Climate Change

Debate between Warinder Juss and Pippa Heylings

Wednesday 24th June 2026 Commons Chamber

[Pippa Heylings]

Absolutely, I agree with the hon. Member.

Let us no longer hide from this, but look it clearly in the eye: there are clear costs. They are no longer in the future; they are here now. There are costs to our economy, but also to our communities.

Let us talk about food costs. Food supplies are coming under increasing pressure. Three of the UK’s worst harvests on record have occurred within the last five years, hitting our farmers and driving up costs for families at every shop. Floods and wildfires are making homes uninsurable and putting lives and livelihoods at risk. But this is much more than a story about a few hot days. If we think that this week’s heat is uncomfortable, the difficult truth is that what today feels exceptional will increasingly become normal, and without purposeful climate action, it will keep on getting worse.

[Warinder Juss (Wolverhampton West) (Lab)]

The hon. Member is making an important speech. Climate change is one of those issues that my constituents contact me about all the time, particularly my young constituents. This is something that really bothers them as much as it does us. Does she agree that climate change is something we are experiencing now—we know that when we step outside? Does she also agree that a dead planet with plenty of jobs is no good for any of us, so we need to focus on this and deal with it?

[Pippa Heylings]

Like the hon. Member, I regularly meet young people across my constituency. I find it hard to look my children and children in my constituency and beyond in the eye, because that is one of the things they talk about the most. I challenge any MP in this Chamber to say that they do not receive those emails or have those meetings in schools where this issue is brought up. I feel that responsibility deeply, and I believe that that feeling is shared across the majority of those in this Chamber.

Without action, we risk handing our children and the next generation a Britain where extreme heat regularly keeps children out of classrooms. Did we not learn from covid, during which the more disadvantaged were left behind because they were told to go home? They did not have large homes, cool gardens or broadband, and that is happening yet again this week. We will have a Britain in which thousands die prematurely each summer and in which water scarcity, with a deficit of 5 billion litres a day of public water, is a reality. In my constituency of South Cambridgeshire, which is one of the most water-stressed in the country, this issue is affecting growth right now, so we know how critical it is.