Nepal: Flooding

Debate between Lord Swire and Lord Wood of Anfield

Tuesday 1st September 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wood of Anfield (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lord for the welcome, and I very much look forward to working with him. I also take the opportunity, based on the noble Lord’s remarks on our Foreign Office staff, to thank them personally for the amount of work that they are doing. They are working round the clock to support British nationals and their families in incredibly confusing and difficult conditions. I pay tribute to them and thank them for that.

On the crisis reserve, I would love to establish a cross-party consensus. It is a matter of public record that the Government have made tough decisions on ODA. I am pleased to say that the response of the UK Government in the past week on Nepal has been full and comprehensive. It is in partnership and observes all the principles that a good crisis response should. Yes, there are financial challenges, and I am sure that we will return to those. Of course, there are issues that arise from the budget decisions that have been made, but I am pleased to say that the UK Government’s crisis response has so far been exemplary and of huge help to the Nepalese Government.

[Lord Swire (Con)]

My Lords, we all welcome what the Government are doing in terms of responding to the tragedy that has unfolded over the last few weeks in Nepal. Could the Minister take back to his colleagues in the FCDO the question of Bhutan? It shares many of the same characteristics as Nepal, but we have no permanent diplomatic representation in Bhutan, and it sometimes gets overlooked. When they are undertaking these studies, particularly around preventing these things and the early warning equipment that Bhutan has very little of, could he please discuss these matters with his colleagues?

[Lord Wood of Anfield (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lord for that. It is an extremely important point. Sadly, this will not be the last incident of this sort, and there are lots of countries that share geographical, climate and economic features that we can learn from. Cross-referencing the successes and shortcomings of how the world has responded to this is an important issue across countries, including Bhutan.