Wildfires

Lord Sharma Excerpts

Thursday 12th June 2025 Grand Committee

[Lord Sharma (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Caithness on bringing this debate forward. I also congratulate my noble friends Lord Jack and Lord Gove on their excellent maiden speeches. It was a particular joy to serve alongside them in Cabinet—I actually mean that—and I am sure that they will add enormously to the expertise in your Lordships’ House.

Noble Lords have highlighted their own experiences of wildfires domestically and of dealing with them, but I want to draw on an international example that I believe provides some learnings. A few years ago, I went to Seattle to attend a clean energy conference. We flew in overnight and, even from tens of thousands of feet in the air, as you looked out of the aircraft window, you could literally see the ground on fire down in Washington state below. At the time, terrible wildfires were raging across the state; as the plane drew lower, you could make out huge patches of forest on fire. I do not exaggerate when I say that it felt to me like looking into the jaws of hell. When we landed, we experienced the acrid smell generated by the wildfires and pollution; it hung like a heavy, choking cloak in the air.

I met some of the politicians and officials in the state government who were tasked with tackling these wildfires. They told me that, over the years, the fires have become more frequent and ferocious. One of the key learnings was effective preparedness: investing in equipment such as bulldozers and excavators; fitting aircraft with infra-red sensors and fire-mapping technology; recruiting more firefighters; sharing their learnings with other states prone to wildfires; and having in place equipment-sharing agreements with those states as well.

Of course, the wildfires that we experience in the UK are generally not as severe as those in North America—at least, so far—but, as we have heard in this debate, their frequency is on the rise and climate change is making things worse. I welcome the Government’s continued commitment to climate action more generally and to sticking with the aim of achieving net zero by 2050. I also welcome the Climate Change Committee’s progress report on adaptation from earlier this year, which called on the Government to create and implement a cross-departmental strategy with external shareholders in order to identify and mitigate the risks of wildfires.

I believe that this strategy should include an international component, with UK specialist wildfire experts learning and sharing effective mitigation actions, as well as training jointly with their counterparts in other nations, so that we can help each other when needed. That is currently happening across some jurisdictions. I also think that we need a national wildfire-fighting equipment asset register to allow for more effective sharing of resources across the country when they are needed. I look forward to the Minister’s feedback on these suggestions.