Oral Answers to Questions

Tom Rutland Excerpts

Tuesday 13th October 2026 Commons Chamber

[Tom Rutland (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Lab)]

4. What recent progress she has made on improving the UK’s resilience to the impacts of climate change.

[Anna Dixon (Shipley) (Lab)]

10. What recent progress she has made on improving the UK’s resilience to the impacts of climate change.

[The Minister for Climate Transition (Katie White)]

My hon. Friends raise an excellent point. In June this year, I, alongside the Cabinet Office, launched a climate and nature security taskforce to assess our resilience. Its first meeting will take place next week, with external experts to challenge our preparedness. Sadly, this taskforce became even more relevant when this summer’s extremes enabled us to feel what scientists have been telling us for many years. The Prime Minister has also confirmed that he will host a wildfire summit this month.

[Tom Rutland]

Over the summer, my constituents in East Worthing and Shoreham, like many across the country, endured unrelenting and scorching heat. For many years we have focused on cold homes in winter, and now we need to turn our attention to hot homes in the summer. It was good to hear, in an earlier answer, some of what the Government have been doing, but what steps is the Department taking to help people to adapt homes and public buildings to our increasingly hot summers?

[Katie White]

We are indeed living through extremes of climate change, and we felt that so intensely this summer. This should encourage us all to accelerate our efforts to mitigate, but also to expand opportunities to adapt. As my hon. Friend the Member for Inverclyde and Renfrewshire West (Martin McCluskey) has just said, the boiler upgrade scheme already provides for air-to-air heat pumps that can both heat and cool our homes at the same time. However, we want to go further, which is why the warm homes plan set out our intention to introduce passive cooling measures in our capital funded schemes, including solar shading, shutters, reflective window-cooling coatings and cooler building materials.