Baroness Finn
Main Page: Baroness Finn (Conservative - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Baroness Finn's debates with the Northern Ireland Office
(1 day, 14 hours ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)
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.
Baroness Finn (Con)
My Lords, I, too, wish the Minister a very happy birthday for the weekend and hope she enjoys her cheerful reading time. During a recent debate in Grand Committee on wildfires, the noble Lord, Lord Khan of Burnley, recognised the problem the Government have with accurate data collection on wildfires and referred to
“the introduction of the new fire and rescue data platform—a new incident reporting tool used by fire and rescue services”.—[Official Report, 12/6/25; col. GC 321.]
Given the higher risk of wildfires during prolonged periods of hot weather, can the Minister commit that the Government will move quickly on this and confirm when this new platform will be up and running?
Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)
I thank the noble Baroness for the birthday wishes. It is wonderful to hear her cite my noble friend the Minister who is responsible for this. Obviously, MHCLG took responsibility for fire and rescue services only on 1 April, but we are very clear that we will be bringing forward the tool and the wildfire strategy imminently, and I look forward to discussing it with her, undoubtedly at the Dispatch Box, in due course.