My Lords, Amendment 129 in my name proposes to add a short new clause to the Climate Change Act 2008. Section 56 of the 2008 Act says:
“It is the duty of the Secretary of State to lay reports before Parliament containing an assessment of the risks for the United Kingdom of the current and predicted impact of climate change.”
All I am seeking is to put in something to make more precise the need to refer to the impact of climate change on buildings and to say something about the location of those buildings that will be affected. It would require the Secretary of State to include in a report an assessment of the risks and the locations of such threats to buildings caused by climate change. We all know only too well, just today, the real problems we are facing because of climate change, yet climate change is not mentioned in the Bill at all. The amendment aims to rectify that.
6.15 pm
The noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, has already referred to flood resilience and our concerns. We all know the problems we have had, not only with Storm Franklin today but with Storms Dudley and Eunice before. Many of us have seen the flooding and heard the stories of people being moved from their homes, traffic chaos and so on, so we are well aware of all the issues around flooding. There is quite a lot of data around if you go out and search for it. The Climate Change Committee tells us:
“Surface water is the most widespread form of flooding in England, with around”—
here, it refers to buildings and properties—
“3.2 million properties at risk.”
NASA does these satellite things and flooding maps, which show us the huge areas of London that could have regular flooding as soon as 2030. Back in November last year, the property industry said that climate change will leave 1.5 million homes at risk of flooding by 2050.
That is just flooding; there are so many other risks, such as coastal erosion. We know, again according to the Climate Change Committee, that, by the end of this century, something like 80,000 additional homes are likely to be at risk of coastal erosion. We know from the British Geological Survey that the problem of subsidence is getting worse. Incidentally, we know that it has already cost us £3 billion over the past 10 years, but it will get significantly worse, rising from affecting around 3% of buildings back in 1990 to something like 10% of buildings by 2070. So a lot of properties in a lot of places are in a lot of difficulty because of climate change. It therefore makes sense for details of all that to be brought together, included in a report and so on.
We have been around these Committees, so we know how the Minister will respond, I think. Let me see if I can predict how he will respond and see how good I am at it. I may get it wrong, but we will see. The first thing he will say is, “The noble Lord, Lord Foster, has just given a ton of detail about all these things, so why do we need this report to be done? The information is already out there”. If that is the argument he is going to use, let me say that I had to spend a lifetime searching out all this information. It should be easy for people to find. It should be gathered together and made easily accessible so that local councils—those responsible for new buildings, looking after existing buildings and so on—can have easy access to it. The Minister is likely to say that but it is not a good enough excuse.
Of course, the Minister will also say that we already produce reports and point me to the climate risk assessment dated 7 January 2022; if he is not going to do that, he should do because it is well worth a read. On page 3, it says:
“Full details of the risk assessment are contained”
not in it but
“in a series of reports published by the CCC which are fully endorsed by both the UK government and devolved administrations.”
I went to have a look at those reports because, if the information was already there, why would I waste my time on this? They contain references to and a lot of detail on threats to buildings caused, for example, by erosion and the other things I have mentioned. However, you really have to dig through those reports to find it all. The problem is that they do not tell us anything about where those risks will occur. There is nothing about location and the details are hard to find.
It is important that the Government be required to produce a report under the Climate Change Act that would bring all that data together and make it easy and simple for people to access it. It would give details of what the risks are over the forthcoming period and say where they are going to occur. That seems a fairly simple thing to do and it would be really helpful and important for all sorts of people. I hope that the Minister will not use either of those excuses but just say, “Yes, it’s a good idea and we’re going to do it”.