Extreme Weather: Resilience

Earl Russell Excerpts

Wednesday 24th January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My Lords, I very much echo what the noble Baroness said about the emergency services and all who are involved in this. Indeed, without the changes we have made and the effort they put in, these recent storms would have caused much more damage and perhaps more loss of life, so that is very good news.

The COBRA system, which the noble Baroness mentions, is of course already baked into standing cross-government flooding response mechanisms, as the last tier of escalation for the most severe flood events. These mechanisms are stood up to support the operational response at local level, which is obviously necessitated by the increasingly sophisticated weather warnings that we see coming through from the Met Office. We managed well across the country on this occasion and the COBRA unit in the Cabinet Office—the ministerial unit—was not needed. That does not mean to say that officials did not get together. They worked well across the country with local people and the devolved Administrations. In some sense, it is a success that it was unnecessary to have the full COBRA ministerial meeting on this occasion. I have referenced the future resilience work that we are doing. We have brought these much better co-ordination systems into the Cabinet Office and work very closely with Defra, which is responsible for building up long-term flood protection. We have also invested a lot of capital in recent years. There is £5.2 billion available for flood defence projects, which I think is a doubling on the previous period.

[Earl Russell (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for her Statement. I join her and the Labour Benches in offering our condolences for all those who lost their lives, and in thanking the emergency services for everything that they do. UK winters are getting warmer and wetter; there is a lot of variation year to year, but winter rainfall has increased by 27% overall since records began in 1837. The impacts of climate change are here now. The NAO report Resilience to Flooding found that the Government do not have clearly defined targets or an effective strategy in place for making the UK resilient to extreme weather. They do not even track or evaluate spending on resilience to extreme weather. When do the Government plan to publish an extreme weather strategy, to include defined targets, risk assessments, and measures of outcomes?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I thank the noble Earl. I am glad he mentioned the NAO report, because it did welcome the work that had been done—I know this has been welcomed across the House—on setting up the Resilience Directorate and, indeed, publishing the resilience framework in 2022. Setting appropriate targets and ambitions for the level of flood resilience—in particular, for critical infrastructure because that is a key part—is part of the Government’s broader thinking on resilience standards.

There are more than 100 risk priorities in our risk register; we are working on all of these and have committed to create by 2030 common but flexible resilience standards right across critical national infrastructure, as well as across the private sector more broadly. One of the lessons of the storms we are seeing is that it is important to work with the private sector as well. One reason that people have been less affected has been the improvements that have been made in power, transport, trains and the rest—partly having early warning, partly working together, and partly having this sense of mission that we must try to respond to the warmer, wetter winters and the arrival of a certain element of Mediterranean weather in our beautiful island, as the noble Earl said.

Climate Change

Earl Russell Excerpts

Monday 24th July 2023 Lords Chamber

[Earl Russell (LD) (Maiden Speech)]

My Lords, I rise to speak very aware of the history of this great Chamber, and very aware of my small part in the narrative. I am honoured to be a Member of this House and I wish to thank everyone, particularly the doorkeepers, who have made me so welcome.

Thank you for the kind words I have received about my father, Conrad. I know he is still remembered, particularly for his unique historical and constitutional knowledge. If I might share with your Lordships: one of his proudest moments was when, during one very late-night sitting, he out-quoted the Bishops one by one with the Bible.

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, for bringing this important debate forward. I am passionate about the environment. My commitment and care come from my personal experience of adventure, long-distance walking and a love of wild places. Climate change is happening now. It is real and it is truly frightening. No longer the stuff of dystopian films, it is our present reality.

I recognise the work the Government have done to date, and the ambitions they have set to be a global leader and to reach UK net zero by 2050. However, all the present political mood music is pessimistic. The Government’s new climate adaption programme does not go far enough. The Government are on course to miss every target to hit net zero, according to their own advisers. This month, we heard that the Government plan to drop their own flagship £11.6 billion climate and nature funding pledge.

Halting climate change at 1.5 degrees Celsius has passed, and 2 degrees Celsius may be passed as well. On current trends, the world will be 2.8 degrees warmer by the end of this century. We do not know where the ultimate tipping points are, but we know that we are getting way too close. The one thing we do not have is time. In the words of Bill McKibben:

“If we do not win very quickly on climate change, then we will never win ... It’s what makes it different from every other problem our political systems have faced”.


The questions of what to do and how we fight for our common survival must be addressed and solutions found and implemented with utmost urgency. We have to adapt our ways of life, our cities, our transport systems, simply for our society to continue to function and survive. We must have hope and inspire confidence that change is possible. The costs of adaption and of preventing climate change may be high, but the costs and consequences of not doing so will be higher still. The UK cost of net zero is estimated to be around £10 billion per year. UK GDP is £3.1 trillion per year: we can afford to do this.

Systems must be found to distribute costs equitably, both within individual countries and within the international system. We can change. We can accept that solutions are global, not state-centric, and that survival is collective not individual. We can set aside our short-term national and political self-interests and work collectively for the survival of all humanity. Internationally, much more must be done urgently to encourage and leverage international finance to pay for adaption in developing countries. We must continue to conduct international climate research to better understand our climate systems. The UK must join Europe’s Horizon programme.

Big companies and businesses must adapt: they will be part of the solutions we need for a functioning society. The biggest polluters must be held accountable. We must give nature and the ecosystem an economic value and assign it worth. We need a new economics and a global green economy. We must pay to start reversing climate change now, or we will pay more and we may not be able to stop runaway climate change later. We must fight for a secure future for humanity.