alike. Our critical infrastructure is, I believe, also hanging by a thread. Just last month, I tabled a parliamentary question on the resilience of our electricity grid during extreme weather. When a heatwave strikes, transformers overheat and water treatment facilities face immense pressure. In a rural area such as Strangford, if a water pump or power line fails because of extreme heat, entire communities are left vulnerable and cut off from basic utilities. The impact is on not just one but multiple households. Although environmental adaptation is heavily devolved, the strategic funding and macro-infrastructure backing must be an all-of-the-United-Kingdom effort. We cannot treat heatwaves as an occasional summer novelty. I love heat, but I am not sure that I like 40°C; I can probably just about take 30°C. We had our Twelfth of July parade yesterday, and it was a lovely sunny day and I really enjoyed it; it is nice to have that heat now and again, but maybe not at the constant level that we now have. I ask the Minister what cross-departmental work has been done with the devolved Administrations to ensure that the UK Health Security Agency’s heat-health alerts and emergency response playbooks are seamlessly integrated into rural healthcare networks. We have the system in place and we need to make sure that healthcare centres—whether that means GPs, clinics or hospitals—and health workers and carers are all integrated and working better together. It is my belief that we need specific capital funding to be made available to modernise rural electricity grids, so that they do not buckle under the twin pressures of winter storms and summer heatwaves, and to support our agrifood sector in transitioning to heat-resilient farming practices. Of course, those improvements all take planning and funding, but if the Government truly believe in the environmental concerns that are seeing green taxes levied on those who can least afford them, that funding must come to these industries at the same time. In conclusion—ever mindful of your timescale of about five minutes each, Sir Christopher—we must act now to ensure that national heatwave preparedness protects every citizen, whether they live in the heart of London or in my constituency on the shores of Strangford lough, and to ensure that our farmers and our agrifood industry are prepared to deal with any continued periods of heat. If that is what is to be expected in the future—the Government tell us that that is the way things are going—we have to be able to respond to that, and I gently say that we need to be more prepared. I look forward to the Minister’s response. I know that the Minister is always very keen to ensure that the regional Administrations and Westminster work together. My hope is that that will be exactly what we do.

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 opportunity over the past 20 years, we need to look forward, with short-term relief and long-term strategies to retrofit buildings, emphasising design and construction techniques that reduce the impact of extreme heat, and to look to the circular economy. We need to consider embodied carbon in buildings, the topic of last night’s interesting Adjournment debate from the hon. Member for North Herefordshire (Dr Chowns). As I mentioned last night, local authorities need to look at how buildings are demolished, so that cleared sites do not hypothetically hold embodied carbon and are not adversely affected by industry benchmarks, such as the Building Research Establishment environmental assessment method—BREEAM points are impacted by poor and thoughtless demolition practices. In conclusion, I stand ready to help the Government meet our 2030 and 2050 targets on climate change and greenhouse gases.

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. Yet, when the pressure came, South West Water was not ready. The imposition of the ban is on mid-Devon and parts of east Devon but nowhere else in the region. My constituents want to know why they alone are paying the price of a company’s failure to plan. Where was the investment? Where was the foresight? That is not bad luck, it is dereliction of duty. It is hard to shake the distinct impression that to South West Water stakeholders come a distant second behind shareholder interests, which is unacceptable. The consequences go beyond garden hoses. At a slaughter site in Willand, water pressure was cut to a quarter of its normal levels, leading to an unfolding animal welfare crisis. It posed a potential public health risk, as a site that cannot access adequate water cannot maintain hygiene standards. As the MP for the area, it took me five phone calls yesterday before someone from South West Water picked up the phone. I found the lack of urgency and concern to be outstanding. I am assured that some water pressure has now been restored, but this is on a cliff edge, and major welfare issues remain a concern. Despite what I heard from its new chief executive in a breakfast meeting just a few weeks ago, it seems as though South West Water has not learned any lessons. Finally, heat preparedness is also as much about the everyday infrastructure that people rely on. Buses, in particular, are used disproportionately by elderly residents, the very group most at risk of heatstroke. Too many buses still lack adequate air-conditioning. That has to be part of the preparedness conversation. This heat will come again and again. We need a system and the infrastructure that meets it head on and corporate entities that put people first, not profit.

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 and cooling systems such as air-conditioning. Remember that not every school can simply open the windows, particularly not schools for children with special educational needs and difficulties, where it could be contrary to risk assessments. I have also been contacted by train drivers, bus drivers and delivery drivers who have been working in extreme temperatures with no air-conditioning. I have even heard that some supermarkets deliberately chose new delivery vehicles without air-conditioning to reduce their costs. That is unacceptable, as workers’ wellbeing should always be a priority over saving a few pounds. I have long supported the campaign for a law on a maximum working temperature, led by all the major trade unions, but it must be matched with the mitigating adaptations to ensure that productivity and the economy can continue in the face of climate challenges. When I worked in the operating department before coming to Parliament, maintaining temperature and humidity at certain levels was crucial to reducing infection risks while balancing the need to maintain a patient’s core temperature. Operating theatres are usually windowless rooms filled with electrical equipment, and even the best laminar flow and ventilation systems would struggle in hot weather. The lack of legislation on working temperatures and the pressures of waiting lists meant that we often had to carry on regardless and try to minimise the risk along the way. We need to act now to adapt to extreme heat to outpace the health risks and impacts on daily life. That requires a combination of immediate operational changes and long-term architectural upgrades to maintain safe and comfortable learning, working and living environments. What are the Government doing to adapt to this new normal, Minister? Will comprehensive guidance and support be provided to help schools, workplaces and public buildings mitigate the impact of extreme heat? Will the Government follow the lead of Spain, Belgium, Latvia and others, and answer the calls from trade unions to implement a maximum working temperature in this country? This country is built for a climate that no longer exists. Without immediate action, we will see more health implications and more disruption. We are at a tipping point. Adapting to extreme heat will strengthen our national and economic resilience and improve everybody’s lives.

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 really shocking that, despite hospitals receiving an enormous amount of investment, they are simply not adequate for treating the most vulnerable and needy when they need critical support. That experience brought home a simple truth: extreme heat is not a minor inconvenience, but a public health emergency. As hon. Members have said, during this heatwave alone, 2,700 people have died as a result of heat-related causes. That includes 368 deaths in the west midlands, which experienced its highest rate of deaths per head during the June heatwave. The buildings that are intended to protect us are unprepared. Although we do not yet have data from this summer, more than half of NHS trusts reported at least one overheating incident during the summer of 2022, and the number of NHS overheating incidents requiring risk assessments rose by 53% between 2016 and 2024. Hon. Members have spoken about schools and other public buildings. During the recent heatwave, about 1,000 schools closed or shortened their days, and there were reports of teachers passing out in classrooms that reached temperatures in excess of 40°C. The answer cannot simply be to send children home or tell patients and workers to drink more water. We need a properly funded national heat resilience programme. We must audit every school, hospital and care home, and install effective ventilation, external shielding, reflecting roofs and energy efficient cooling where necessary. We should create accessible community cooling centres and establish clear maximum safe indoor temperature standards. Extreme heat is already costing lives, and the Government must prepare for summer emergencies with the same seriousness with which we prepare for winter. Warm words and weather warnings will not cool a classroom, protect a hospital patient or prevent the next avoidable death.

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 weather extremes such as flooding. As my hon. Friend the Member for Waveney Valley pointed out, we are facing a situation in which climate change, or climate breakdown, is driving the increasing frequency and severity of extreme weather events. As he pointed out, we have known about this for decades, but sadly Governments have effectively been asleep at the wheel on reducing climate-warming emissions to the level we need them at, and particularly on adaptation and building our resilience. Our farmers now face water shortages, and those working in public services, whether in health, education or public transport, are struggling to cope with conditions for which our infrastructure is simply not built.

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 is not about just sticking our finger in the dyke or using a sticking plaster approach, such as patchwork retrofitting air-con in every building that is struggling with the heat; it is an opportunity to imagine and to build a better country for the future. There are things the Government can do right now. My hon. Friend the Member for Gorton and Denton (Hannah Spencer) introduced a private Member’s Bill yesterday to establish a maximum workplace temperature. We have a minimum workplace temperature, but we clearly need a maximum one. Minister, is this something that the Government will support? I hope they will. As we have seen, there is international precedent and huge levels of support across the country We also need to recognise that we must build the long-term resilience that we require. As a country, we do not yet have an adaptation plan that is fit for purpose, or the co-ordination that is needed. I raised that issue with the Minister a few days ago in a debate on national security and resilience and was told that Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs is responsible for resilience in farming, and that the Department of Health and Social Care is responsible for resilience in health. I raised this in Health questions this morning, but the issues we face are not solved just by retrofitting our hospitals. We have to enable everybody in the country to stay healthy in the extremes of heat that we are increasingly seeing so that they do not have to go into hospital in the first place. This is a cross-Government requirement and priority, so will the Government put in place adaptation plans that the Climate Change Committee will itself declare are fit for purpose? Finally, we must put the brakes on the problem at the same time. It is not an either/or between mitigation and adaptation; we still have more to do to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and the emissions that are causing climate breakdown, so that we save ourselves from the worst possible effects of runaway climate change. I call on the Government to go further and faster on real climate action, not least by holding the line on Jackdaw and Rosebank. We cannot on the one hand struggle with facing the consequences of climate change, such as extreme heat, and on the other hand continue to take more fossil fuels out of the ground and burn them. We need consistent Government policy across the piece. I hope the Government will provide that.

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, given we can now model what that means for every sector? Preparing for increasing climate impacts must be seen as an issue of national security and resilience. The Liberal Democrats are calling for adequate cooling to be installed in all NHS hospitals, care homes and schools in high-risk areas in the next five years, and for work with local authorities and mayors to create a network of air-conditioned cool hubs for vulnerable people. We also agree that we should have maximum workplace temperatures, as many of our European neighbours already have; increase green space and plant more trees to cool our towns and cities; and support households to insulate their homes and install heat pumps that can provide both efficient heating in winter and cooling in summer. Without greater resilience, the foundations needed for our UK security will struggle to function, but we have all the answers in our hands. That is the message of the multiple people’s emergency briefings that the South Cambridgeshire climate and nature group arranged across my constituency and which I have attended, and which have happened across the country. Does the Minister support the call for a Government-backed, televised national emergency briefing? People deserve the facts, and they need and want to be better prepared.

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 how to deal with this. The hon. Member for Birmingham Perry Barr (Ayoub Khan) rightly highlighted the fact we have had long-term knowledge of climate change and we have collectively, as a human species, failed to take decisive action thus far. The hon. Member for North Herefordshire (Dr Chowns) talked about the impact of learning. Finally, my hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire (Pippa Heylings) talked with her customary passion and expertise on this topic. She said that the impact of climate change is here today and that it should be considered a national security issue. We Liberal Democrats share the concerns of hon. Members in this Chamber. We are acutely aware of the serious public health threat posed by heatwaves, particularly to those with underlying health conditions, residents of care homes and people living in temporary accommodation. Back in summer 2023, an estimated 2,295 deaths were associated with five periods of heat. This year so far, more than 2,700 people may have died from heat-related causes in England and Wales, as suggested by expert estimates. We have also seen wildfires. Very tragically, a wildfire led to the deaths of British citizens in Almeria in Spain, but I have also had fires locally in the Astons and West Challow in my constituency, although thankfully they have not led to fatalities. My constituency has also faced the challenge of hot school buildings. At recent school visits, I have felt this for myself—for example, at the Stanford in the Vale Church of England primary school but also at Aureus secondary school, despite that building not even being a decade old. That shows how we continue to not get these things right. I have attended a community national emergency briefing in Wallingford, and there has also been one in Didcot. That shows there is rising popular concern about these topics and that we need to take more action. Let us think about this issue through three categories. First, what can we do to prevent the root cause? Secondly, what can we do to mitigate it? Thirdly, what coping measures do we have in place? On prevention, I feel very strongly, as do several other hon. Members, that we cannot keep shunting carbon emission reductions down the road. We have made progress in a number of areas in the United Kingdom but there is a lot more to be done. Globally, the same issue applies: when we are confronted with a choice between making further and faster progress on reducing carbon emissions and other factors, it is often the other factors that win out. Progress has been pretty stagnant on introducing electric vehicles and adapting our infrastructure, and the UK’s hopeless record on rail electrification, including under this Government, and on industrial production needs lots of attention. That is before we even think about rainforest loss and the destruction of nature both here and elsewhere. That is why we, as politicians who care about these topics, must tackle net zero scepticism head on. We are directly seeing the impacts of climate change now, and we will spend far more money if we focus solely on mitigation—which, alas, we need to do because of our lack of progress—rather than on tackling the root causes of carbon emissions. The second theme is mitigation. Building design is important. The hon. Member for North Herefordshire made embodied carbon in buildings the focus of her Adjournment debate last night, and we can also learn how to design our buildings better so that they are resilient for the future. We know from some of the buildings here on the parliamentary estate what a long way we have to go: elements of the Palace can be very cool, but Portcullis House is hardly a triumph of modern building design, given that the atrium—and frankly every room in that place—is a greenhouse. I am personally delighted not to have won a room in Portcullis House in the ballot. I am happy to be in Derby Gate where the air-con actually works—for half of it anyway, but that is another story. It is not right that so many people are left to endure dangerously high temperatures in poorly insulated homes and buildings. That is why the Liberal Democrats are calling for a 10-year emergency home upgrade programme, beginning with free insulation and heat pumps for low-income households, while ensuring that all new homes are built to zero-carbon standards. That builds on our recent success of getting the Government to commit to putting rooftop solar on all new builds, which was encouraged by the sunshine Bill introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Max Wilkinson). When we are dealing with heat pump scepticism, it is important to remember that heat pumps have the capability to provide air-con in summer. Successive Governments have comprehensively failed to take climate adaptation measures seriously, guaranteeing misery for people and communities affected by heat stress, as well as flooding and wildfires. That is why we would prioritise protecting communities by implementing a comprehensive UK adaptation strategy, embedding climate resilience into decision making across all Government Departments and agencies—rather than the current siloed approach—to prevent problems before they happen. We would deliver adequate funding to local communities to empower them to combat flooding, drought and heatwaves, including through nature-based flood management, sustainable drainage, water supply enhancement, building retrofits and urban greening, backed by stronger planning and regulatory frameworks. People continue to ignore the evidence that even simple solutions, such as more trees and more shade in urban areas, can make an enormous difference to our ability to withstand heatwaves. The Liberal Democrats would develop resilience standards for the energy, water, transport and telecommunications sectors, and support homeowners to install proactive adaptation measures against flooding and overheating. We also believe that no one should be expected to work in unacceptably high temperatures, and we support the Climate Change Committee’s recommendation to introduce a statutory maximum workplace temperature. The third theme is coping measures, and cool hubs are our policy solution. They would be rather like warm hubs with areas of heating, which are popular in Ukraine in winter when Russia attacks infrastructure, but they are the summer equivalent. Community spaces with air-conditioning, such as gyms, leisure centres and libraries, could provide much-needed respite from soaring temperatures in summer months, following similar “cool bank” schemes in other countries. We need to do more to make our transport networks resilient. We need to consider whether our current rail stress temperatures need to be increased, given a much wider range of temperatures and much hotter summers. The more modern railway electrification that we have in this country is much more resilient than older equipment installed in past decades. Melting tarmac can be an issue for roads and aviation. Public health advice and information will be more and more important. We need to ensure that people understand good practice for keeping houses cool. I have realised from contributions to the Didcot community Facebook group that I have been doing this all wrong and that, actually, having the windows open often does not help. Somebody said, “You’re such idiots for opening your windows. Keep them closed when it’s hot.” I have tried that and, I have to say, it is a lot better. Perhaps that exposes my embarrassing lack of understanding of science, but it shows that we can do a lot more to help people to reach the best conclusions for their own houses. Finally, we need a public information campaign on what we can all do to prevent fires and reduce the risk, particularly in the countryside where we should not be smoking, vaping or having barbecues in areas that have been subject to drought and are at much higher risk. This is clearly a very challenging topic, and one that needs action across Government Departments. For that reason, I look forward to the Minister’s comments.

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 is becoming a recurring feature of British summers, and Government policy must adapt accordingly. Reducing emissions remains important, but adaptation must sit alongside mitigation. We have a duty to ensure that our homes, infrastructure, public services and energy system are capable of coping with the conditions we increasingly face. That begins with protecting the most vulnerable. The Cabinet Office is the lead Government Department for severe weather and has responsibility for identifying those who require particular protection during periods of extreme heat. Last year’s resilience action plan committed the Government to publishing new lead Department expectations and updated guidance to help Departments to identify those who may become vulnerable during emergencies such as heatwaves. Yet a year after those commitments were made, neither of those things appears to have been delivered. Will the Minister explain when those long-promised expectations and updated guidance will finally be delivered? Preparing for emergencies cannot simply be a slogan; it requires effective planning and proper co-ordination across Government. Preparation must also extend to the homes we are building today. Many of those homes will still be occupied at the end of this century, so they should be designed not simply for the climate of the past, but for the hotter summers that experts increasingly expect. In apartments in densely built urban areas or during prolonged periods of extreme heat, opening windows is often ineffective—as the Liberal Democrat spokesman, the hon. Member for Didcot and Wantage (Olly Glover), outlined from his personal experience—or impractical because of security concerns, pollution or noise. Current building regulations may not explicitly prohibit air-conditioning, but they require developers to exhaust every possible passive cooling measure before mechanical cooling can even be considered. In practice, that has created a system where air-conditioning has become the exception rather than a realistic option. Indeed, there have been cases where families have installed air-conditioning and have been instructed by councils to remove it. At precisely the moment Britain needs to become more resilient to hotter summers, Government policy is too often acting as a barrier to the adoption of technology that could help people remain safe and comfortable. Research suggests that wider use of air-conditioning could reduce heat-associated deaths among those at greatest risk by as much as three quarters. This is not simply a matter of comfort; it is about public health and protecting vulnerable people. It is also about ensuring that children can learn effectively during hot weather, that workers remain productive and that families are able to sleep safely through increasingly warm nights. Britain is increasingly becoming an international outlier. Around 90% of homes in both Japan and the United States have air-conditioning, compared with only 3% to 5% of homes in the United Kingdom. We in the Conservative party have already committed to removing the regulations that effectively discourage air-conditioning in new homes. I asked the Minister whether the Government will now consider doing the same. There is another contradiction in current policy. At the very time that we are discouraging greater use of air-conditioning, consumers are paying billions of pounds in energy bills to compensate renewable generators for switching off when there is excess electricity generation during sunny summer days. Air-conditioning demand rises precisely when solar generation is at its strongest. Rather than paying generators not to generate, surely it makes more sense to allow households to use that electricity to cool their homes. As electricity generation becomes increasingly dependent on intermittent weather conditions, maintaining grid stability becomes ever more challenging. This summer, the National Energy System Operator took the unprecedented step of issuing electricity margin notices following periods when supply became dangerously tight. That should concern every Member of this House.

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 little bit of optimism. We have made progress, and we have to make sure that we carry on making progress. The Government recognise that extreme heat fuelled by climate change is no longer a rare seasonal event to be managed with temporary emergency measures; it is a chronic, recurring, structural risk to our economy, public health and national security. Every hon. Member who has contributed today has recognised that point. Our response to extreme heat is built on a combination of tried and tested plans and capabilities that have been refined over time, and also longer-term programmes to meet the specific challenges of climate change. Evidence suggests that without action, the physical impacts of climate change could cost England’s economy between 1.1% and 3.3% of GDP by 2050, and at least 7.4% by the end of the century. We are taking action now in recognition that it is economically beneficial to invest early to reduce emissions. As Nicholas Stern said many years ago, the more money spent on investing to prevent, the cheaper it is to deal with the consequences. The Government have put clean energy and climate action at the heart of their agenda, which includes showing global leadership by setting a world-leading target to reduce emissions by at least 81% by 2035. Cutting emissions remains our first line of defence, but it is harder when the political consensus that existed about climate action has broken down globally and in this country. There are still people who claim that climate change does not exist and that we are spending a load of money for no particular reason, when we know that scientists are universally agreed that the increase in heat and changes in climate that we are talking about have been caused by human effects on our planet’s climate. The sooner that everybody recognises that globally, the easier it will be for the great ingenuity of the human race—when it is in a good mood—to deal with the consequences of what was done in the past with industrialisation. We are taking action as well as mitigation to prepare the UK for the impacts of climate change. Under the Climate Change Act 2008, we maintain a robust climate change risk assessment, and through the national adaptation programme, DEFRA co-ordinates a rigorous cross-Government response to ensure that our sectors remain resilient.

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.