Surviving Drought (Environment and Climate Change Committee Report)

Lord Sikka Excerpts

Wednesday 11th November 2026 Grand Committee

[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.