Surviving Drought (Environment and Climate Change Committee Report)

Lord Roborough Excerpts

Wednesday 11th November 2026 Grand Committee

[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.