(1 week, 1 day ago)
Lords ChamberI thank my noble friend. As a former trade union officer, this is something that I have discussed every summer in my adult life. My noble friend is aware of the current situation with regard to the Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations, which require employers to provide a reasonable indoor temperature in the workplace. Obviously, what is reasonable depends on what work you are doing and where you work, which is why in the Moses Room yesterday we had to have the doors open and the fans on. I think it is appropriate that appropriate mitigations are made, but my noble friend will be aware that these conversations are ongoing, and the very nature of this Question ensures that I had yet another conversation about it yesterday.
I declare my interest as a director of Peers for the Planet. Should we not be aware, in discussing this Question, that extreme heat affects us in certain ways, but extreme heat overseas can have devastating effects on crops, with drought, famine and population changes and movements, so we should not treat this lightly? Alongside the need for mitigation, resilience measures and everything that the Minister has said, is not the proof of the increased likelihood of these sorts of episodes an absolute clarion call for this country not to withdraw or retreat from our commitment to domestic progress and international leadership on fighting further climate change?
The noble Baroness raises excellent points about why we are having to have these conversations in the first place. It is clear that the chance of 40-degree days in the UK is now 20 times higher than it was in the 1960s, and we have a 50:50 chance of a 40-degree day within the next 12 years. This is changing within the UK, and obviously that has a knock-on effect on climate elsewhere, which is why we need to take this extremely seriously in terms of our impact on the environment and why I was so pleased to see in our industrial strategy, which we published on Monday as part of our plan for change, that we made commitments to green jobs, investment in green energy, embedding net zero and challenges to climate change within our plans for government across every department.
The noble Baroness knows how fond I am of her, but I am going to have to disagree hugely with the premise of her question. We are very clear on making sure that we can deliver. The noble Baroness’s previous Government announced a review. They evaluated 125 public bodies over a three-year period, with 104 reviews within their review, and saved £104 million. Given that the budget for arm’s-length bodies is £353 billion, it is an accounting error in terms of savings. That is not the approach of this Government. We are moving forward and delivering for the people of the United Kingdom.
My Lords, following on from the question from the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, I can well understand the Government’s concern not to have duplication, not to waste money and not to have unnecessary bodies. But does the Minister agree that it will require careful and nuanced work during the transition to make sure that in doing away with duplication we do not open up chasms into which important areas of policy and delivery fall?
The noble Baroness raises the most important of points. I assure her that the Cabinet Office is working closely with sponsoring departments to make sure that, while we recognise and want to eliminate duplication, we are not doing so by deleting both functions in one go. We will be very sensitive about how we approach this.