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The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Vaux of Harrowden) (CB)
My Lords, if there is a Division in the Chamber while we are sitting, this Committee will adjourn as soon as the Division Bells are rung and resume after 10 minutes.
Rebuilding Forensic Science for Criminal Justice (Science and Technology Committee Report)
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Lord Mair (CB)
My Lords, I am delighted to introduce for debate our Science and Technology Committee report Rebuilding Forensic Science for Criminal Justice: An Urgent Need. At the outset, I welcome the noble Lord, Lord Hanson of Flint, responding on behalf of the Home Office. I thank the committee members who participated in the report, including those who have since left the committee. I also thank the noble and learned Lord, Lord Burnett of Maldon, who was co-opted on to the committee, as well as the noble Baroness, Lady Black, for her informative briefings to the committee and support of the inquiry. I thank the excellent committee staff who assisted in preparing this report: the clerks, John Turner and Daisy Robins; the policy analyst, Thomas Hornigold; and the committee operations officer, Sid Gurung.
The inquiry started in November 2025, we published our report in February 2026, and the Government responded in April 2026. The inquiry heard from a range of witnesses, including forensic scientists, companies, the regulator, defence barristers and witnesses from the Home Office and Ministry of Justice. Crucially, the inquiry was in part a follow-up to the inquiry that the committee undertook in 2018-19, in which I also took part.
Today, I will first set out the issues our inquiry found with the forensic science system, which many others have also identified. I will then discuss the Government’s response and their proposed policing reforms, which involve setting up a national police service with forensics as part of its remit. These risk kicking a lot of these urgent issues into the long grass. I will conclude with questions for the Minister.
Forensic science is unquestionably a critical pillar of the criminal justice system. We rely on good forensic science to establish the facts of a case. Miscarriages of justice can arise when mistakes are made, both in wrongfully convicting the innocent and in allowing the guilty to walk free. For this reason, a well-functioning forensic science system is critical to the interests of justice in the UK. Unfortunately, the forensic science system in England and Wales is not working for anyone. It is not working for the police, it is not working for forensic scientists, and it is not working for lawyers. Ultimately, it is not working for the public and for the criminal justice system. Our inquiry heard exactly this from Professor Angela Gallop, a prominent forensic scientist. We heard little to contradict it.
To understand the problems, it is necessary to know some history. Prior to 2012, most forensic science in England and Wales was conducted by the Forensic Science Service, which provided forensic science services to the police forces. This was shut down and replaced by a combination of in-house police laboratories and private commercial providers commissioned by the police. This model now suffers from a range of problems, many of which we identified in 2019 and have only worsened since.
First, no one takes responsibility for ensuring that the system works. Responsibility is split between the Home Office, via its responsibility for the police, and the Ministry of Justice—defence, legal aid and courts. But no Minister has forensic science explicitly in their remit. Responsibility for procuring forensic science or providing it in-house is divided between 43 different police forces, which are only loosely co-ordinated through bodies such as the National Police Chiefs’ Council. We identified this in 2019, but the joint structures promised in 2019 were not kept up, so no one really owns the overall responsibility for funding forensic science, managing the forensic science market or workforce planning.
Secondly, the market for forensic science services has collapsed. In 2019 there were three major commercial providers but now there are effectively two. One of them is Eurofins, with over 80% of the market share: a near monopoly. The only other major company emerged from administration in 2018 with a reduced range of services. This is not an efficient, competitive market. The providers run on thin or even negative margins. Our report asked what assessment the Government had made of this concentration risk. What is the contingency plan if Eurofins, the near-monopoly provider and a big multinational, decided not to provide forensic services any more? We did not receive a satisfactory answer.
Thirdly, and in part due to this market collapse, there is now fragmented in-house police provision of forensic services. Most forensic science spending is in-house: some £500 million compared to £100 million spent on external providers, which is to say more than 80%. As providers reduce their services more gets taken in-house, which is a vicious circle. This creates several problems: first, it lacks independence from the police. Scientists know that bias need not be a conscious or corrupt act. It can arise from what you choose to examine, what you choose to ignore and how you choose to interpret the results; it can arise unconsciously. In Scotland there is a sterile corridor between its forensic science and police services, but there are no such provisions in England and Wales. We suggested this as a model that the Government could adopt with their proposed new national forensic service. There has been no commitment to do this.
Practice varies between police forces; there is limited co-ordination as to the forensic science capabilities of each force and there is limited oversight of them. What is done in-house, what is done externally and even how exhibits are submitted all vary from force to force, creating what the Minister for Policing and Crime herself called a “postcode lottery”. This fragmentation is inefficient, with police forces duplicating labs and capabilities. Ministers admitted that they did not know how much was spent on certain activities and by which forces. There is voluntary guidance from the National Police Chiefs’ Council, and the independent forensic science regulator can set standards that would bind police labs. Most forensic science activities should be accredited according to the Forensic Science Regulator’s code. But in practice our witnesses were concerned that the regulator is underresourced and might hesitate to use its powers to disrupt a fragile forensic science system. We asked the Government to publish the accreditation status of every police force’s in-house forensic science. It agreed in principle but, six months on, no force-by-force data has been published. Accreditation itself creates issues; witnesses described it as slow and burdensome. Compliance is still patchy and the high costs involved drive smaller providers out of the market.
A fourth major issue is that there is no equality of access for the defence. In court, the police have access to their in-house forensic experts and the large forensic science providers, but the defence must rely on a small, fragmented and underpaid community of individual forensic experts. The problems with legal aid are well documented, but what is less well known is that defence experts are paid less by legal aid than the prosecution. In our inquiry we heard that the rates are £83 per hour, paid by legal aid, for the defence experts, while £130 per hour is paid by the Crown Prosecution Service for prosecution experts. Given the struggles to obtain legal aid in the first place, we heard that many companies and experts do not pursue defence work because the pay is so limited.
This lack of overall co-ordination gives rise to a host of other issues. Perhaps no issue better illustrates the dysfunction than how forensic evidence is stored. Often, technology advances, enabling subsequent better analysis that can convict or exonerate someone. Storing forensic evidence properly is therefore critical. Under the old Forensic Science Service, there was one national forensic archive that stored forensic evidence to a high standard, but when the FSS closed, responsibility was dispersed to each of the 43 police forces to store their own materials. They are not experts in how to do this. They were not funded to do it. Some forces invested in it but some struggled and the result is that many pieces of critical forensic evidence are getting lost or damaged, jeopardising criminal justice.
One defence barrister told us of an unsolved cold case in which a key exhibit was eventually traced to a police officer’s home, where it had been used to train other officers. A quite staggering aspect of this is that the forensic archive still exists. It still stores all the evidence from the old Forensic Science Service’s archive and has been expanded to hold material from a collapsed provider of forensic services. The forensic archive once expanded responsibility for storing evidence. I am sure that the police would be relieved to have this burden taken away. The Home Office Minister, Sarah Jones, was asked whether the Government should fund a national archive and said, “yes, quite possibly”. The Courts Minister, Sarah Sackman, said that expanding the archive was a great idea and that
“we need consistency across the country”.
Yet all the Government have said that they would do is review the forensic archive’s remit. Many months on from our report, there is no commitment to expand the archive. In reducing duplication, it would likely save money. A modest investment in already existing facilities could prevent the national scandal of justice not being done because no one has funded proper storage of the evidence.
Another major issue created by this lack of overall co-ordination is that certain specialisms of forensic science are dying out. We heard that areas such as marks and traces and analysis of fibres, glass, paint and footwear are all suffering. We heard from Professor Angela Gallop that the Stephen Lawrence case would not have been solved without fibre evidence. Some 10 to 15 years ago, there were 40 fibre scientists but now there are just about four or five. Because there is no national-level co-ordination of forensic science, no one is in charge of making sure that we retain vital capacity in these areas, which fall between the cracks of the police and forensic science providers.
DNA testing is clearly a marvellous tool, but it cannot solve every case. Our witnesses were clear that, without these specialisms that I have outlined, some cases would never have been solved. If they die out, there will be preventable miscarriages of justice in the future. As long as forensic science is determined by what disparate, underfunded market actors are willing to pay for, rather than what justice requires, this is where we are headed. The Government recognised that niche disciplines were under threat. They did so in 2019, but the police steering group tasked with looking at this was quietly disbanded. In 2026, the Government have also accepted that these disciplines matter, but there is still no sign of any action to preserve them.
The same is true when it comes to training the next generation of forensic scientists and harnessing new technologies. There is a lack of national co-ordination. Digital forensics is a huge and growing area of concern, yet there has been a stubborn backlog of 20,000 digital devices still awaiting examination. AI could potentially be used to reduce this, but it also poses new challenges in the form of deepfake evidence. The Government have introduced PoliceAI, which funds some pilots on digital evidence, but its funding is not ring-fenced for forensic science. As most digital forensics is done in-house by the police, there is an urgent need for standards and training, including in the use of new tools. Our report recommended the establishment of a national institute for forensic science to maintain tools and guidance for best practice, help to run training courses for forensic scientists and conduct research and development into new forms of forensics. But, again, the Government have not agreed to this.
I now turn to what the Government are doing about all of this. A major development that could be extremely positive, but which also creates a huge deal of uncertainty, is the policing reform White Paper, which has committed to the establishment of a new national police service and, as part of that, a national forensics capacity. Our committee welcomed this idea in principle because of the total dysfunction of the existing system, but when the White Paper was published, around the time of our report, we were also—to quote our report—concerned
“that the much-needed rebuilding of forensic science in England and Wales gets kicked into the long grass while we await uncertain, long-term structural reforms”.
Ten months on from the White Paper’s publication, there is still no Bill before Parliament to set out what will actually happen. The proposed mergers of police forces are still very uncertain and will likely take years, and there is still no launch date for the national police service and its forensics service. There has been continuity in the Home Office at ministerial level, which suggests that these reforms will go ahead, but it is all very uncertain and, in the meantime, the problems that we have identified are continuing to get worse. Although we have suggested that any forensics service should be operationally independent of the police, perhaps through a “sterile corridor” between them, the Government have not committed to this.
Reform will, of course, take time, but our report urged the Government to act now to stabilise the forensic science sector as well as setting it on a firmer footing in the long run. Uncertainty around the long-term reform should not be an excuse for inaction now on issues such as the storage of forensic evidence, addressing legal aid funding for defence experts, preserving niche disciplines and setting up a national institute for forensic science, as many other countries have done, to safeguard expertise while the policing reforms are undertaken. All these could be undertaken now, but on the vast majority of our recommendations there has been little sign of movement.
In summary, the issues with the system that our report identified are not new. Many were identified in our earlier report in 2019 and have not been addressed. The Westminster Commission on Forensic Science report also identified many of these issues last year. The Government have a real opportunity to grasp this problem, prevent future miscarriages of justice and rebuild a forensic science system in which the public can have confidence. We have been sounding this alarm for a long time about such glaring issues in an area that is core to criminal justice, but the Government’s position has shifted from neglect to an abdication of responsibility. We will get the justice that we are willing to pay for, so investment in shoring up the system now is vital to avoid preventable tragedies where the innocent are convicted and the guilty walk free.
I conclude with just a few specific questions that I hope the Minister will be able to answer. First, when can we expect to see the police reform Bill introduced, and when will the proposed national forensic service actually start operating? Secondly, will the Minister commit to making the national forensic service operationally independent of the police, as in the Scottish model, and to putting that independence in the Bill? Thirdly, what measures are the Government taking to shore up the marketplace for forensic science? If Eurofins, with 80% of the external market, withdrew tomorrow, what is the Government’s contingency plan? Fourthly, Ministers, officials and witnesses all praised the forensic archive and suggested that it should be given funding and responsibility to store forensic evidence, and it is keen to do so. Is there an ongoing review of its capacity? Will the Minister commit to allowing it to expand? Finally, while the wider police reforms are under way, what will the Government do in the next 12 months on three important issues: preserving forensic specialisms; supporting defence experts with parity of pay; and setting up a national institute for forensic science.
Our Select Committee has looked at this twice, in 2019 and last year. Our report warned that, the next time that we have to do so, it will not be a diagnosis but a post-mortem. The Minister still has time to prove us wrong, but not much time. I beg to move.
Viscount Stansgate (Lab)
My Lords, I was proud to be a member of this Select Committee, which I was until earlier this year, and I commend my friend, the noble Lord, Lord Mair, for his chairship, the report and the way in which he introduced it. It was so comprehensively introduced that I find it difficult to know what more I can add, apart from the fact that I pretty well agree with every single word of it. The noble Lord said that forensic science is not working for anyone. Frankly, that is an understatement. It is a mess and the Government need to take decisive action because forensic science is crucial to our criminal justice system. As a committee, we were very disappointed by the Government’s refusal to support our recommendation for a national institute for forensic science. I, for one, hope that this might still be reconsidered, because it makes sense.
This House has many roles to perform. It holds the Government to account, it conducts pre-legislative scrutiny—not enough, and we should have more—and, of course, it engages in post-legislative scrutiny and following things up. This is a classic example of something that needed to be done. We decided to conduct the inquiry precisely because we thought that the subject needed to be looked at again, and we were right. Do not forget that an underlying purpose of this is to avoid future miscarriages of justice, and the Committee should not forget what can be at stake. There have been some celebrated examples over the years. I looked back and dug up a few; I will mention one or two that Members may recall.
Do noble Lords remember Stefan Kiszko? He spent 16 years in prison before scientific proof showed that he could not have been guilty, and DNA testing later identified the actual killer. Sally Clark was wrongfully convicted of murdering her two infant sons and the prosecution relied heavily on flawed medical testimony and misleading statistical claims. She was cleared after fresh evidence revealed that one of the babies died of a staphylococcal infection. Peter Sullivan spent 38 years in prison for murder. At the time of his trial, advanced DNA profiling was unavailable or inconclusive, and his conviction was finally quashed only last year after modern testing isolated a male profile that completely excluded him. Going back even further, the Birmingham Six and the Guildford Four cases, arising out of what we now call the Northern Ireland Troubles in the 1970s and 1980s, relied heavily in some cases on manipulated forensic tests. The establishment of the Forensic Science Advisory Council was recommended in 1993 as a result.
One of our findings is—I want to emphasise this—that we need some structural clarity. The Home Office and the Ministry of Justice need to decide who takes responsibility for forensic science, as the noble Lord said in introducing the report. It seemed to us that the Ministry of Justice should take the lead when it comes to ensuring what we call an “equality of arms”. Can my noble friend the Minister, who has had great experience of government and represents the Home Office ably in this House, give us clarity as to who is responsible for this important area? Will he make a commitment on behalf of the Government to an equality of arms? The prosecution and defence need equal access to the forensic science evidence, which can, after all, convict as well as exonerate. Justice demands that forensic science makes both possible.
We all know that since our report the Government have announced their plans for a radical restructuring of police forces. I, too, ask my noble friend what progress is being made in rationalising the existing 43 police forces in England and Wales into a smaller number. What number might that be? When will we know? When will the Bill be introduced?
I should at this point express my great gratitude to the staff of the committee, some of whom are here today. Thomas Hornigold has been mentioned, and I endorse that, as well as thanking all the other staff. They have done an excellent job and continue to do so. I also thank the Library for its briefing, which has also been very helpful.
This is not the first time that I have crossed paths with forensic science in my professional life—talk about déjà vu. I remember a House of Commons Select Committee considering this matter in its report in 2011 and, going back even further, I remember consideration of forensic science in this House in the early 1990s. In a different capacity I helped the Royal Society of Chemistry provide evidence that was considered at that time by a Select Committee chaired by Lord Dainton, a formidable figure who produced a landmark report on forensic science, which examined the state funding, organisation and delivery of forensic science services in the UK. It was Lord Dainton himself who highlighted the operational delays plaguing investigations by stating:
“Evidence delayed is evidence denied”.
I think that noble Lords would agree that that is still true today.
The key concerns at that time included investigating sample backlogs, turnaround times and the structural and commercial changes affecting police access to forensic science laboratories. Following the Dainton report, the forensic science landscape underwent radical transformation and transitioned from a highly centralised government service into a fully commercialised open market, which, as the noble Lord indicated, is falling apart. If one of the companies pulled out, we would be in a terrible mess. I will not go through all of this in detail, as this is a debate not a history lesson and my time is rapidly running out.
However, we should not forget that in the years of the Forensic Science Service we created the first national DNA database. We were a global leader in pioneering techniques such as Alec Jeffreys’ genetic fingerprinting and advanced DNA amplification, yet in 2012 the Government completely shut the service down. That closure, which privatised the majority of internal work, has been responsible for so much of the damage that we are facing today. In retrospect, we can see that the closure lies at the heart of many of the problems that we still face. I have a list of some examples that I will not go into, except to say that research that does not yield a direct short-term commercial profit is nevertheless still vital and things such as fibres and hairs collected on clothing is being abandoned to our great cost in future. The closure of the Forensic Science Service was a terrible mistake.
As my time is up, I shall just say that we reported on this in 2019. We reported on this again this year, and I hope that when my noble friend replies he can give the Committee some reassurance that the Government will take decisive action, otherwise we will be here again discussing this in a much worse situation than we are in now.
Baroness Neville-Jones (Con)
My Lords, I thank the chairman for his thorough and lucid examination of the situation and for the way in which he presented our report and the reasoning behind it. As he said, this is not the first report. In fact, it is not even the second report—there have been reports by other bodies in the meantime. I, too, thank the committee staff. I think that there is a universal feeling on the part of members of the committee that we had an exceptionally helpful and thorough job done for us.
I think that all of us feel that good justice is of extreme importance to what we stand for in this country. We were once regarded as global leaders in forensic science. We had evidence—not this time, but on the previous occasion—from witnesses from abroad who said how much they regretted the decline of standards in this country, which they no longer regarded as ones that they followed, but would lead with their own.
I wish that I could say something optimistic about the situation in which forensic science finds itself in relation to the criminal justice system, but I have to say to the Minister that all the signals are pointing in the wrong direction. I was on the committee when we produced the 2019 report, when the state of affairs was worrying. Now, frankly, I would describe it as parlous and shameful for a country that prides itself on dispensing justice. Our ability to do so is at risk.
I will not go over the ground that has been so well covered but will focus on what I regard as the extreme urgency of the current situation. In our report, we recognised that police reform provided a welcome opportunity for a more thoroughgoing improvement of the role of forensic science in the justice system than might be the case if these wider changes were not going on. The headline was opportunity, but I think that there is a danger of that opportunity simply not being taken.
Since we wrote our report, nothing much seems to have moved. Now, 2034 is regarded as the target date for new arrangements for the national police service— perhaps the Minister will comment on that. That is seven years from now, not allowing for slippage. But I have to say that, without some life-saving support before then, the availability of the forensic science offering that we have now, with a reasonable, although declining, range of specialisms, could well collapse before then. The change simply will not wait for so long.
As our chairman said, one of the most worrying features of the scene is the slender supply chain. You cannot call it a market when 80% of the work is done in-house, 80% of the remaining 20% is done by one company, and the other company that has the remainder of the market has been through administration. This is the kind of market that can very easily just crumble. It is not fanciful to say that we risk this oligopolistic situation seriously collapsing. That would put us in a situation—it is already a danger—in which the impartiality of the judicial system as regards forensic evidence is increasingly suspect.
Neither of the interested government departments seems to take responsibility for ensuring that forensic science remains alive and reputable. That is why, among other things, the committee proposed that a national institute of forensic science should be instituted straightaway. That was in our 2019 report. It is a sensible idea and has been adopted by many countries, and I suggest that it is urgent that we do so, too. It would not get in the way of the powers or the position of the director of forensic science, which I think was intimated to us; rather, on the contrary, it would lend power to her elbow if she had a body outside which was able to deal with some of the issues and ensure that the market survives, that standards are upheld and that best practice is a running issue.
Unfortunately, however, the Government have declined that idea. I very much ask the Minister please to think again. Whatever we do, action is needed, and we must not have a situation in which the creation of a national police force in the future becomes the reason why we can go on delaying until we have that prior reform. We very much need to deal with forensic science before we can get to the final stages of police reform.
I will say one more thing. This morning, the noble Baroness, Lady Casey, was on Radio 4 talking about the critical state of social care, which she attributed in large part to no department of government taking responsibility for its functioning, which has led to the current state of affairs about which she was scathing. My worry is that the evidence that we took shows that forensic science as regards the judicial system of this country is very close to tipping point. The descent now lies downwards, and that is the territory of future scandals. Two decades after the Government’s Forensic Science Service was abolished in 2014, the risks of a miscarriage of justice taking place are seriously rising, and we all wish to avoid that.
Baroness Neuberger (CB)
My Lords, I too thank my noble friend Lord Mair for chairing our committee so ably. I want to pay a great tribute to the staff of the committee and the clerks—Thomas Hornigold and Siddhant Gurung. We had fantastic help with all this.
In response to the committee’s report, the Government state that they agree
“on the need for strong national leadership and clear safeguards to ensure the independence and impartiality of forensic science”.
They continue by saying that:
“The current governance model has contributed to significant variation in how forensic work is organised, assured and overseen. This has reduced opportunities for efficiency from scaling innovations or best practice, impacted staff flexibility and development, inhibited private sector investment, prevented effective performance and service management and made assurance more complex and expensive”.
Quite so—in other words, the Government absolutely accept this committee’s analysis.
But the Government then added:
“The Forensic Science Regulator already provides national leadership and accountability for the quality and oversight of national forensic services. We will create national governance for forensic services in the National Police Service”.
So far, so good, although we would argue for greater independence. Yet, despite the Government saying that they want the new national police service to host a nationally led forensics service, nothing has happened—I think we are going to be a bit like a stuck record here—nor is there much sign of anything happening. Given that this was not our preferred option, but that the Government were keen to press ahead with their national police service and to give it these functions, can the Minister give us any indication of when we might see some progress here?
As others have said, we also recommended a national institute of forensic science, as many other countries have, to provide co-ordinated national leadership across a range of functions, including research and development, specialist and low-volume disciplines, expert competence through training in core methods and novel techniques, best-practice guidance, training and national capacity assessment. This was precisely because of concerns over fragmentation and the risk that vital specialist capabilities, innovation and expertise are being neither sustained nor shared consistently. The current system leaves significant gaps in research, in training for forensic scientists and in co-ordination for forensic science capabilities. The preservation of forensic science specialisms, which cannot turn a profit in the commercial market, is still absolutely vital for the interests of justice.
The UK is almost alone in not having a national institute. We heard from the Australian national institute about the useful work that it does overseas. Critically, our committee recommended that a national institute for forensic science could be set up now, without waiting for police reform. An independent institute would play a number of important roles in the system and would counterbalance a forensic science service entirely under the aegis of the police. An institute could set research and development priorities for forensic science on a national basis, employ experts to preserve specialist skills that the forensic science market cannot pay for and provide impartial expertise to both prosecution and defence to assist in equality of arms and help safeguard the independence of forensic science.
Despite the strong argument we made for the creation of a national institute for forensic science, this was rejected by the Government, who maintained their line that the new national forensics service under the national police service would resolve all these problems. We believe that this is the wrong approach and ask that it be reconsidered. Other colleagues have said the same. We do not think that it is too late.
Meanwhile, can the Minister tell us just how long it will take to create a national governance role for forensics in the national forensics service as part of the national police service, and to give it a legal mandate to deliver the service to policing? Unless I am much mistaken, there is no sign of a police reform Bill yet. All this seems to be taking an unconscionably long time.
My noble friend Lord Mair has covered almost all the other issues, as have other speakers, but I want briefly to pick up on the inconsistent arrangements for the storage and retention of evidence across police forces. We called for the expansion or re-establishment of a national forensic archive and the use of trained forensic archivists, supported by clear national standards, to ensure that evidential material is stored securely and managed consistently across England and Wales. The Government actually agreed, especially when it comes to appeals and cold case reviews, but all we got in response was the statement:
“The Director of Forensic Services will work with policing partners, the Forensic Archive and the Home Office to consider how evidence retention and storage can be more robust”.
Although the Government acknowledge that
“The ability to retrieve forensic evidence underpins the integrity of investigations in particular appeals and cold case reviews”,
they gave us little comfort. Can the Minister give us more comfort today?
A credible and fair forensic service should be a basic provision of our justice system. Like other speakers, I think that this is part of what the UK stands for, and I am really sad that we have come to this. Despite the evidence of many scientists and others that we are not doing well, and that the supply of future forensic scientists has all but dried up, we have been given little reason to think that the Government think this as important as we do. Can the Minister tell us that they do think it is as important as we do, and can he tell us when they are likely to act?
Lord Ranger of Northwood (Con)
My Lords, I begin by thanking our chair, the noble Lord, Lord Mair, for his leadership of this important inquiry, our committee staff for their excellent work, especially our policy analyst Thomas Hornigold, and all the witnesses.
I must confess that forensic science is not an area in which I would claim any particular expertise—far from it. Like many people, much of my personal understanding of forensic science has come from watching great programmes such as “Quincy, M.E.” or, latterly, “CSI” and the occasional Hollywood crime thriller. If those programmes are to be believed, forensic scientists have unlimited resources and extraordinary technology, and can solve almost any crime in about 45 minutes, including the commercial breaks. Unfortunately, our inquiry revealed that the reality in England and Wales could hardly be more different. What shocked me most was not simply the gap between fiction and reality but the extraordinary fragility of a system upon which something as fundamental as justice depends.
I will focus my comments on the people, skills and expertise upon which forensic science relies, and how we safeguard them for the future. Throughout my career, when working on major technology programmes, in business or in government, I have learned one fundamental lesson: technology and systems are important but, ultimately, it is people, their knowledge, experience and judgment, that make them work. This is equally the case in the world of forensic science.
Our inquiry heard deeply concerning evidence about the workforce. The evidence showed that we have a significant number of undergraduate forensic science courses, undoubtedly encouraged by the popularity of the subject, yet career opportunities are limited, salaries relatively low and pathways into sustainable employment far from clear. We also heard concerns that some courses do not provide the rigorous scientific foundations required for professional forensic work. There is something fundamentally wrong when we encourage young people to pursue a scientific career without ensuring that the training and employment opportunities exist to support them. As such, our committee recommended a review of forensic science degrees and better practical training, including opportunities for trainees to follow cases from crime scene to courtroom.
However, perhaps more alarming is what is happening to the expertise we already possess. As the noble Lord, Lord Mair, has stated, we heard that just 10 to 15 years ago, there were around 40 specialist fibre scientists working in forensic science; now, it is four. Even a lay person knows that forensic science and fibre evidence play a critical role in solving the most serious of crimes. Yet this entire field of specialist scientific expertise is approaching the point where it could simply disappear. Once that knowledge is lost, it cannot easily be recreated.
I have spent much of my professional life advocating for technological innovation, digital transformation and, increasingly, the appropriate use of artificial intelligence. AI offers enormous potential to analyse information, identify patterns and support forensic investigations. At this point, I refer to my register of interests, particularly my roles with VE3 and Great Wave AI.
But we must recognise two important realities. First, AI must enhance scientific expertise, not become an excuse for allowing expertise to disappear. An algorithm may identify a pattern, but scientific understanding, validation and professional judgment remain essential to interpreting what actually matters. Secondly, new technology creates new challenges. Deepfakes, synthetic media and increasingly sophisticated digital devices make establishing the authenticity of evidence more difficult. Without the expertise to understand, challenge and validate that evidence, we risk undermining confidence in the justice system itself.
I will make three practical points. First, we require a national forensic science workforce strategy—one that connects universities, professional training, research institutions, policing and commercial providers, ensuring rigorous qualifications, genuine career pathways and the retention of experienced professionals.
Secondly, we must urgently protect specialist scientific capabilities. Where disciplines may be commercially unviable but essential to justice, the state must seek to ensure that the expertise survives. Justice cannot simply depend solely on whether a scientific specialism generates a commercial return.
Thirdly, we need a clear national strategy for technology and AI in forensic science. That means investment in research, approved tools, training and expertise required to use emerging technologies safely and effectively. Our committee has, as many fellow Peers have said, recommended establishing a national institute for forensic science, and I echo that. It would play a vital role in co-ordinating these priorities. But I am also concerned that the Government have deferred much of this approach to their work within the wider policing reforms mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Mair.
I have two main questions for the Minister. First, will the Government commit to publishing a national forensic science workforce and skills plan, alongside a clear programme for preserving endangered specialisms and skills? Secondly, of the £75 million committed to the police AI programme, how much will be specifically allocated to forensic science and how will the Government ensure that this investment develops the skills and scientific capabilities we need?
Ultimately, this is not simply about science, technology or workforce planning. As has been said, it is about ensuring that the innocent are protected, the guilty are brought to justice and the public can have confidence in the evidence upon which our courts rely. We cannot afford to discover the true value of these skills only after they have been lost. I look forward to the Minister’s response.
Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd (CB)
As the first speaker who has not been a member of this committee, I commend it for the excellence of its report and the admirable analysis made by the noble Lord, Lord Mair, of its contents. I decided I ought to speak for two reasons. First, for some years, as a judge I took a particular interest in the development of forensic science. Secondly, recently retired, I served and was co-opted on to the committee that reported in 2019. I was therefore shocked to realise that nothing had been done.
I have every sympathy with this Government, because the problem goes back to the obviously mistaken decision to abolish the Forensic Science Service. It was a disastrous mistake for another reason I will come to quickly. Having said that, if we do not do something now, the person on the watch who has been told they must do something will carry the can. So I have another degree of sympathy for the Minister because, in the nature of forensic science, something will go seriously wrong, and the lack of safeguards will be blamed.
I will say why. First, the noble Lord, Lord Ranger, has made my first point about the centrality of forensic science to the perception of juries. They look at the television, and they come to court believing that forensic science will tell you the answer. Secondly, because those on television are generally reputable and honest, they trust the scientists. It is therefore critical to the justice of a trial that forensic science is reliable. Reliability depends first of all on scientific rigour—I will return to that shortly. It also rests on transparency and on the integrity of the witness giving the forensic evidence. Very importantly, it rests upon the independence of the forensic science providers.
It is critical to look back and analyse what happened in the past, as it can be easy to forget. As mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Mair, there are cases of unconscious bias. I sat on an appeal where there was an allegation of bias against a forensic scientist; it was alleged that he was acting under pressure from his chief constable. It was extremely uncomfortable to witness, but we set aside the conviction because there was strong evidence —we never had to decide whether the chief constable had pressured him into solving something.
I do not want to see the police having any role other than that of organisation: they must be at arm’s length from the service. It is of central importance for the protection of the police and their integrity and for the protection of the criminal justice process. No doubt one has to use the police force, as in Scotland; we are where we are, and they probably have more money than anyone else, but the forensic service must be independent. That is one thing I hope the Government will take that away: it must be at arm’s length.
There is another consideration. The best experts are experts who give evidence for both sides. If you have given evidence for the Crown and for the defence, you are much more likely to be credible; people have greater confidence in you. I have witnessed a regrettable occasion where enormous pressure was brought to bear; the person fortunately refused to succumb to that pressure not to give evidence in support of the defence. This concept of being at arm’s length is therefore critical.
I hope that we will go forward with these reforms, because there is yet one further point. If we do not have a good forensic science service here, and if the money can be found, people are sometimes prepared to go to quacks and to those who do not have decent standards. I have seen cases where experts have come from America and from elsewhere and who have given evidence that was, frankly, dishonest. That is one of the risks we face in not acting now.
But there is a more positive side. In 2015, the Royal Society held a conference on forensic science that lasted a couple of days and was designed to show that the UK was world-leading in forensic science, and I believe we were. We had made enormous strides on DNA; we worked out how you explained it to juries, we were at the forefront and our experts were acknowledged across the world. What worries me is that this is another area where the lead in UK technology and its reputation for developing forensic science is lost. If people are to have trust in what we do, they want to see how the service works in practice. Even if one is not concerned about criminal justice—and I do not know anyone who is not concerned about the disastrous state of our criminal justice system and whether there is something that could be done—there is a good, sound economic reason for doing something to strengthen our economy in this important area, in which we have the potential to be worldwide leaders.
I hope that, rather than waiting, the Government will take action and start to ensure that we do justice, ensuring that we put ourselves in a position to pay for it more easily by being leaders.
Baroness Northover (LD)
My Lords, I, too, am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Mair, for chairing this inquiry so effectively and for introducing this report so forensically. I also pay tribute to our amazing staff for their outstanding support. It was also enormously helpful to have the noble and learned Lord, Lord Burnett, join us for this inquiry, and I am glad that he has just joined us now. He will therefore hear what the Minister says.
When this topic was suggested, following as it did on a previous report, I confess that I was sceptical. I was not convinced that this was the best use of our time. As we heard the evidence, I realised how very wrong I had been. We have documented a profound problem—one that undermines our whole justice system and that the Government do not seem fully to have grasped, judged by their response thus far. There are lessons for all of us.
I was fortunate to have served as a Minister in the coalition. As the smaller party in that coalition, there was much discussion among us in relation to policy proposals that came forward from our larger partner. That partner had pledged a bonfire of the quangos—always a popular-seeming idea. But which quangos? Among the bodies selected for combustion was the Forensic Science Service. We were told that private providers would create a more competitive and inventive system. At the time, there were those who warned of the risk; they have been proved right, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, has said. Today, there is scarcely a functioning market at all. The forensic science sector has become fragile, concentrated and vulnerable, as others have detailed. Police forces have increasingly taken this work in-house to reduce costs, but this can mean major gaps in expertise and capacity.
I can now hardly see any report of a crime or court case without wondering about the quality and reliability of the forensic evidence. What we heard is devastating in relation to the criminal justice system and for justice as a whole. As others have said, the forensic science services have experienced years of fragmentation and underinvestment. That has major consequences for victims and defendants. Victims may not see justice and defendants may be wrongly convicted. We concluded that the forensic science system is in crisis. As the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Jones, rightly warned, it is close to a tipping point. We found a near-monopolised and fragile commercial market, inconsistent oversight of police-run services and an enormous backlog. We concluded that the system is not working for anyone, as the noble Lord, Lord Mair, said.
Since the closure of the Forensic Science Service in 2012, a number of providers have failed, withdrawn from services or been absorbed into larger organisations because the economics are simply unsustainable. As the noble Viscount, Lord Stansgate, and the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Jones, warned, suppose the dominant provider decides to pull out of the UK. Even now, the result is a market that often rewards lowest price rather than quality. It discourages investment in research, innovation and specialist expertise. Some forensic specialisms are now at significant risk, as the noble Lord, Lord Ranger, and others have pointed out. We should recognise the indispensable role of truly independent experts. Police officers perform an essential role, but they are investigators, not specialists in every scientific discipline. Expertise cannot simply be absorbed into routine policing functions and be fair, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, pointed out.
We also noted that the storage of forensic material is dispersed across 43 police forces and multiple providers. Evidence retention is too important to be left fragmented. We urgently need a return to an independent national storage capacity. The Minister, like his colleagues, must surely agree.
Then there is the stunning inequality of arms, so devastatingly laid out in our report. Equality of arms is a fundamental principle of justice, yet legal aid funding falls far short of the real cost of obtaining independent forensic advice. The Minister has heard the inequality between defendants and victims. Criminal cases may involve DNA evidence, digital evidence, pathology, toxicology or crime scene reconstruction. Independent experts must often review vast quantities of material and undertake their own analysis, yet lawyers repeatedly report difficulties obtaining adequate funding for this.
The state has access to police resources, investigators and prosecution experts. Defendants of limited means often struggle to secure equivalent scientific scrutiny. When forensic evidence cannot be properly challenged because funding is unavailable, errors may go undetected. Miscarriages of justice have often involved forensic evidence that was misunderstood, overstated, inadequately tested or insufficiently challenged. The criminal justice system is clearly at its strongest when scientific claims are subjected to rigorous independent examination. This position is unsustainable. What is urgently required is the rebuilding of forensic science. This is essential to the fairness, credibility and integrity of our criminal justice system.
The Minister is a very sentient being. I noted his discomfort as the noble Lord, Lord Mair, laid out his case. I hope he has read the full report and that he has reflected on what we are saying and will act on our recommendations. I trust that his messages while the noble Lord, Lord Mair, spoke, were him seeking permission to agree the report. I noted that the Minister frequently looked at the annunciator, which records progress on the Health Bill. I am afraid that no votes will interrupt this debate. Nothing will save him from having to respond to us. I hope that he will come back shortly with agreement that he has clearance to implement what we have said here. Will he, at the very least, agree to update the Select Committee? Reform may appear costly, but the costs of inaction, measured in miscarriages of justice, public inquiries and compensation payments, will be far greater. I look forward to the Minister’s response.
Lord Davies of Gower (Con)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Mair, and his committee for their unsparing report. It is a particular pleasure for me to contribute to this debate as someone who for many years made great use of forensic science when I had a proper job as a police officer.
The committee’s central recommendation is the creation of a national institute for forensic science. I understand the case, especially for research, training and rare disciplines, but I have concerns about the potential for overlap and fragmentation. Today, forensic functions are scattered across multiple different bodies, so I welcome the committee’s focus on the fragmented approach to forensics. However, I fear that the proposed solution may not solve the problem entirely.
The Government’s answer in the police reform White Paper is the creation of a national police service hosting a national forensic service. But if these reforms go ahead and the committee’s recommendation is also adopted, we may find ourselves in a situation whereby forensics is split between the national police service, the national institute for forensic science, the College of Policing, the National Crime Agency and the Forensic Science Regulator.
I appreciate that the Government’s intention is for the national police service eventually to absorb the College of Policing and the National Crime Agency, but this will not happen for quite some time, which means that during the transition period we would have an incredibly disjointed and even more fragmented provision of forensic science services. Indeed, the committee itself concedes that the institute’s role will need to be co-ordinated with all the bodies I just mentioned. Is not the real problem, therefore, fragmentation and bureaucratic overlap? Adding yet another body to an already crowded field risks a structure in which accountability is entirely lacking.
The White Paper promised to
“consolidate decision making authority for the delivery of police forensics under the NPS and establish the legal mandate for a national lead to deliver all forensics as a service to policing”.
How does a separate national institute square with that? If the Government want to fix forensic science, should they not be reducing the number of bodies with forensic functions rather than increasing them?
There is tension on independence, too. The committee wants a “sterile corridor” between forensics and policing, as in Scotland. The Government say that the national police service will host the service and that they rely on the regulator in the meantime. One witness in the committee’s inquiry made the case that forensic science is a function of the criminal justice system, not of policing. So, which approach will the Government take—the one recommended by the committee and witnesses, or the one that they have outlined previously?
The Government’s response to the committee’s report was published in April under the previous Prime Minister. Since July, we have had a new Prime Minister whose agenda is greater devolution and the so-called “rewiring of the state”, so the Home Secretary has said that the review of force structures has been delayed so that it can be retested against that agenda. Will the Government’s restructuring still go ahead in the form that the White Paper described? Is forensics still to be consolidated within the new national police service? Do the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary agree? The whole of the Government’s reply to the committee’s report rests on those reforms and, if the policy has been changed, Parliament is entitled to know.
The committee also noted that full consolidation into the national police service will not occur until 2034 and warned that action on forensics cannot wait that long, yet the Government have not promised legislative proposals until the next Session. Will the Minister tell us when and what is being done now?
I have a few further questions. First, the Government accept that the defence expert market is “fragile”, yet they say that any change to rates will be “cost-neutral”. Rates have reportedly not been changed since 2005, so how can a real increase be cost-neutral?
Secondly, the committee heard that no one seems able to ascertain how police forces spend their forensic budgets, so can the Minister tell the Committee how much is spent and by whom?
Thirdly, the Government concede that the £115 million funding for AI is not specific to forensics, so how much is in fact earmarked for forensic reform?
We support the committee’s call for urgency on forensic science, but we cannot support a model with more bodies and less accountability. As always, I look forward to the Minister’s response.
The Minister of State, Home Office (Lord Hanson of Flint) (Lab)
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Mair, for bringing forward this important debate today, for the contribution of the Science and Technology Committee to the detailed report and for the blunt, strong and effective way in which the noble Lord put the committee’s case to the Government today.
As a start, I can tell the noble Lord that I was the Minister in charge of forensic services in 2009-10, when I was Police and Counterterrorism Minister as a Member of Parliament in the Labour Government of 1997 to 2010. With my colleague Alan Campbell, the junior Minister, we undertook an examination of the restructuring required for making the forensic service a modern, effective system, and we determined to keep that service in-house.
I can also tell the noble Lord that, in 2012, when the then Government—it was the coalition Government; I say this for the benefit of the noble Baroness, Lady Northover—restructured the Forensic Science Service and effectively privatised it, my colleague Alan Campbell and I opposed that. When I was not in that shadow position anymore in 2018, and served on the Justice Select Committee in the other place, we produced a report that raised many of the concerns that the noble Lord, Lord Mair, put to this Committee today.
So I say to the noble Lord that, if I winced at some of his punches, it is because I recognised those concerns because I have raised them before. When I say to the noble Lord and his committee that I would not have started from here, I hope he understands that that is because I would not have started from here. But here we are.
The question of high-quality, timely and impartial forensic science is, as the noble Lord and colleagues have said, indispensable to the criminal justice system. It helps police to identify offenders, to eliminate innocent people—the point that my noble friend Lord Stansgate mentioned—to inform charging decisions, to enable the defence to test the evidence and to support courts in delivering justice firmly. The Government take the committee’s report seriously.
I cannot answer for the situation before 4 July 2024, because we were not in government then, and I have outlined to the noble Lord our views at the time. I want to put on record the excellent work undertaken by the forensic community in England and Wales and the dedicated professionals who still work in that area today, but I cannot ignore the long-standing weaknesses that have been highlighted by every Member of this House who has spoken.
The areas of concern have been put into about seven or eight categories, and I will try to address some of them, at least in part. They are around national leadership; independence; the commercial market, which is very fragile, as has been said; evidence retention; AI; the policing White Paper; and the potential for a national centre. If I may, I will start with the Government’s proposals for the policing White Paper, because it is the golden seam that runs through all of this.
When it was produced in January this year, we described a fragmented, inconsistent and inefficient system, and we have set out our intention to enable a new national police service to lead a more stable and consistent model for law enforcement in England and Wales. Ahead of the police reform Bill, we have initiated a number of reforms, including a national reform programme of policing and private sector forensic capabilities. As has been mentioned, central to the reform is the policing White Paper. The new Prime Minister has come in but the general tenets of that White Paper are still in place: a reduced number of forces and a centralised service looking at training, procurement and forensics, as well as many other areas of national security.
It may not help Members who have spoken, but the Bill will be produced at some point in the near future. I cannot talk about the Bill until such time as it is produced, but the direction of travel has been clear from the Government in 2026, and it is clear from the Government now. There are obviously some aspects that we want to look at in relation to the size of the force. We have received the report from the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, on the size of forces; we want to look through it and we will do so. I cannot give comfort on those points today, but there will be governance of forensics in a stronger national service, stronger national leadership and safeguards to independence and impartiality, and the national police service will have clear responsibilities backed by statutory powers. That is the direction. It is not published yet but when it is, as with every piece of legislation, it will go to the House of Commons and it will come to this House. It will go through enormous amounts of scrutiny, and I will have to answer for it to Members of this House in due course.
Let me look at the other points that have been raised. The first question was about national leadership in government. One of the key arguments in the committee’s report, mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Neuberger, and the noble Lord, Davies of Gower, is that responsibility for forensic sciences has been too fragmented. I agree. There is too much variation in how forensic science is organised. There is too much about its assurance and how it is overseen, and strategic change, although extremely difficult, needs to be undertaken. Our aim is to move beyond the diagnosis of the same problems and establish some national structures and capabilities to address them. That includes the appointment of the director of forensic services, working in partnership with the National Police Chiefs’ Council and local bodies to deliver national forensic reforms and programmes. There is an understanding of that, and that leadership will need to be looked at.
The question of independence and impartiality has rightly been raised in terms of the forensic science service. It has to be developed and delivered impartially with scientific rigour. The committee itself has highlighted the Scottish “sterile corridor” model as one way to safeguard impartiality. That has some merits, but it is not the only model and currently the Scottish model does not include digital forensic services. We are looking to make sure that practitioners are free to exercise impartial scientific judgment using validated methods, professional standards and robust quality assurance.
The Government are now working with the police, the Forensic Science Regulator and our colleagues in the Ministry of Justice and the Attorney General’s Office to look at designing robust checks and balances that preserve that independence while ensuring high-quality and fair science. There are real challenges and problems, but they are ones that we wish to examine.
The regulator’s statutory code of practice expressly requires impartiality and provides external scrutiny and enforcement. Independence also depends on organisational safeguards of professional leadership, transparent decision-making and effective challenge. We are detailing now, through design with stakeholders across the criminal justice system, those safeguards that can be built into the new model.
The noble Baronesses, Lady Northover and Lady Neville-Jones, among others, mentioned the commercial forensic market. As I have said, there are real and legitimate concerns about the resilience of the commercial forensic market. I would not have started from here, but here is where we are and we recognise that challenge. Work is under way at the moment: the Home Office director of forensic services has prioritised a delivery project as part of the reform programme to look at engaging with suppliers and working with the police to address those immediate vulnerable specialist services while developing a more sustainable market for the future. I would argue—again, we can refer to this in due course—that national governance will provide a clear review of market resilience and improve our understanding of demand for specialist and low-volume disciplines. I accept that that it is work in progress, but I hope the Committee can reflect on the fact that we are trying to address this particular challenge.
The question of research, innovation and a national institute was raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Neuberger, among others. The committee has made a strong case for better national co-ordination of research, innovation, specialist skills and training. I agree with that need. I cannot necessarily agree, on behalf of the Government, with the solution proposed, but I agree with that need. We do not believe that a separate national institute is necessary, but we do intend to strengthen co-ordination through the national police service and a national annual plan developed with partners across the criminal justice system to look at shared priorities, support collective delivery, give special expertise, be proactive for future requirements, co-ordinate funding and commissioning, and form stronger partnerships with academia, universities, industry and others. We want to make sure that the tests do what I think your Lordships’ excellent report does, which is to try to improve the outcomes, with better co-ordination of research and faster adoption of effective science and systems to anticipate future forensic needs.
The question of digital forensics and artificial intelligence was raised by the noble Lords, Lord Ranger of Northwood and Lord Davies of Gower. Digital material is integral to modern investigations. I confess that I love catching up on the Monday night television programmes where the three great transformations of criminal justice—DNA, automatic number plate recognition and forensic science—nail people doing bad things. It is a great pleasure to watch that. I understand, and I know, that we absolutely need to be on top of that game. Synthetic media and deepfakes are creating new challenges, and AI is exponentially sweeping across. That is why we need to look at modernising digital forensics and at new technology. We are looking now at how we can support areas including CCTV analysis and disclosure on translation and transcription. Work is under way across the board to make sure that we modernise what we do in digital forensics accordingly. That is a real challenge, because we can use AI to do this, but AI is equally an enemy that the Government need to be aware of in many areas.
I have been asked the question about financing from the noble Lords, Lord Ranger and Lord Davies. I cannot give an answer today, but I will look at that, dissect the funding and the budgets and come back to the noble Lords in due course.
There was also a question about evidence retention and the forensic archive from my noble friend Lord Stansgate and the noble Baroness, Lady Neuberger. The committee is right to emphasise storage and retention. The director of forensic services has started to work with policing and the forensic archive to strengthen retention and storage arrangements. It may not help the Committee, and I know there will still be challenges back to us, but we now have two police forces working with the Home Office to develop a more consistent and qualitative approach to storing forensic evidence and to look at what we can do to roll out a better, clearer, consistent and auditable approach to long-term management of forensic evidence.
A number of noble Lords mentioned defence experts and equality of arms. That is an important area. The Ministry of Justice has a particularly important role in that. A number of noble Lords mentioned the fact that we need a fair forensic system. If it cannot provide good evidence for the prosecution, the defence must also be able to understand it. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, has great experience in that area. We recognise those concerns and the need to have extra resilience for the defence expert community.
I am speaking for the Home Office, but the Ministry of Justice and the Legal Aid Agency are now looking at monitoring the availability of defence forensic expertise. Over the summer, they have engaged with defence firms and forensic experts, including on the payment process, which has been raised today. The Legal Aid Agency has published consolidated guidance for experts and, as indicated in the Government’s response to the committee in April, although immediate changes to expert rates will have to be done on a cost-neutral basis, the MoJ is considering the findings of the engagement in the context of the spending review. That goes back to the point that the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Gower, mentioned. Where higher expert rates are justified in individual cases, there are mechanisms to ensure that they can request enhanced rates where possible. An independent cost assessor can determine appeals against the Legal Aid Agency’s refusal of funding.
Finally, we had streamlining forensic reporting. The committee raised concerns about how forensic evidence is communicated and tested in court. I recognise that forensic evidence must be presented in a way that allows prosecutors, the defence and courts to understand its meaning and limitations. The Forensic Capability Network is examining potential improvements at the moment, and the Ministry of Justice is looking at engaging with the defence community as a whole.
I am answering for the department today. One of the criticisms the noble Lord, Lord Mair, made early in his contribution was that a single Minister is not responsible. My colleague Sarah Jones, the Minister for Policing, has responsibility for this. I am answering today for our department, but I will make sure that she and I reflect on the points that have been made today. We cannot revisit the government response, but the areas of concern are ones that we raised when we were not in government. We need to examine how we can do that. In the two years and three months that the Government have been in office—it might seem a lifetime to colleagues—we have been trying to assess and flush out some of those difficulties and challenges. We agree wholeheartedly that the status quo is not sufficient. That is why we have an ambitious national reform programme, why we are tackling the underlying causes and why scientific quality will remain non-negotiable.
While I cannot say yes or no to everything in the report, if I look, as I did today, at the list of the committee’s recommendations, there are a lot of yeses to them. There are quite a few maybes and a few noes, but they are in the minority compared to the yeses and maybes in relation to the list.
The objective for our reform is to have a more effective system at the national level, regulated robustly and focused on timely, high-quality, innovative and impartial advice. I thank the committee. To be honest, I felt that I was against the ropes on this. Every speaker punched hard on areas of concern. It is important that we recognise those areas. We are trying to work through them. I thank the committee for its report. I hope that in the response I have given some comfort on some areas for the noble Lord, Lord Mair, to share with the members present, past and even future.
Lord Mair (CB)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for his replies. I am sorry if he felt too much on the ropes, but many of his replies were very much from the heart. We understand the position. What is still a concern is that everything is just delayed until a national forensic service is set up, and that is being presented as a sort of panacea to everything. Our remaining and key question is therefore: how long? What is the timeline for this national forensic service to be set up, what is the timeline for the police reform Bill to be published and will the national forensic service be made independent of the police?
There is also the question of funding for the forensic archive and why that cannot not be done now rather than having to wait for the national forensic service to be established. The Minister mentioned the review by the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, which is currently determining how many police forces will be optimal, but the question is, again, what is the timeline and direction the of travel, what would a national police service and a national forensic service do and do we really have to wait for the precise number of regional forces to be determined before these actions can be taken?
Our overall concern, which I think the Minister appreciated in his reply, is that we are very anxious to see resolution of these urgent issues that we have identified. As I said in my opening speech, as did many other members of the committee who have taken part in this debate, and I thank them, the forensic science system in England and Wales is not working for anyone. We would therefore appreciate it very much if the Minister could write to the committee on any issues left unanswered in today’s debate. I commend this report to the Committee.
Surviving Drought (Environment and Climate Change Committee Report)
(1 day, 6 hours ago)
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Baroness Sheehan
That the Grand Committee takes note of the Report from the Environment and Climate Change Committee Surviving drought: reclaim the rain (3rd Report, HL Paper 298, Session 2024–26).
Baroness Sheehan (LD)
My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who are taking part in today’s important debate on the Environment and Climate Change Committee’s report, Surviving Drought: Reclaim the Rain. I thank Members of the committee for their sterling work on this very timely report. We were fortunate to have the perspectives of the hereditary Peers the Earl of Leicester and Lord Mancroft, both of whom brought valuable understanding of the impact of drought on farming and the wider countryside. As they are no longer Members of this House and cannot take part in this debate, I place on record my appreciation of the insight they brought to the final report.
I also thank the six schools which took part in our youth engagement programme: Boston Grammar School, Bullers Wood School for Boys, Chesham Grammar School, Darlington College, Northfield School & Sports College, and Stamford College in Lincolnshire. Their energy, enthusiasm and knowledge were impressive and their presentations helped to remind us that this is a national issue that young people will inherit. Indeed, the title of our report was inspired by a booklet produced by students at Stamford College: England’s Water Wake-up: Reclaim the Rain.
While I am thanking people, it would be remiss of me in the extreme if I omitted to thank Alastair Taylor, the committee clerk, and his team, who provide expert support in making people like me appear knowledgeable. They are policy analyst Lily Paulson, committee operations officer Hanna Ghufoor, and media and comms officer Alec Brand. I am always deeply grateful for their support.
The committee began this inquiry in November 2025, having just witnessed the driest spring in 132 years, the hottest summer on record and repeated heatwaves. The summer of 2026 was even hotter and drier. The Met Office has provisionally confirmed that summer 2026 was the warmest on record for the United Kingdom. It also found that such a summer was made around 130 times more likely by human-induced climate change.
Breaking an all-time seasonal temperature record two years in succession is unprecedented in the modern record, which dates from 1884. These are not distant projections: they are the lived experiences of households, farmers, businesses, firefighters and communities across the country. Large parts of the United Kingdom remain in drought, and on 15 October the first ever “severe drought” declarations for parts of south-west and south-east England were issued. The Environment Agency estimates that England needs around 120% of normal rainfall between September and April for every area to recover. That is a tall order.
Our report recognised that we were fortunate that the winter of 2025-26 was one of the wettest on record. But how fortunate do we feel entering the winter of 2026-27? The news gets worse: leading meteorologists have warned that the unusually early disruption of the polar vortex could bring prolonged dry conditions, raising the possibility that our reservoirs and groundwater stores may not refill over winter.
I pay tribute to the Minister, for whom I have considerable regard. While the Government’s response to our report was in many respects positive, in that they accepted in whole or in part the substantial majority of our 17 recommendations, I must point out that acceptance is only the first step. It is the intent to deliver that we must be—and remain—persuaded of. Delivery requires clear ownership, firm timetables, adequate funding and visible progress that Parliament and the public can scrutinise. The Government’s response contains too many commitments to work that is “under way”, “being considered” or “expected later this year”. The Government so far are not convincing in their intentions to deliver the recommendations that they have labelled as accepted. The Government’s response was in July this year. In the light of the dramatically worsening drought situation, I hope to hear greater urgency from the Minister today.
The scale of the challenge is stark. The Environment Agency’s National Framework for Water Resources 2025 warns that in a do-nothing scenario, England’s public water supply could face a deficit of 5 billion litres per day by 2055, driven by climate change, population growth and water-intensive industries. More than 60% of that future shortfall must be met through demand management and leakage reduction while new infrastructure is built, says the report. In regulatory speak, that means we must all use less water. As Minister Hardy said in evidence to the committee,
“The cheapest way to increase water capacity is to reduce demand”.
That is the threat I wish to pursue today: reducing demand by reducing waste, improving efficiency and making better use of the rain we already receive, because these are immediate, urgent actions that will bring the results that we desperately need.
Our report is clear that water security for people and the natural environment requires a whole-of-society effort to waste less water and to use it more efficiently, from Whitehall to water companies, from farmers to businesses, and in every home, school, hospital and community. We heard evidence that the public want to play their part. Friends of the Earth told the committee that 68% of people are willing to reduce their water consumption to protect the environment, yet a recurring theme of our inquiry was the lack of public awareness of how much water people use, where it comes from and how scarce it can easily become.
There remains a persistent belief that we are a wet country surrounded by rain, but rainfall is not the same as reliable water supply. Rain that falls heavily and quickly can run off land, overwhelm drains and cause flooding while reservoirs and groundwater remain depleted. England can experience flooding and drought at the same time. We must get better at capturing and storing rain rather than letting it run out to sea. There is a strong argument to invest in measures such as soil moisture monitors and rain gauges—easy things, easy tools—that could help improve soils and our management of soils so that they are able to hold moisture better, something that was recommended in the report. The Government’s response was vague, yet they labelled this recommendation accepted. It would be helpful if the Minister could give clarity about the intention to use tools such as those to give us the data that we need.
The Government also accepted the recommendation to conduct a full economic and environmental assessment for each of their drought scenarios, citing their possible delivery of a drought data hub and early warning system. Can the Minister say whether the lackadaisical commitments—because that is what they were—to soil moisture monitors and rain gauges augers well for a drought data hub? Can he confirm the status of the drought data hub? Is it a possibility? Is it a probability? Does it exist? Will it exist?
The Government have accepted our recommendation calling for a whole-of-society approach to water resilience by promoting a year-round communication plan by December 2026, working with stakeholders across the water system. Indeed, as mentioned earlier, their national framework for water resources prioritises water demand reduction. The Government in their response point to the water efficiency campaign launched this summer by Ofwat and water companies across England and Wales, which aims to reshape the public’s relationship with water and embed water-saving behaviours in daily routines. I welcome that initiative but I must confess that I did not see any of the ads. They did not reach me.
I must ask the Minister how its effectiveness has been measured. How are the Government able to point to that as success, when the Environment Agency’s figures say that total leakage rates show no improvement and remain at 19%, and that household water use has gone up from 136.5 to 136.9 litres per person per day? Households can help to identify leaks, choose efficient appliances, take shorter showers, run full loads, turn off taps and use rainwater. We heard this repeatedly in our evidence. There is also a particular issue with leaking toilets; a continuously running or quietly leaking toilet can waste a huge volume of treated drinking water, often unnoticed behind a closed door. Individual actions matter, but they must be enabled by the Government. The mandatory water-efficiency label, which we are told is currently under consultation, should help consumers to compare products and choose those that use less water. Can the Minister update us on that consultation?
Enhanced water-efficiency standards in building regulations should ensure that new homes are designed for a water-scarce future and do not lock in wasteful consumption for decades. The report’s recommendation 5 calls for urgently strengthening Part G of the Building Regulations 2010, so that new homes use no more than 105 litres of water per person per day. The Government told us that the outcome of the consultation on the regulations is expected in 2026. We are nearly at the end of 2026, so can the Minister tell us what is happening there?
New developments should incorporate water efficiency from the outset: efficient showers, taps and toilet appliances, and well-designed plumbing, metering and leak detection. Where appropriate, homes should include rainwater harvesting and grey water reuse for watering gardens, flushing toilets, vehicle washing and other non-potable uses. These measures, multiplied across millions of households, will make a substantial difference.
I have spent a great deal of my available time speaking of actions that must happen now to prepare the country for possible emergency drought situations, given the drought events this summer and the distinct risk of failed winter rains. The Government must get the urgency of the message across; there is no reason why they cannot undertake to do so straight away.
The public are being asked to play their part. The water industry must now visibly and consistently demonstrate that it is playing its part too. Looking down the speaker list, I have confidence that the shortcomings of the water companies will be exposed again, and that the anomalies of water pricing for industry, the required reform of abstraction licences, measures to facilitate the building of on-farm reservoirs, nature-based solutions and many other issues pertinent to delivering water resilience will receive good coverage.
In conclusion, the Government have accepted many of our recommendations and now they must deliver them. I call on the Government to give a commitment that they will publish clear milestones, identify responsible organisations, report publicly on progress and ensure that households, businesses, farmers, firefighters and the natural environment are equipped with the resources, information, incentives and protection that they need. With large parts of England still in drought, severe temperatures persisting in the south-west and south-east, and a daily projected shortfall of 5 billion litres, this is not a challenge that the country can afford to meet unprepared. The taps must not be allowed to run dry. I beg to move.
Lord Sikka (Lab)
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, and I thank the committee for its report. Contemporary science shows that human consumption is accelerating global warming, which increases the variability of rainfall. There could be more in some periods and places and less in others, so we are faced with a greater prospect of droughts and flooding. Droughts increase the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which decreases land productivity and reduces the amount of vegetation storing carbon dioxide. Dry conditions produce wildfires and soil erosion, which in turn releases carbon dioxide sequestered in trees and plants back into the atmosphere. In short, droughts threaten crops, water supply, housing, energy production, transport, livestock, biodiversity and our own existence.
Climate change has no boundaries. We need global and local co-operation. Countries with technologies for mitigating global warming need to freely share them with others, but successive Governments have reduced aid to poorer countries, which are then forced to return to the use of fossil fuels. On water usage, the UK ought to learn from Israel, China, India, the Middle East and African countries about how they have greened deserts through efficient water usage and storage, and created more resilient crops. Millions of new trees ought to be planted to reduce the effect of droughts.
The committee’s support for limiting water usage to 105 litres per person per day is intriguing. I do not know what person it had in mind. The super-rich enjoy golf courses, water sports and heated swimming pools. They roam the world in private planes and yachts and use carbon-emitting appliances. The same super-rich have economic interests in promoting fossil fuels and polluting technologies. They use their financial and political muscle to organise threatening issues off the political agenda. We cannot deal effectively with climate change and droughts without shackling the power of the super-rich.
The UK’s richest 0.1% produced 46 times more carbon pollution per person than someone in the poorest half of the population. Oxfam reported that, in 2025, there were 66,931 private jet flights from the UK, producing around 424,000 tonnes of CO2. The flights spent more than 155,000 hours in the air—equivalent to more than 17 and a half years of continuous flying—and covered around 85 million kilometres, equivalent to more than 2,100 trips around the globe. The “polluter pays” principle is rarely applied to the wealthy. If anything, fuel for private airplanes enjoys exemptions from fuel duty and VAT. I hope that the Minister will explain what curbs the Government would place on the wealthy to curb pollution, and explain how they would ensure that they bear the social costs of their polluting activities.
The Government’s commitment to economic growth is at odds with the threat of drought. Indeed, local droughts are being manufactured. There is a huge increase in housebuilding, but it is not accompanied by the required level of infrastructure. England’s water companies are focused on profits, and little attention is paid to the need for national infrastructure. We do not have a national grid to transfer water from areas of abundance to areas of scarcity. The familiar neoliberal reply is that it will cost too much. Of course, they take no account of the social cost of droughts.
Water companies have not risen to the challenge of water scarcity. Successive Governments have permitted them to pay dividends and neglect investment in new reservoirs and desalination plants. Large parts of the UK water network were installed 130 to 150 years ago. Thames Water infrastructure has an average age of 79 years, compared with the industry average of 56 years, and 40% of Thames Water assets are over 100 years old. Some companies still do not have a full map of their pipe network. Some 2.6 billion to 3 billion litres of water in England are lost every day to leaks. Hosepipe bans save around 577 million litres of water a day. Since privatisation, around 44 trillion litres of water have been lost through leaks, equivalent to eight to nine years of household water supply.
At the current rate of investment, it will take 700 years to replace the 425,000 kilometres of main water supply pipes. Existing reservoirs also need to be modified. They are too shallow for hot weather, and a large volume of water is lost to evaporation. Meanwhile, the Government are hobbled by self-imposed fiscal rules which constrain their ability to bring water into public ownership and invest in infrastructure. With the threat of drought, we cannot have business as usual; we need radical change.
Lord Ashcombe (Con)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to serve on the Environment and Climate Change Committee and to speak in this debate. I too thank the staff who supported this inquiry and whose expertise contributed so much to the report.
We are a country that has long taken water for granted. Turn on the tap and the water appears, yet ensuring that it continues to do so is becoming an increasingly significant challenge. When we began this inquiry in November 2025, following a prolonged dry summer, few expected the following year to be even more severe. England avoided a serious water shortage only because the drought was followed by an exceptionally wet winter. Quite frankly, we got away with it. But relying on good fortune is not a water strategy. Given the current state of our water infrastructure, we must hope for another even wetter winter, because our resilience is not yet where it needs to be.
Our report concludes that England could face a shortage of 5 billion litres a day by 2050 if action is not taken. Yet there is reason for optimism. England receives around 10% more rainfall than it did in 1970. The challenge is one not simply of supply but of storage and management. We are experiencing wetter winters and drier summers. The committee found that we must improve the way that we measure, capture, store, supply and use water. Better data and infrastructure and a more strategic approach are all essential.
I welcome the Government’s positive response to most of our recommendations, including commitments on drought monitoring, water efficiency, smart metering and infrastructure investment. However, acceptance is not implementation. Leaks still account for around 19% of water leaving the system—almost 3 billion litres every day. In the oil industry, any leakage is regarded as unacceptable. It has smart pigs to regularly check pipeline integrity, so why not do that in the water industry? Can the Minister say more about the timetable for delivery? The key question is not whether the recommendations have been accepted but when they will be achieved.
In the time available, I shall focus on three issues: storage, demand and governance, starting with storage. England’s population has grown by around 7.5%, or possibly a bit more, over the last decade, yet no major new reservoir has come into operation. At the same time, climate change and economic growth are increasing demand. Major reservoirs currently under development will help, but they remain years from completion. We must therefore think about storage at every scale. That means restoring wetlands and reconnecting flood plains. It means supporting farmers who wish to build on-farm reservoirs that can be shared among them. In the last five years, just 34 reservoirs with a capacity greater than 25,000 cubic metres have been constructed, while the Country Land and Business Association estimates that around 450 will be needed annually until 2050. I am sure that my noble friends Lord Leicester and Lord Mancroft would have had a great deal more to say on this topic if they were still with us.
It also means expanding sustainable drainage schemes and encouraging rainwater harvesting in homes, schools and businesses. Every year, water that causes flooding in one part of the country is, only months later, during drought, unavailable elsewhere—indeed, sometimes in the same places. We must become far better at capturing and storing it.
Secondly, on demand, future water security cannot rest solely with the Government and water companies. We need a cultural shift in how we regard water. We now understand the importance of conserving energy; water should be viewed in the same way as a valuable resource that should not be wasted—mend that leaking loo, fix the dripping tap and use water wisely. Government can help through higher efficiency standards in new homes and buildings. Businesses can reduce consumption. Above all, however, tackling leakage must remain the priority.
Public engagement will be crucial. I regret to say that the Government’s “Let’s Save Water” campaign, in May this year, passed me by and I suspect that I am not alone. Lasting change will depend upon people understanding why it matters. Water companies inevitably also have a major role to play. It is difficult to persuade customers to save water when they see leaks left unrepaired for weeks. Public confidence matters if behavioural change is to succeed.
Finally, I turn to governance. There are many organisations involved in managing our water system. Each no doubt has an important role, but responsibility can appear fragmented. Who is responsible? The committee recommended clearer planning frameworks, better co-ordination between agencies and improved drought monitoring, data sharing and early-warning systems. I welcome the Government’s commitment in these areas, but I regret that water companies are not being given a stronger voice in planning decisions. They are, after all, responsible for ensuring adequate supply. Water availability must become a central consideration in planning, just as electricity connections increasingly are today. One need look only at the growth of data centres to appreciate the challenge; these facilities place substantial demands on local water and energy resources, often on a scale unmatched by other users.
Drought preparedness is fundamental to economic growth, food production, public health, biodiversity and national resilience. The Government deserve credit for responding constructively to our report. The challenge now is delivery. Future generations will not judge us by the number of recommendations we have accepted; they will judge us on whether rivers continue to flow, nature recovers, farms remain productive and households enjoy a secure supply of water. The title of this report captures the challenge perfectly: to survive the drought, we must first learn to reclaim the rain. I hope that the Government will continue to show the urgency and leadership that this challenge demands. I commend this report to the Committee.
Lord Krebs (CB)
My Lords, I thank our excellent chair, the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, for her comprehensive introduction to our report, and at the same time thank the outstanding clerk, policy analyst and committee operations officer who support all our work. This report appeared shortly before the driest July since records began in 1836. It was the right product at the right time.
You can build drought resilience by increasing the supply of water, reducing demand or both. The supply of water is ultimately rainfall, which can be stored or transferred from one place to another. The demands on water include use by households, industry, agriculture and nature, as well as the water that is wasted and ultimately ends up in the sea. As we have already heard, the supply—rainfall—has increased slightly over the past few decades, but it also appears to be getting lumpier, with periods of dry weather and periods of intense rainfall. Demand has increased because of population growth and the emergence of new water-intensive industries, such as data centres, as the noble Lord, Lord Ashcombe, just mentioned.
As the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, told us, the Minister, Emma Hardy, said that the most cost-effective measures to mitigate against drought are to reduce demand. I want to focus briefly on two areas of demand: the home and the farm. As we have already heard, household water use in England is profligate. We use over 136 litres per person per day, which is 30% more than in many other European countries. The Government have a target of reducing per-capita consumption to 122 litres by 2038, but even this is more lavish than in many other countries in Europe. The reasons for this are quite simple. On the one hand, water is too cheap. On the other, we have not legislated to require more efficient use of water in the home.
Several witnesses told us that water is too cheap, although simply increasing the price of water without reducing the amount used would have a negative effect on the cost of living crisis. However, we were told that some water companies use carrots rather than sticks to encourage more frugal water use. Anglian Water has a summer tariff and a reduced winter tariff to incentivise water saving in dry periods. South West Water offers credit on water bills to customers who reduce their water use. Does the Minister agree that these approaches should be more widely adopted by water companies?
We have already heard that Part G of the building regulations sets the rules for water use in new-build homes. The current standard of 125 litres per person is too high, and the Government accepted our recommendation that the standard should be tightened to 105 litres. They said that the policies for achieving this are expected to be published this year. As the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, has already asked, I reiterate that it would be nice to have an update on these policies. I particularly ask whether the policies will include rainwater harvesting and grey water recycling, which could reduce per capita consumption to 80 litres per day. The standard does not apply to existing buildings, and I therefore ask the Minister to tell us how the Government propose to address water use efficiency in these homes.
I turn to farmers. They often rely on abstracted water for irrigation. Witnesses told us about a number of problems with abstraction. One is that the cost of abstraction licences does not reflect water scarcity. Another problem that farmers complained about is that the Environment Agency is sometimes obliged to reduce the amount of water available for abstraction in order to meet the needs of nature. At the same time as these problems exist, the demand for water by farmers is very likely to increase in the future because of summer heat and drought.
The Nature Friendly Farming Network argues that a combination of on-farm reservoirs, rainwater harvesting and efficient irrigation are essential parts of the solution to increased drought resilience. In addition, it emphasises the need to foster spongy soils with high organic content that can successfully retain water. It cites figures suggesting that soils with higher organic content retain substantially more water and reduce the need for irrigation. However, a recent review of the scientific literature also suggests that spongier soils may reduce groundwater recharge, so there may be costs as well as benefits to improving the organic content of soils. Can the Minister tell us what the Government’s assessment is of the benefits and costs of spongy soils? I look forward to the Minister’s responses.
The Lord Bishop of Manchester
My Lords, I add my thanks to the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, and the committee for this excellent report. Noble Lords may be wondering why on earth a Bishop from the notoriously damp Manchester is worrying about drought, but I am. Access to clean water is both an environmental matter and a question of justice. That and environmental care form two of the five marks of mission of the global Anglican Communion, of which the Church of England is one of the founder members. Moreover, as a Christian, I believe that human beings have a unique vocation of stewardship towards the natural world. While it was encouraging to see that most of the report’s recommendations have been accepted, a truly effective response requires faster action, greater corporate oversight and accountability, and targeted measures to support those most at risk.
As pressure on water supplies is projected to increase in the coming decades, the Government’s commitment to fast-track some new reservoirs in England is welcome. Long-term investment will be an essential step for sustaining water security into the future. However, as the noble Lord, Lord Ashcombe, reminded us, many of these projects will take years to deliver. In the meantime, droughts will continue to threaten agricultural production, and those with the least will be hit the hardest. Making water more expensive might reduce consumption, but it may have a disastrous impact on the poorest. Water security is also not simply a matter of reservoirs. My daughter and her young family, living in rural Devon, pump their water directly from the stream that flows through their land. They do not have a second source.
The noble Lord, Lord Krebs, helpfully drew our attention to water use in farming. The Church Commissioners, whose meetings I used to chair—they pay my stipend and costs—recently met with one of their farming tenants in Cambridgeshire. The tenant explained that their yields of beans and spring barley were 50% down as a result of dry weather and limited water availability. They also suffered from significant wind erosion, including soil being blown from fields and damaging the crops. In 2026, this kind of extreme weather contributed to England’s worst cereals and oilseed harvest on record, which again drives up prices for ordinary consumers.
To address this crisis with adequate urgency, the Government must also invest in natural infrastructure such as wetlands, so that water can be stored more immediately. I am planning to attend a meeting tomorrow afternoon that will look at making wetland water storage an investable product, which will help farmers to make more land available. Removing barriers to the building of farm reservoirs would reduce pressure on rivers, help manage flood risk and create more wildlife habitats. There is one just below where I live. Crucially, that would enable our farmers to adapt high-value cropping to climate change to bring down food prices and tackle food poverty.
Unless these measures are implemented, the poorest families will face severe hardship. They are the ones for whom stockpiling advice—we have heard a lot on that recently from the Government—is particularly unrealistic. They must be supported through a strengthened social security net and have targeted incentives, so that they can meet their most basic needs.
While the Government’s agreement on a full environmental assessment of the impact of drought is encouraging, their efforts will only be hindered without proper oversight of where demand is growing. We have heard quite a bit about demand; the noble Lord, Lord Ashcombe, already alluded to data centres, yet these are increasingly being built in areas that have existing water stress. One estimate indicates that, overall, AI-related infrastructure could soon consume six times more water than Denmark does. The true scale of water demand may be even greater than currently available statistics suggest.
I know that the noble Lord, Lord Katz, recently told us that data centres currently account for roughly 0.2% of England’s non-household water use. But that statistic relies on voluntary and anonymous surveys; in fact, data centres are currently under no formal obligation whatever to report on the volume of water they are using, where they are sourcing it from or how it is being consumed. If the Government are to effectively fulfil their commitment to improve accurate data collection and the assessment of drought impacts, formalised reporting obligations must be introduced for data centres. That is essential not only so we can understand their impacts on water conservation targets but so that communities are not asked to bear the consequences without real transparency.
The Government have also agreed to improve public engagement and communication on water use and drought preparedness. That is an essential measure for reforming our relationship with the natural world. I and other Christians believe that humans have a unique responsibility to care for creation. We are called to imitate God in exhibiting qualities of care, service and responsibility for all other living beings, and to be shepherds for the natural environment. Bishops carry a shepherd’s crook, of course.
So, while I am encouraged by this commitment, we must understand that public trust in key institutions with environmental responsibilities is alarmingly low. According to the BBC, Thames Water pumped at least 72 billion litres of sewage into the River Thames between 2020 and late 2023, while water bills were continuing to rise. If the public are to be reassured that their actions at home can make a real difference—why they should save water—they must see water companies being properly held to account for environmental abuses, not just leaks but sewage into the waterways.
They must be held responsible for investment in infrastructure and river restoration. There should be meaningful consequences when environmental abuses are discovered. It is no answer that all the value was extracted by the people who bought the companies originally and they have now been loaded with debt. Water insecurity is not a challenge for future generations. Its impacts are already being felt, and disproportionately so, as I have said, by those already experiencing poverty—I make no apology for repeating that.
In order to meet the challenge, we need to invest in natural infrastructure, greater transparency and accountability from private companies entrusted with our water system. Churches and food banks have long supported communities facing hardship. We have emergency support and community initiatives. As food scarcity continues to drive up prices, we will not be able to address these inequalities alone. If individuals are to be expected to prepare for climate-related disruption, the Government must fulfil their responsibilities to their most vulnerable citizens. There must be targeted support for those most at risk, and social security must ensure that basic needs are always met.
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, and the committee. This is an excellent report. It is very irritating to me to have to follow the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester because he has covered issues I wanted to cover. That is the problem with coming sixth in a debate in a room full of people who know and understand climate change.
The report has made one thing abundantly clear, which is that drought is no longer a rare or occasional problem. It is becoming a defining challenge for England’s environmental and economic future. This summer cost farmers an estimated £390 million with cereal harvests set to be the lowest ever recorded. It is clear that this crisis goes far beyond simple hosepipe bans to potentially developing into a severe risk to our food supply. What we grow has to change, and the Government have to help farmers to make that transition and do it quickly.
One of the most striking conclusions of the report is that we are not facing a simple shortage of rainfall. In fact, the UK receives more rain than it did several decades ago. The problem is that climate change is altering when and how that rain falls. We are seeing wetter winters, more intense downpours and hotter and drier summers. Too much water arrives when we do not need it and too little arrives when we do. Hotter temperatures mean greater evaporation, lower river levels and more pressure on agriculture, ecosystems and public water supplies. If we fail to address climate change, the challenge of drought will become increasingly severe. For Greens, this is a crucial point because nature is not simply something that is nice to have, to look at and to walk our dogs in. It is part of the solution that we need for this problem. We do not need wildlife and ecosystems damaged because we are failing to address the problem. Healthy wetlands, restored floodplains, thriving peatlands and better managed catchments to help retain water in the landscape are needed. They increase resilience during dry periods while reducing flood risks during wetter months. Clearly farm reservoirs have a role to play in that.
It is not enough to tell consumers, that is, households, that they have to cut their water consumption because clearly people do a lot. I already flush my loo with washing up water and things like that. What has made it really bad is the privatisation of the water industry. First, there was the failure to build any new reservoirs despite English water companies going £72 billion into debt. That money went to shareholders, not infrastructure. Secondly, there is the failure to fix broken pipes. The hose-pipe bans this summer saved a bit of water and ruined a lot of gardens, but leaks lost five times more water. Thirdly, there is the massive expansion of housing and consumption without regulations to limit water use and encourage reuse in new and old buildings.
Reservoirs are needed, but the public do not necessarily trust the water companies to build them. I have been involved with local councillors and campaigners in Havant because the new Havant Thicket reservoir is coming online. At the moment, it is a beautiful watery space, absolutely gorgeous, but South West Water is planning to put recycled effluent into it. That will be a problem. Local people are already asking whether they want to drink that water, whether it is going to be healthy and whether is it going to be okay. South West Water does not have a good reputation. It is dumping sewage and all sorts of chemicals into local rivers and on to the seashore. I have mentioned the Havant Thicket reservoir before; it is a problem. A water industry driven by profit and debt cannot adapt quickly enough to the new climate and new needs. Only public ownership can get us through the coming crisis.
The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester also mentioned data centres. A detailed set of amendments has been drawn up by experts at Manchester University who were raising concerns about data centres. They wanted water reuse and some restrictions on where you put the data centres so it did not impact on areas already subject to drought conditions. They were sensible ideas but the Government ignored them.
We are on track to be living the hottest year on record, and the frightening thing is knowing that the new record could be broken next year or the year after. Climate scientists working via the UN have been making predictions for decades, and every single one of those predictions has underestimated how bad things are going to be and how fast things are going to change.
I have come to all the things that I have scribbled out because other people have said them, but I will try again. Water availability must become a far more important factor in planning decisions. It makes little sense to recognise the risk of future shortages while continuing to approve developments that place ever greater pressure on limited resources. On the Government’s insatiable obsession with data centre expansion, I point out that it will only place further demand in areas where demand is already rapidly increasing due to housing developments.
The solutions are available. We can reduce leakage and use water more efficiently. We can restore natural systems that help store and manage water. We can ensure that development takes place within environmental limits and, above all, we can recognise that tackling climate change is fundamental to securing our future water supplies and our future well-being as a human population.
The noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, came up with all sorts of really good ideas. I did not make a note but I will check in Hansard—I am sure they are already Green Party policy. However, the biggest thing we can do to fight climate change, or to slow it down at least, is to stop using fossil fuels. I ask the Government, when they talk about growth, to please focus on climate-friendly growth. It is not enough and it is not good enough to talk about constantly expanding all sorts of development when we need to put the climate first. It is not just the climate; it is the future of us, our children and our grandchildren.
Lord Trees (CB)
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to serve on this committee under the excellent chairmanship of the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, and the wonderful support of all the staff that we have.
At the end of October, the major part of England was officially in drought or severe drought, and much of England had severe drought in 2025, but the paradox is that the UK currently experiences 10% more rainfall than it did in 1970. Our failure has been not to adequately value our water and not to ensure appropriate capture for storage and usage. One serious consequence has been that the Government have now had to commit to fast-tracking nine new reservoirs by 2050, which will be a serious challenge.
In the time I have I want to focus on two issues: namely, the provision of adequate water for farming and food production, and consideration of how we might reduce domestic usage of potable water. I have not connived with the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, who chose to highlight similar things.
A recommendation in our committee report was for the need to prioritise water supplies in the event of drought, and I suggest that the production of food should be a national priority to support food security. Can the Minister assure us that His Majesty’s Government have determined or are determining priorities for water usage in the event of shortages, and that agriculture is one of those priorities?
I acknowledge that there are difficulties in formulating an overall drought planning policy for farming because of the diversity and highly disaggregated nature of the industry. However, I note that Defra is considering where responsibility for this might lie, so can the Minister indicate whether any progress has been made in this respect?
Not only is water essential on our land for food production, but a multiplicity of on-farm water storage sites would assist in the control of the increasing incidence of wildfires and the consequential huge damage they do to nature habitats and biodiversity. Improving the link and extending the licence terms for water abstraction would facilitate the topping up of existing farm reservoirs during high winter precipitation and de-risk the investment for new on-farm reservoir building.
Although many farmers have managed to create small reservoirs, they are inhibited by planning and other regulatory complexities as well as capital costs. Water management grant funding has been extremely welcome to aid the construction of small reservoirs, but will His Majesty’s Government consider another round of such grant funding, and will they plan to simplify and accelerate the planning and regulatory processes around building more on-farm reservoirs?
My other major point is on the domestic use of water. Over 90% of the total consumption of water is through the public water supply, of which the major part, 59%, is for household use. So, to reduce overall water usage, it makes sense to tackle this major source of use. Currently, we expend much effort and money on collecting and purifying water to drinking standards, and we then use it to flush the lavatory, wash clothes, water the garden and wash the car, and for a variety of other uses. This may consume 45% to 50% of the total household potable water demand.
Current per capita consumption, as we have heard, is over 130 litres per person per day. But Part G of the building regulations requires a dwelling not to use more than 125 litres per person per day, a regulation of which I—like most people, I am sure—was totally unaware. His Majesty’s Government consulted on these regulations in September 2025, as several noble Lords have mentioned, and are still considering a response. When are the results of this consultation due to be published?
The consultation also called for evidence on water reuse in new developments. It has been estimated that harvested rainwater could reduce potable water consumption from current levels to perhaps 80 litres per person per day. We heard evidence from the Good Homes Alliance that distinguishing between potable water consumption and total use in water consumption would be and should be a policy priority to aid in promoting a separation of these resources. It took years before we saw solar panels routinely integrated into the roofs of new buildings. With regard to water, while retrofitting existing buildings with means to separate the source and use of rainfall and grey water from potable supplies is likely to be extremely expensive, what are we doing to develop, encourage and incentivise this installation in new builds? This is not an immediate solution, but in the medium term it could be a game-changer in water conservation. Are the Government considering this approach?
Similar opportunities apply to non-domestic uses, where the use of potable public supply is relatively cheap, providing no incentive for industry to use non-potable sources. Discounted rates have even been provided for higher water users. At a time when there can be water shortages, this is an obvious own goal. Has this practice been discontinued? I know that we in this country are terribly slow at capital innovations, but after all, the Romans were harvesting rainwater in the home 2,000 years ago.
Lord Frost (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I chose to speak today partly because I very much enjoyed my time on the Environment and Climate Change Committee, under the chairmanship of the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, but also because I want to set out some reservations, not about the global climate but about the intellectual climate that has shaped this report, which is interesting in many ways. That intellectual climate has crept up on us; it is a reluctance to accept that providing more of the good things of life is a necessary and desirable aim of public policy. This aim has given way to a rather miserabilist vision, in which the task is to restrict consumption, manage expectations and persuade people to be content with that. That was symbolised for me by the Minister’s remark in the evidence session that the cheapest way to increase water capacity is to reduce demand.
The noble Lord, Lord Trees, mentioned the need in this country to be self-sufficient in food or to get closer to it. By that logic, the best way to achieve that would be simply to tell people to eat less rather than to grow more. I do not think that this is a satisfactory prospectus for prosperity, and it is frustrating, because there is a lot in the report on which we could build a better approach.
The summary acknowledges the key facts: we are not short of rain; in fact, we have 10% more than we used to, even if it falls at different times of the year. This could have been the basis for a clarion call to build more infrastructure and to get on with it but, unfortunately, we do not quite get that. It is not that it is not mentioned, and it is acknowledged in the Government’s response, but that it feels half-hearted. Much more is said about the need to exercise restraint, reduce demand and manage human behaviour.
With that in mind, I will briefly mention four issues. First, the report slips into overly alarmist language at times. In the summary, it says that
“drought impacts will, without mitigation, endanger life as we know it today”.
I ask whether that is really consistent with having 10% more rainfall in the country. The problem with the alarmist language is that it makes a particular set of choices about consumption, investment and regulation seem like they follow naturally from an existential challenge rather than being what they really are: highly contested.
Secondly, we are asked to accept a faintly Soviet-sounding permanent campaign for good behaviour—a whole-society approach to drought, sustained all year long, and a government communication plan to that end. The Government’s response tells us that:
“We all must go further and faster to … be mindful of our water consumption”.
We are even told that some stakeholders think temporary use bans are not about reducing consumption but
“an effective awareness mechanism for educating the population”
about changing their behaviour. The feeling, sometimes, is that citizens are seen as kind of conscripts in a permanent national struggle against drought, not customers entitled to expect reliable provision.
Thirdly, I think the deepest problem is a suspicion of abundance as a policy goal. In paragraph 138, the National Preparedness Commission is quoted as saying:
“Allowing the myth to perpetuate that water will always be in plentiful supply, is in some way a citizen’s or business’s ‘right’”.
It regards that as a myth. Of course, no system can guarantee unlimited water in every circumstance, but plentiful, reliable supply ought at least to be an ambition to realise, not an expectation that has to be educated out of the public. People might be entitled to ask why the answer to growing demand should so readily become a campaign to suppress demand instead. For that is what is intended; paragraph 86 quotes figures and a planned balance in which 50% of the projected supply deficit is met by “customer-side demand management”. In other words, reduced consumption becomes the dominant answer, rather than asking what it would take to provide enough and whether that is the better way forward.
Demand management starts by being voluntary but ends by being compulsory, which has already been alluded to a little. We see it in the recommendation that the new building regulations for new homes should require a maximum water usage of 105 litres per person a day. The Government have accepted that recommendation, although I guess they did so before the Chancellor said in the Budget that there will be no further major changes to building regulations for the remainder of this Parliament. Can the Minister, in winding up, say whether this is still government policy or whether it has been superseded by events?
My fourth and final point is on affordability. The word does not actually occur in the report, and its discussion of price seems to see it primarily as a tool for managing demand down. It seems to think that water is fundamentally too cheap, in some sense. That is fine—well, not really fine, but understandable if you are well off. What about those who struggle? Do they not deserve some concern in policy-making in this area too? The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester has already alluded to this issue. By all means, introduce more of a market in water, but only if there are also measures to increase supply. I think that we will instead see supply restricted, in practice by state fiat, coupled with demand managed through high prices. That is a regressive policy and one that I think the report could have commented on a little more.
The right objective is more reliable water and more of it at prices that people can afford. To repeat the committee’s own phrase, we need
“better storage, supply and reuse”,
not more public enthusiasm for having less of it. I worry that we are importing into water policy the same mistaken instinct I see in energy policy: treating scarcity as something to organise society around, not a problem to overcome. The public are entitled to expect better than that, and the policy really ought to be a determination to provide it.
Lord Jay of Ewelme (CB)
My Lords, it is always good to follow my good friend the noble Lord, Lord Frost —opposites attract, I think I might say. It has been a pleasure to be a member of the Environment and Climate Change Committee for the last two years and to work with the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, as a highly effective chairman, and with our excellent staff.
As our report makes clear, climate change is one of the key factors causing drought. I will just say a word about climate change itself: it is of course an international, not a national, crisis that we face at the moment. Despite the difficulties at present, in particular in Washington and elsewhere, it is essential that the international community takes climate change seriously, not least at COP 31, which is going on as we speak. I must say that I am not sure that flying a thousand people to Turkey is a particularly good example to the rest of us—an online COP might be an option for the future—but, even so, I am glad that the Prime Minister and other Ministers will be there and I hope that, at COP and thereafter, the United Kingdom will lead by example in what it says and does.
Climate change is not of course the only cause of drought in the United Kingdom. Population growth and water-intensive industries, notably data centres, play their part too. Nor is drought an annual occurrence. None the less, drought in summer and flooding in winter looks like becoming, if not the new normal, at least a regular occurrence, hence the relevance of the committee’s report. It is clear from the Government’s response to the report that the Government and the committee are broadly on the same page. That is not always the case, in my experience, on this committee or others.
I therefore welcome the publication of A New Vision for Water earlier this year and the report by Sir Jon Cunliffe that preceded it. As the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, said, however, it is execution that matters. I want to focus on two main issues, the first of which is the need to make us all realise that water is a scarce resource. We know when electricity is scarce because the price goes up and we know when gas is scarce because the price goes up. We use less electricity and gas as a result. We all know, I think, that the electricity price is too high and that the Government are rightly trying to get it down. However—I know this is an unpopular thing to say—the price of water is too low by any standard and we use it too liberally.
I know how hard it is to raise prices at a time of economic difficulty for people and for businesses, but does the Minister accept that at a time of scarcity the price of water may need to rise? I know that the price mechanism is not everything, and I applaud the Government’s campaign earlier this year, “Let’s Save Water”, as an attempt to change attitudes in England and Wales. The chief executive of the Environment Agency, Philip Duffy, told the committee this morning that the early signs suggested that the report had had a positive effect. It was an impressive evidence session and the suggestion of a positive impact is good, but can the Minister tell us how the Government intend to maintain the momentum to change attitudes to water and to use less? Like others, I urge the Government and the committee to keep the pressure on the water companies to reduce leaks. Nothing so disincentivises the rest of us to cut back on water use than seeing the street outside our houses running with water from a burst main.
I turn to the need to preserve water, a matter for all of us as individuals. Many of us are using less water and some of us are mastering the technology of rain butts. It is also a question of building regulations, and I am glad that the Government accept our recommendation on this. It is more than that though: too much rain is running into rivers and out to sea. We need more and deeper reservoirs, as mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Sikka. I know the difficulties in winning local support for new reservoirs, but I do not see how we can meet the challenges and crises of the future without building them. The Government have talked of simplifying planning rules and the water companies have talked of compensatory measures for affected communities, but progress is worryingly slow. Can the Minister assure us of the Government’s determination to see new reservoirs built and used soon?
We need large reservoirs but more on-farm reservoirs too, as others have said. I am glad that the Government accepted the committee’s recommendation on this and announced in August this year their intention to encourage local water supply and streamline planning barriers. But does this go far enough? The Country Land and Business Association makes a powerful case for constructing many more reservoirs than would be possible with the £15 million so far allocated by the Government. Like others I am sorry that we no longer have the Earl of Leicester with us to make this point more effectively than I can. Does the Minister agree that we must do much more?
Finally, as mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, we had excellent presentations from six schools during our work on this report. One of them gave us the title of our report, reclaim the rain. Their commitment was palpable, and it is their future and not just ours that is at stake.
Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)
My Lords, I am delighted to have joined the committee in January 2026, which was part-way through the inquiry, and it is a privilege to serve on it. I declare my interests: I am co-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Water Group and vice-president of the Association of Drainage Authorities, and I have minor shareholdings in Pennon and United Utilities. I co-authored four reports, and am now undertaking a fifth, on water and flooding policy in a series entitled Bricks and Water with Rob Allen from Westminster Sustainable Business Forum. I congratulate my noble friend Lady Sheehan for her excellent stewardship of the committee, for chairing it so well, for this excellent inquiry and for securing this debate. I echo the thanks of all on the committee to the support staff who are with us today.
The summer of 2026 saw the worst drought for 50 years. The impact on consumers, farmers and businesses was palpable. In North Yorkshire, we had ongoing wildfires that were very difficult to control. They threatened farms, livestock and livelihoods. I praise the North Yorkshire Fire & Rescue Service and other emergency services for their huge efforts to bring those fires eventually under control. It is essential to have access to water for livestock, poultry producers, the horticultural sector and households.
Climate change is now a fact of life. We have to learn to live with the consequences. We have to do more between droughts and between floods. It is essential that we store more water in times of flooding. We need to have not just the large reservoirs but, as others have said, smaller on-farm reservoirs of around 20,000 cubic litres. We need to have nature-based solutions, and I pay tribute to the Pickering Slowing the Flow pilot scheme project, which, in storing water upstream, has protected the town of Pickering from flooding since its construction.
We must have measures to mitigate and adapt to the impact of droughts and floods. We need to use building regulations intelligently and effectively to make houses more resilient. We need to reduce water consumption per household to 105 litres per person per day. This is not unique to the United Kingdom: Denmark and other Scandinavian countries are already well ahead in this field.
In considering the report, I will refer to certain recommendations and, in particular, the Government’s response to them. First, the committee recommended that water companies be made statutory consultees on all major planning decisions, particularly for houses. Why is this important? In the Pitt review in 2007, Sir Michael Pitt recommended ending the automatic right to connect, so that water companies would not be forced to make false connections or connections that would put undue pressure on wastewater—sewage—in adjacent developments to those for which planning permission was sought. Sadly, the Government have rejected that recommendation, which in my view is ill advised.
Far too often, planning for major housing developments is being sought in inappropriate places—on functional flood plains and in areas of water stress. Also, too often, wastewater in the form of raw sewage is making its way into rivers, watercourses and the sea because these developments are proceeding against the advice of the Environment Agency. The Government have also yet to implement Schedule 3 to the Flood and Water Management Act 2010, allowing excess surface water to continue to enter the combined sewers. This situation will continue until water companies can formally reject inappropriate applications as statutory consultees.
We proposed to strengthen building regulations to reduce potable water demand to a maximum water usage of 105 litres per person per day. Although the department has accepted this, the Government—and the Budget, as we heard earlier from the noble Lord, Lord Frost—have announced that no new building regulations will be adopted any time soon. That is very disappointing indeed.
Internal drainage boards—I have declared my interest—have an essential role to play in the maintenance, drainage and flood prevention of watercourses in low-lying areas. Crucially, the role of IDBs should be recognised in the forthcoming water Bill so that they will have a recognisable role to play in any catchment management system of watercourses. Bizarrely, the department has rejected our recommendations to expand the remit of IDBs.
On storing water, creating reservoirs, the use of abstraction licences, environmental permitting and nature-based solutions, Defra is ambivalent. It accepted our recommendation of moving abstraction licensing into the environmental permitting regime, but we heard from the Environment Agency today that there is simply no timeframe to do so and therefore, it seems to me, no sense of urgency. Given the scale of the problem identified in this report, I would argue that urgent action is needed and we need to do more to prepare for future droughts and times of flooding.
Small on-farm reservoirs should be given priority. The department urgently needs to address the issue of the Balmforth review on reservoir safety and the de minimis rule contained in the Reservoirs Act 1975, recognising that small on-farm reservoirs of between 20,000 and 100,000 cubic metres simply do not threaten public safety—when they are ring-fenced so that no one enters them and drowns—but will manifestly contribute to preparing for and surviving future droughts. I urge the department to act now to implement all our recommendations or give us today a very good reason for not doing so.
The Lord Bishop of Norwich
My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, for bringing this debate and for the thorough report by the Environment and Climate Change Committee. As always, it is a privilege to follow the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh. About 15 years ago, when I was chairing the forestry and woodlands advisory committee for the Forestry Commission in the north-east, I visited Pickering to see that excellent work holding the water higher in the catchment area. I think beavers would also do a good job. There are two environmental areas on which I would like to focus: the impact of drought on soil health and chalk streams.
First, I shall offer a few reflections as a Lord spiritual. Drought is a recurring theme throughout history, bringing hardship, uncertainty and a stark reminder of humanity’s dependence on the natural world. My question is: has this been the hottest summer on record or the coolest summer of our futures? Has this been the worst harvest on record or the best harvest of our futures? The Bible offers some striking descriptions of drought and its consequences. The prophet Jeremiah describes the distress of people sent to draw water only to discover that the cisterns were empty. Similarly, in the story of Elijah the brook dries up because there had been no rain in the land. These accounts illustrate how quickly the things we take for granted can disappear and how vulnerable human life becomes when essential resources become scarce.
We should resist viewing drought as simply an act of nature beyond our influence. Climate change, excessive consumption and the pressures we place on natural resources all invite serious consideration of our responsibilities. We are reminded that water is precious, that its availability cannot be taken for granted and that we have a duty to protect and preserve our environment for future generations. I recall a time in the very north of Ghana when there was very little water, and we were given basically a calabash each to wash in every day. It was a salient reminder of how water in so many places around the world is utterly treasured.
Drilling down into the two areas of soil health and chalk streams, we are totally reliant on six inches of soil to sustain human life. Healthy soils store water, support plant growth, provide habitats for countless organisms and play an important role in maintaining the balance of our ecosystems. When soil is rich in organic matter and has a healthy structure, it can absorb and retain moisture, as the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, outlined, helping plants and crops withstand periods of dry weather and, vitally, holding water higher up in its catchment—a sort of natural flood management infrastructure. Conversely, compacted, depleted or degraded soils struggle to hold water, making the effects of drought more severe. As a simple experiment, pour water on to hard, dry soil, and it just runs off; pour it on to healthy soil, and it soaks in. Spongy soils are good, as the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, said.
Drought causes a slowdown of the soil microbe activity that drives nutrient cycling and supports plant growth. Microbial communities’ structure, function and interactions can all be disrupted in periods of drought. Drought also leads to nutrient stagnation. Without moisture, nutrient transport to roots halts and uptake by plants decreases. Drought impacts soil invertebrates—earthworms, woodlice, millipedes and the like—reducing population numbers, and this results in less supply for their predators and a greater challenge for birds to extract them from the soil.
The depletion of soils means that during drought conditions, soils become exposed to wind erosion as well as topsoil erosion when it rains too hard, causing flash floods. When, as we have heard, peaty soils dry out, carbon is released into the atmosphere, and they become susceptible to fire, as we saw with moorland fires last summer. The soil moisture deficit in west Norfolk at the end of September compared with the long-term average reached an all-time high of more than 160 millimetres.
Perhaps the lesson of drought is not simply that we need more rain but that we need to take better care of the ground that receives it. A healthy future begins under our feet. Improving soil health and having spongy soils is the first practical step towards greater drought resilience. Thus, my first question to the Minister is: where does soil health come in His Majesty’s Government’s priorities about responding well to a drier summer future?
My second point is the impact of drought on chalk streams. These precious ecosystems, of which about 85% of all the world’s 200 chalk streams are found in England, well up out of aquifers. Consecutive months of below-average rainfall mean that aquifers fail to recharge during the winter. Drought extends the time when there is no flow in winterbournes—temporary streams in the upper reaches of chalk stream systems that contain water only when groundwater levels rise high enough to feed the channel—thus threatening species that depend on these seasonal patterns.
The River Pang in Berkshire dried up in places never seen before this summer. In fact, poor old Ratty, Mole and Mr Toad would not be able to get into their boat. It is not helped by the level of abstraction to meet water demand. In August, the River Wensum, which flows through the centre of Norwich, experienced a mass death of fish and of species that are not visible—the fish all floated when they died, but many other species were killed as well—after a heavy downpour of rain flushed contaminants out of the city’s drains into the Wensum. Thus, my second question to the Minister is will His Majesty’s Government fulfil their promise in the White Paper to further “embed action” to protect chalk streams, including during periods of drought, in the long-expected clean water Bill?
The Duke of Wellington (CB)
My Lords, I declare my farming interests in the United Kingdom and southern Spain. I mention that because I am more than aware of what farmers suffer when there is a lack of rainfall. In southern Spain, we never expect any rain between May and October—none—so we have what members of the committee would think of as a drought every year. We are very conscious of conserving water, using it efficiently and building small, on-farm reservoirs, as has been mentioned by a number of noble Lords.
I am interested in this report and welcome it. It has been informative for me. I am no longer a member of the Environment and Climate Change Committee, but I wish to comment briefly on an element that is referred to in the report but has not yet been given the priority it deserves, which is leakage. The figures have been quoted by various noble Lords. Some 20% of our daily supply of water is lost through leakage. That is an incredible figure. If I understood the graphs correctly, that is nearly 3 billion litres of water every single day lost through leakage. I find it extraordinary that that does not concern the public and the department more than it does. It is a very serious situation.
The noble Lord, Lord Katz, answered a question from me in the Chamber only two days ago, and I have put questions to the noble Lord, Lord Benyon, when he was the Conservative Minister, and to the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, the present government Minister. The Government’s ambition, their target, is to reduce water leakage by half in the next 24 years. We should be doing better than that. The report helpfully tells us that the government target has been accepted by the Government as what the water companies have committed to do. That is the wrong way to form public policy. The Government should set a target and make the water companies achieve it. We have got that wrong.
I also read with great interest in the report that Ofwat is quite often reluctant to authorise expenditure on leak prevention. That astonishes me. Again, I hope that the public will become more aware of that. As my noble friend Lord Jay said, nobody likes to see the water mains in their street leaking down the side of the road. That is when it is visible, but, unfortunately, a lot of leakage is not visible; it is in old underground pipes that have been there for maybe 100 years. Again, with modern technology, which is referred to in the report, there must be ways of detecting these leaks. Smart meters were mentioned and are obviously sensible. There should be more meters along the system, which would be a way of catching leaks.
I would like the whole question of leakage to be moved up the list of priorities, even more than the committee has said. There are two or three very interesting pages in the committee’s report about leakage, but it is more important than the committee has suggested, if I may say so. Three-quarters of the leaks, I understand, come from the water companies’ pipe systems, and only one-quarter comes from domestic residences and businesses. I hope I read that correctly. So the major problem, which we must tackle, is the leakage from water company systems. The report says that in 2055 we will have a deficit of 5 billion litres a day. As I have just said, we are currently losing 3 billion litres a day, so surely part of that problem can be solved by reducing leakage.
I very much commend the committee on the report and its recommendations. I am disappointed that this Government, like the previous Government, have not been prepared to look again at the target. Although the noble Lord, Lord Katz, said two days ago in the Chamber that he was not minded to ask Ministers in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to look again at that target, I again ask him to pass on to his ministerial colleagues that this is something they really should look at. They should not just take as a target what the water companies have suggested.
Earl Russell (LD)
My Lords, I declare my interest as a board member and director of The Water Retail Company. I thank our clerks and committee staff for their exemplary work, the many witnesses and the schools which worked alongside us. I also pay tribute to and thank my noble friend Lady Sheehan for her excellent leadership of the committee.
I welcome the Government’s response; 11 of our 17 recommendations were accepted in full and four in part. That is not something that the committee counts on. It matters—I will not set out all those recommendations because others have done so—and it is a constructive response, but as others have said—here is the central nub of the issue—what matters now is the pace of delivery, which must match the pace of the problem. I think we have said with one voice that acceptance is not implementation and that urgent action is now absolutely required on these matters.
The truth at the heart of the report is simple: our climate is changing faster than our policies can keep up with. As my noble friend Lady Sheehan said, we wrote much of this during last winter’s floods, yet here we are back in drought. Indeed, we need 120% of rainfall every month between now and April just to come out of drought. So floods and drought are two sides of the same coin.
The noble Lord, Lord Ashcombe, pointed out that the Met Office has shown us that we get 10% more rain now than we did in 1970. The difference is how it falls. We have the lumpier rain in the winter that the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, mentioned; that runs off, and then we have this hydrological whiplash that our witnesses talked about when, in the summer, the heat bakes the soil and any rain we get simply does not soak in. Beyond that, our infrastructure is also built for a different climate. The steady rain of my childhood no longer exists. At two degrees of warming, droughts like that in 2010 will become 86% more frequent. At four degrees of warming, they will become 150% more likely. The increasing risk of multiyear events has the real potential to do absolute damage to our water security. I respond politely to the noble Lord, Lord Frost: I recognise his points, but he is asking us to report on a world that does not exist any more.
Our overall conclusions are not complex: we must capture the rain where and when it falls. It is the change required to get there that is complex. It starts, as others have said, with big infrastructure projects. We have not built new reservoirs in way too long. I welcome what the Government are doing on that, but these projects take a long time. The Government need to make progress and they must be honest about who pays.
Water infrastructure is also the very landscape itself—a point made by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester and the noble Baroness, Lady Jones. Our wetlands, peatlands and river restorations slow water flow in the winter and recharge it in the summer. Our dried peatlands also become carbon emitters, with underground fires when they are not kept moist. I absolutely agree with the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Norwich that we need more beavers—nature’s own engineers. We need to reduce licensing costs and put more into funding rangers, so that we can manage their reintroduction. I welcome the £300 million for natural flood management, but it falls short of a first line of defence. I want to see the Government go further.
Our report was absolutely clear about demand: 80% of the reduction in the next decade must come from the demand side. The noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington, is absolutely right to point out that 19% of treated water is lost to leaks; one-fifth of all the water we clean and pump is gone. The noble Lord, Lord Krebs, pointed out that our consumption is still too high and is getting higher. Halving leakage by 2050 is a reaffirmed target but not a new one. I wonder whether the Minister would commit to having milestones on that journey.
Water companies are not delivering on the water efficiency measures. They are not the right vehicle, so I ask the Government to look at them. On Part G, we welcome that but when will the Government respond? Every home that we build to the old standard is one that we retrofit later at greater cost. We need grey water systems, rainwater harvesting—a point that the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, made—and smart meters in half of our properties by 2030, giving us near-instant leak detection. We also need better-designed taps. With one of the taps I have at home, it is almost impossible to control the flow of water. Would the Government consider mandatory labelling for fittings and improving fittings?
I turn to where the response falls short. The Government rejected statutory consultee status for water companies, pointing to the requirement to assist. I wonder whether that will really have an impact and how it will work in practice. We are not asking for a veto, but these pressures and tensions need to be better planned for and understood. The Government also rejected extending the remit for internal drainage boards. Again, that needs better consideration. As the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, said, the water Bill offers an opportunity to change that. Will the Government take that up? That is my challenge.
On data, we have just 50 soil monitoring sites. I recognise the Government’s response but they must give us the detail. How many will there be, and when will that be done? The Environment Agency projects a deficit of 5 billion litres of water by 2055. Our evidence suggests that it is probably greater than that, and, as others have said, AI data centres and hydrogen production are outside of that and are projected to require another 767 million litres of water by 2050. The AI sector does not report its water use—a point made by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester. The Government need to require mandatory reporting for its water use. There need to be adequate guardrails for reporting and for the water it uses.
I welcome the new flood and drought resilience taskforce. Fifty bodies around the table is really good, but this kind of integrated working is what we really need. Will it have the powers required?
To conclude, as I have gone over time—I apologise, but I am trying to sum up this debate—I want to ask the Minister a final question. We have an El Niño coming. What preparations are the Government making for if the winter rains fail and we have another really hot summer? If that happened, we would be in a really bad situation.
Lord Roborough (Con)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, for this debate and for her work as chair of the Environment and Climate Change Committee. I also join the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, and my noble friend Lord Ashcombe in particularly thanking my noble friends the Earl of Leicester and Lord Mancroft, who sat on this committee but who have since been excluded from this House and so unfortunately are unable to be here today to debate this report. I draw the Committee’s attention to my register of interests as a farmer and land manager, including engagement in peatland restoration, riparian tree planting and the River Walkham landscape recovery scheme.
A 10-year weather survey conducted by the NFU found that 68% of respondents have seen an increase in drought, and this July was the driest on record for England and Wales. There is no denying climate change on our Benches. Many of our reservoirs have hit record lows and even now are 17 percentage points below seasonal norms. As others have already pointed out, we need more than 20% above seasonal rainfalls to leave us even partially prepared for another year like this one.
It is not that we lack rainfall, the expertise or opportunities for private capital. However, a phone alert from the Government banning barbecues over the summer just did not cut it. Genuine resilience and adaptation are needed. So many of these issues have a knock-on effect beyond water supply: on our farmers, food prices, housing development, businesses’ growth and essential infrastructure. It is estimated that broader water scarcity could cost the UK between £8.5 billion and £13 billion in lost growth over the next five years, which, frankly, seems a low estimate.
The report has called for the Government to publish a prioritisation plan for an emergency drought situation no later than this autumn, as well as to foster a whole-of-society approach to drought management by putting in place a year-round engagement plan on water use by December 2026. Can the Minister update your Lordships’ House on this and reassure us that agricultural water needs and usage will not be left as an afterthought? This is especially important when the Government have launched their Be Ready campaign.
In the remainder of my comments, I want to focus on the supply of water and, in particular, on storage. The noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington, and the noble Earl, Lord Russell, addressed leakage comprehensively. The report states:
“Nature-based solutions … in both the urban and rural environment must be prioritized as a first line of defence to manage the increasing risk of both flooding and drought”.
The first new reservoir is not due for five years at the earliest, and the remainder are not expected until as late as 2040. The country needs solutions that deliver now. The Government have announced only £15 million to help build on-farm reservoirs. Can the Minister say whether the water management grant will still be open this autumn, how many on-farm reservoirs it will fund and what impact that will have on our total water storage? My suspicion is that it will be incredibly valuable to the rural economy, but wider society will not benefit. I have visited an irrigated cotton farm in Australia. Land intensity for on-farm reservoirs tends to be high. They tend to be quite shallow and use quite a lot of land. There is also an issue with the release of carbon from the soil underneath them.
Further to that, what is happening to SFIs that fund nature-based water solutions? How can they contribute meaningfully when there is a cap of £100,000 per applicant? Those applicants might value other SFIs more highly. Can the Minister update us on uptake levels for 2026 SFI round 2 related to improved water volume management? I can find only two: management of ponds and ditches. Why are there so few? In August, the Minister said they had been working closely with MHCLG to update planning guidance to support agricultural infrastructure, such as on-farm reservoirs. What further planning reforms are planned?
The adoption of nature-based solutions could move so much more quickly with a proactive, enabling, risk-tolerant Defra and its ALBs. We on these Benches believe that the current complex structure focused on prescribing actions is not fit for purpose, nor is it helpful that much of the infrastructure that needs protection through NBS—nature-based solutions—is transport or energy-related. We know that officials from those departments have shown serious interest in nature-based solutions. Will the Minister ensure that Defra leads this effort and ensures that the resources of all these departments are harnessed to allow those industries to fund nature-based solutions appropriately? Endless consultations, planning cycles and approval requirements seek to gold-plate these schemes when the Government could place so much more trust in a properly incentivised and deregulated private sector to deliver the desired outcomes. The Corry review made many sensible recommendations for how that could be achieved.
We on these Benches urge the Government to go further and faster in simplifying Defra to focus on outcomes, risk tolerance, accountability and, more important than all of that, attracting private capital to nature-based solutions. The science is there to support investment in restoring soil structure, rewetting, decanalising our rivers and streams and riparian planting, but the Environment Agency continues to penalise these measures with a 4x risk multiplier versus grey infrastructure. A portfolio of many of these actions will surely reduce the overall risk of using nature-based solutions to levels at or below grey infrastructure. What can be done to encourage the Environment Agency to take a more constructive tone? The £3 billion targeted at nature-based solutions in the current water sector investment cycle is good, but why are we not open to much more given the speed of delivery and the evident benefits?
Landscape recovery schemes are impressive but they are moving too slowly, hampered by contracts that threaten to withdraw funding with 12 months’ notice and limited by five-year spending reviews when the schemes themselves may last 20 or even 30 years. There are difficulties in quantifying values from these investments in resilience in our national water infrastructure and in ensuring that all beneficiaries contribute fairly. The Evenlode scheme shows what can happen when an effective leadership team brings together the owners of downstream infrastructure with the water companies to deliver a comprehensive investment package. Why is this not happening in every river catchment now?
The Environment Agency requires companies to plan future supply on the assumption that demand targets will be reached, but demand reduction has underperformed expectations, with an estimated shortfall of around 220 million litres per day. Can the Minister shed light on what the water Bill will do to tackle this? Will there be changes to the price review process for water companies? Finally, what progress have the Government made on accepting round 3 landscape recovery schemes? How many round 1 and round 2 schemes have moved into the implementation phase in order to deliver these long-term, large-scale projects for the environmental benefits we all want to see?
As climate change compounds manmade pressure on our natural environment, as well as on our water supply system, the great beauty of nature-based solutions is the dramatic improvement they bring to nature protection, restoration and recovery. Salmonids benefiting from more consistent flows in our rivers increase biodiversity within healthy soils, particularly for many unpronounceable, I am afraid, but highly beneficial fungi, bacteria, insects and ground-nesting wading birds, such as Eurasian curlews from rewetting drained land. I hope I am sufficiently persuasive on this subject. We could be planting riparian trees right now, although the soils are probably still too dry, but right now is the planting window until March. Soils remain dry enough to use swing shovels now to decanalise rivers and restore peat hags. Where is the action?
Several noble Lords mentioned data centres. I should declare an interest that I am an unpaid advisor to a data centre development and a member of the APPG for Data Centres. I am sure that the Minister will make this point too, but all the UK data centres use recycled water. Their water footprint is de minimis. It is the US data centres that use water on a run-through basis for cooling; it does not happen in the UK. The noble Earl, Lord Russell, will, I hope, be reassured by my view that hydrogen will never be economic in this country and, therefore, will never use much water.
I am conscious that I have asked a lot of questions, many of which I asked in the Chamber on Monday and my noble friend Lord Ashcombe asked in the Chamber yesterday. I hope that the Minister’s officials have prepared him very thoroughly. If there is not time to answer them all, a reply in writing will of course be very welcome.
Lord in Waiting/Government Whip (Lord Katz) (Lab)
My Lords, it is an absolute pleasure to respond for the Government to this interesting and in-depth debate on the Environment and Climate Change Committee’s report. I thank all those who have brought their experience of sitting in the committee, but also their life experience, to bear on this debate and the consideration by the committee. I am very grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, for securing the debate and to the present members of the committee and indeed past ones; I take a moment to mention the Earl of Leicester and Lord Mancroft in that cohort. The experience demonstrated across the Committee today reflects the importance of the issues that we are discussing and the growing challenge that drought poses to our environment, economies and communities.
I say right now, because I might forget at the end as I will be in a rush, that I am sure I will not be able to answer all the questions, however hard I try, from the noble Lord, Lord Roborough, opposite. I will do my best and will of course reflect on Hansard and reply to Peers on those questions that I miss.
As everyone has noted, this debate comes at a particularly important time. Parts of England are currently experiencing severe drought conditions, reminding us that drought is no longer a distant risk that may arise at some point in the future. It is a challenge that we must confront now, while also strengthening our resilience to the droughts that climate change is expected to bring in the years ahead.
While severe drought is the highest classification in the Environment Agency’s drought framework, it does not in itself mean that public water supplies are at immediate risk. We have to be clear about that. It does, however, underline the need for the Government, regulators and water companies to act early and prepare for the possibility that conditions could worsen. The Government therefore welcome the committee’s report and all the recommendations that it contains. As has been noted, the Government have, with a couple of exceptions, accepted the report. Noble Lords rightly ask, where is the action and follow-up? I hope to be able to address at least some of those concerns in my response.
As we set out in our response earlier this year, the Government agree that action is needed across society to improve drought preparedness, strengthen water resilience and ensure secure supplies of water for people, businesses, agriculture and the natural environment. As many noble Lords have noted, particularly the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, the committee’s report was published before the severe drought conditions we are now experiencing in parts of the country. Those conditions only reinforce the importance of the issues raised by the committee and the action that is already under way across government and the water sector.
Before turning to longer-term resilience, I want first to address the current situation. Since severe drought was declared in parts of England, the Government have been working through the National Drought Group to co-ordinate the national response, alongside the Environment Agency, water companies and local partners. The National Drought Group plays a vital role in bringing together organisations responsible for managing water resources, protecting the environment and maintaining essential services. It is that cross-government, multi-agency and whole-society effort that many noble Lords mentioned, particularly the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan. Through this collaboration, we are ensuring that action is informed by the latest evidence and that appropriate measures are implemented as conditions evolve.
We have increased engagement with water companies in the areas facing the greatest pressure, worked alongside local resilience arrangements where necessary, and have continued to assess the measures available to protect public water supplies and minimise impacts on the environment wherever possible. Water companies are implementing their statutory drought plans, while the Government and regulators continue to monitor conditions closely and prepare for further deterioration should that be necessary.
Managing the present drought is of course essential, but we cannot forget to build drought resilience. We must also address the underlying pressures on our water system and prepare now for the conditions we expect in the decades ahead. Many Members of the Committee, particularly the noble Earl, Lord Russell, spoke about the El Niño effect. However, responding to drought, as has been noted this afternoon, is just one part of the challenge. We must also strengthen our resilience to future droughts. Most if not all noble Lords spoke about the importance of better information, monitoring and planning. I agree that effective drought management depends on access to timely reliable data and governance arrangements. That is why the Government accepted the committee’s recommendations to strengthen drought data collection and accessibility.
I reassure the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, that work is under way with the Environment Agency and partners to explore the development of the drought data hub. This will bring together key information on drought conditions and impacts in a more accessible and integrated way. Alongside this, monitoring capabilities continue to improve, helping us to identify emerging risks earlier and support more informed decision-making across sectors.
Clear governance is equally important. The Government are working with the EA and the National Drought Group to improve the understanding of the roles and responsibilities of organisations involved in drought planning, preparedness and response, ensuring that action is co-ordinated and effective. A number of members of the committee, including the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, and the noble Lords, Lord Ashcombe and Lord Krebs, also highlighted the importance of reducing demand and using water more efficiently. The Government agree that improving water efficiency is one of the most effective ways of strengthening resilience while protecting the environment. That is why we continue to work with MHCLG on proposals to improve water-efficiency standards while supporting the accelerated rollout of smart meters to help customers better understand and manage their water use.
The noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, and the noble Earl, Lord Russell, asked about the consultation on strengthening water-efficiency standards in new homes. I am afraid that all I can say right now is that the response is expected in due course. That is the finest of Civil Service language, but I am afraid I cannot give any more detail: this is a timeline of which we are very much aware.
My noble friend Lord Sikka and others asked about improving water efficiency. The Government have a statutory target to improve public water supply consumption per person by 20%. These demand reduction measures are expected to save around 2,000 megalitres of water per day. Ofwat and the water companies launched the national water-efficiency campaign to promote water-saving behaviours earlier this year. We have also introduced mandatory water-efficiency labels that will help inform consumers on the water efficiency of products—I cannot be specific but, to respond to the noble Earl, Lord Russell, perhaps this might relate to taps—and help to save water and money and meet the demand reduction targets. Water-efficiency labelling is a key government intervention to support consumers and should save households around £1.9 billion on water bills and £1.8 billion on energy bills over 10 years.
Leakage reduction, as many argued, must remain a key priority: this was spoken to by the noble Lord, Lord Jay, and the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington. Water companies have a responsibility to reduce leakage and to improve the resilience of their networks. Regulatory reporting on water company performance is expected shortly, and those water companies not on track to meet their leakage commitments will face appropriate regulatory action. We are very clear that they have a responsibility.
I owe the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington, an apology in response to his question. Was it on Monday or yesterday?
Lord Katz (Lab)
Yes, Monday. They all blend into one sometimes. I realise now that I misunderstood the noble Duke’s question. We do have an ambition to urge water companies to act quicker. Perhaps I did not understand what he was asking. The Government have set an interim target to reduce leakage by 30% by 2032. We are expecting regulatory reporting this month, so watch this space. We are on it and we expect Ofwat to make sure that the water companies are too.
It is beyond unacceptable that 20% of the water supply is lost, whether we are in drought conditions or not. I think the water companies clearly understand the Government’s view on this, and I know that my honourable friend Minister Hardy has been very clear with them about this and the Government’s expectation of them, not least in the context of the forthcoming water Bill. An updated communications strategy, led by the National Drought Group, is in development to help promote year-round water efficiency and encourage more sustainable water use.
The noble Lords, Lord Ashcombe and Lord Frost, and the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, asked a number of questions about development and building regulations. The Government have committed to lower water usage in homes to reduce consumption to 110 litres per person by 2050, and we are, as I said, working with MHCLG to explore where building regulations could tighten water efficiency standards and enable consumers to save on their water and energy bills by using less water. Building regulations provide an opportunity for government to ensure that the water requirements of new housing are reduced to create environmental headroom for growth.
There was a fair amount of discussion about the Government’s decision to reject the third recommendation of the committee’s report on water companies being statutory consultees. To be clear, it is not that we do not understand the importance of this, but the dynamic should be reversed. The baseline is that there is a clear expectation that water companies plan properly for growth, and they have water management resource plans that drive them to do this, including preparing for one-in-500-year drought events. I am sure that many Members of the Committee are aware of that. So water companies have to plan for growth, which is why we are prescribing in the requirements that water and sewerage companies assist regulations, so they are obliged to assist with plan-making where reasonably requested. Water and sewerage companies are also listed as consultation bodies, so they will be made aware of key plan-making consultations where they have an interest. I hope that gives some comfort that we absolutely understand the importance of this.
The noble Lord, Lord Krebs, asked specifically what we are doing in existing homes. There is a really important role here for smart meters in improving resilience, as I said. We expect to install around 10 million smart meters by 2030, which will help customers to identify where they have leaks and better understand their water use. It will also help water companies to detect leakage and manage demand more effectively. So that area feels really important for the current housing stock, as well as for taking action with the new housing that we hope to build.
There was a lot of discussion about data centres. I am aware of the time, so I will not spend as much time as I could on this. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester, the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, and the noble Earl, Lord Russell, all mentioned the impact of data centres. It is always pleasant to be able to say that I concur with the noble Lord, Lord Roborough, on this. It is important to understand that current evidence suggests that most data centres are not intensive water users. Another figure I will cite to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester is that a techUK survey in 2025 indicated that 55% of data centres surveyed use dry or waterless cooling, 44% use hybrid and only 5% are water-cooled. Environment Agency analysis suggests that data centres in England currently use around 1.9 billion litres of water from the public water supply each year.
I will give some reassurance. The Committee will probably be aware that, on 28 October, Minister Hardy—I mention her again—issued a Statement on enabling sustainable data centre growth through responsible water energy. This set out that data centres will be asked to follow a water-use hierarchy, prioritising demand management, efficiency and alternative water supplies, before requesting a public water supply connection. We see what is happening in America. There is a very different landscape in this country, as the noble Lord, Lord Roborough, said, but we are very clear about the potential dangers. We want to expand data centres, as the Committee will be aware, but this is how we will do it.
Improving resilience is not simply about reducing demand but about ensuring sufficient and reliable supplies of water for the future. The scale of that challenge is significant. As many have noted, the EA’s national framework forecasts a water shortfall of around 5 billion litres per day by 2055. That is why we continue to support, as a Government, a twin-track approach: reducing demand while investing in new and enhanced water resources. That includes major strategic infrastructure. We are accelerating the delivery of nine new reservoirs, alongside strategic water transfer schemes. Construction is already under way, as we have heard, on the Havant Thicket reservoir, while local solutions will also be important in helping communities, farmers and businesses strengthen their resilience.
I want to reassure the noble Lord, Lord Jay of Ewelme, that we are accelerating the construction of those reservoirs. It is a key part of improving long-term resilience. It takes time, but that is why we have a twin-track approach of making sure that we reduce leakage in the present while preparing for the future by building this infrastructure. I think we can all agree that we should have done more much earlier. We are where we are and would not be starting from here if we could help it.
Several noble Lords spoke about the role of agriculture and local water management, including the noble Lords, Lord Ashcombe, Lord Trees, Lord Krebs and Lord Roborough. I am not going to cover all the ground that was raised. I will leave some comments about the strategic finance incentive to correspondence. I want to be clear that the Government continue to support water abstraction groups, which help local abstractors collaborate and participate in planning water resources. Since the start of the programme in 2024, the number of water abstraction groups has increased from eight to 14, with further groups expected to be established in the coming year.
We are supporting local water resilience through the Environment Agency’s local resource options programme, which has enabled groups of farmers and growers to identify and develop projects that improve water security, including irrigation reservoirs and water storage schemes. More than 30 projects have been completed, with several already progressing towards implementation. The Environment Agency is developing a multisector approach to explore shared water resilience solutions across a wider range of water users.
The noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, and the noble Lords, Lord Trees and Lord Jay, all wisely raised the importance of letting those who know local landscapes and hydrology contribute to the effort to save water, and we are very keen and alert to ensuring that that can happen. The Government are also supporting farmers directly as part of this year’s drought support package. Up to £15 million is being made available through the water management grant to support the development of on-farm reservoirs and strengthen drought resilience across the sector.
The committee was also right to highlight the importance of modernising water management and regulation. The noble Lord, Lord Krebs, was one of those who mentioned this. We remain committed to reforming abstraction licensing and moving towards a more modern, digital and responsive system. Defra and the Environment Agency are also conducting an innovative smart abstraction trial in the Cam catchment, using real-time monitoring data and alerts to help farmers abstract water when conditions allow, while protecting river flows. Early findings of this trial are encouraging, and the pilot will continue until March next year.
Many noble Lords talked about and raised the importance of nature-based solutions, not least my noble friend Lord Sikka and the noble Lords, Lord Krebs and Lord Trees. The Government agree that nature-based solutions have an important role to play in strengthening resilience to both drought and flooding, while delivering wider environmental benefits.
The noble Lord, Lord Krebs, asked about spongy soils. I agree that improving soil health and reducing soil compaction can help land absorb and retain more rainfall, reduce surface run-off and allow more water to infiltrate into the ground, thus helping groundwater recharge.
The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Norwich talked about peatlands and moorlands. Restoring degraded peatlands can improve the landscape and the landscape’s natural water storage capacity by slowing the movement of water through the catchment, reducing the incidence of drought and flood risk. Previously, we have had discussions that I have enjoyed participating in about the regulations around burning. That is very much what those regulations are designed to tackle.
At this point I will also address the question from the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Norwich about chalk streams. I reassure him that the Government are focused on protecting and recovering chalk streams through investments across a wide range of areas in our Storm Overflows Discharge Reduction Plan and locally led project funding. Between 2025 and 2028 the water restoration fund is investing over £1.4 million of water company fines and penalties in chalk stream projects.
I am going to run out of time. Throughout today’s debate, there has been a consistent theme: the need to ensure that England is prepared for a future in which droughts are likely to become more frequent and severe. The committee’s report has made an important contribution to that discussion, and its central message is clear: we need to take a more proactive and long-term approach to drought resilience, ensuring proper investment and innovative and strong partnerships. Progress is being made but we also recognise that there is more to do. Climate change means that drought preparedness must remain a long-term national priority.
I have not had time to touch on the issue of food security that the noble Lord, Lord Trees, rightly raised, but I say to him that we have refreshed our approach to food resilience and stakeholder engagement through the establishment of a food preparedness group. We understand the importance of food security; it is of course national security.
Our ambition is clear: a country that uses water more efficiently, has secure and resilient supplies, protects and enhances the natural environment and is better prepared for the challenges of the future. In closing, I hope that I have demonstrated both the progress already being made and the Government’s determination to go further. I know that I have utterly failed to answer more than a fraction of the questions posed, and I have been slightly selective—are we not always?—but I beg the Committee’s indulgence in that. Once again, I thank all those who participated in this debate and the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, for securing it.
Baroness Sheehan (LD)
I thank the Minister very much for his full engagement on the issue, and all noble Lords who have spoken in this debate. It has been exemplary—an exemplar of the breadth and depth of the experience that Members of your Lordships’ House bring to debates such as this. I am in awe of the quality of the contributions that I have heard. I will not keep noble Lords very long; I want to make just two points.
The first relates to the circumstances in which the inquiry was carried out. It was following the drought, as we have heard, and in the confident knowledge that winter rainfalls would be 10% above where they used to be in the 1970s. The conclusion was that to survive drought, we had to capture and store the rain that did fall using solutions including nature-based solutions, reservoirs, household efficiency measures, et cetera. But I have been shocked. I thought I was not complacent about climate change, but I have been shocked by what we have seen this summer. Two droughts in succession is unprecedented. What has shocked me even more is the possibility that the winter rains may fail. That was not a possibility that we considered when we were doing this report.
I think it was the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, who said that climate change is moving quickly and things are going to change. They certainly are. It was in that context that I concentrated my remarks on the most immediate measures that we could take. I hope very much that it will not be necessary but, just in case, let us not just trust our luck. Let us put in place some emergency measures now, other than just asking people to stockpile water bottles.
The only other point I want to raise, which was not covered and which I wanted to cover in my opening remarks but did not have time to do so, is the use of water by businesses. Some 59% of potable water is used by households, 20% is leaked into the environment through sheer negligence by the water companies and the other 20% is used by industry and businesses. Of the water that is abstracted from the environment, businesses use far more than farmers. Businesses are big users of water, but they do not have to tell us how much water they use. I fully take the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Roborough, that data centres could be efficient users of water because they can have closed-loop cooling systems et cetera, but the temptation to use cheap water, which becomes cheaper if you buy in bulk, must be great. We do not have mandatory reporting of water use by businesses. That is something we require for absolute transparency. It is what the Environment Agency and Ofwat told us they want to see. I leave the Minister with a final question: when will we see that?
I thank everybody again and commend this report to the Committee.