If my hon. Friend will forgive me, I would like to conclude my remarks .
I hope that the Government will also consider the call by my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition for the national consensus on climate change to be rebuilt. The events of the past few weeks have shown that that is now a matter of national security, with people’s homes, businesses and livelihoods under threat from extreme weather. All the evidence points to that happening more frequently in future.
Before the last election, we were edging towards that consensus. The Stern report set out clearly the catastrophic impact on our economy of a failure to act on climate change. The Committee on Climate Change and carbon budgets were established. Targets to reduce emission were set. Investment in flood protection was rising. The leader of the Conservative party was hugging huskies and pledging to lead the greenest Government ever.
Just three years later, however, the progress that was being made appears to have stalled and the Prime Minister is allegedly wandering around Downing street talking of his wish to be rid of all this “green crap”. Tellingly, he has appointed an Environment Secretary who talks up the alleged benefits of climate change and refuses to be briefed on the subject by the Government’s scientific advisers.
We urgently need to re-establish the consensus on the threat to the UK of climate change. The science is clear. The evidence is overwhelming. The Committee on Climate Change warns that current planned funding will
“result in around 250,000 more households becoming exposed to a significant risk of flooding by 2035”.
These floods must be a wake-up call: a wake-up call on whether dedicating just 0.7% of DEFRA’s budget to climate change mitigation and adaptation makes sense ; a wake-up call on the folly of ignoring the impact of climate change in the Food Re insurance scheme; and a wake-up call on the consequences of cutting investment in flood protection. For the communities that have suffered such appalling flooding in recent weeks, that is the very least they deserve.
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