Surviving Drought (Environment and Climate Change Committee Report)

Baroness Sheehan Excerpts

Wednesday 11th November 2026 Grand Committee

Moved by

[Baroness Sheehan]

That the Grand Committee takes note of the Report from the Environment and Climate Change Committee Surviving drought: reclaim the rain (3rd Report, HL Paper 298, Session 2024–26).

[Baroness Sheehan (LD)]

My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who are taking part in today’s important debate on the Environment and Climate Change Committee’s report, Surviving Drought: Reclaim the Rain. I thank Members of the committee for their sterling work on this very timely report. We were fortunate to have the perspectives of the hereditary Peers the Earl of Leicester and Lord Mancroft, both of whom brought valuable understanding of the impact of drought on farming and the wider countryside. As they are no longer Members of this House and cannot take part in this debate, I place on record my appreciation of the insight they brought to the final report.

I also thank the six schools which took part in our youth engagement programme: Boston Grammar School, Bullers Wood School for Boys, Chesham Grammar School, Darlington College, Northfield School & Sports College, and Stamford College in Lincolnshire. Their energy, enthusiasm and knowledge were impressive and their presentations helped to remind us that this is a national issue that young people will inherit. Indeed, the title of our report was inspired by a booklet produced by students at Stamford College: England’s Water Wake-up: Reclaim the Rain.

While I am thanking people, it would be remiss of me in the extreme if I omitted to thank Alastair Taylor, the committee clerk, and his team, who provide expert support in making people like me appear knowledgeable. They are policy analyst Lily Paulson, committee operations officer Hanna Ghufoor, and media and comms officer Alec Brand. I am always deeply grateful for their support.

The committee began this inquiry in November 2025, having just witnessed the driest spring in 132 years, the hottest summer on record and repeated heatwaves. The summer of 2026 was even hotter and drier. The Met Office has provisionally confirmed that summer 2026 was the warmest on record for the United Kingdom. It also found that such a summer was made around 130 times more likely by human-induced climate change.

Breaking an all-time seasonal temperature record two years in succession is unprecedented in the modern record, which dates from 1884. These are not distant projections: they are the lived experiences of households, farmers, businesses, firefighters and communities across the country. Large parts of the United Kingdom remain in drought, and on 15 October the first ever “severe drought” declarations for parts of south-west and south-east England were issued. The Environment Agency estimates that England needs around 120% of normal rainfall between September and April for every area to recover. That is a tall order.

Our report recognised that we were fortunate that the winter of 2025-26 was one of the wettest on record. But how fortunate do we feel entering the winter of 2026-27? The news gets worse: leading meteorologists have warned that the unusually early disruption of the polar vortex could bring prolonged dry conditions, raising the possibility that our reservoirs and groundwater stores may not refill over winter.

I pay tribute to the Minister, for whom I have considerable regard. While the Government’s response to our report was in many respects positive, in that they accepted in whole or in part the substantial majority of our 17 recommendations, I must point out that acceptance is only the first step. It is the intent to deliver that we must be—and remain—persuaded of. Delivery requires clear ownership, firm timetables, adequate funding and visible progress that Parliament and the public can scrutinise. The Government’s response contains too many commitments to work that is “under way”, “being considered” or “expected later this year”. The Government so far are not convincing in their intentions to deliver the recommendations that they have labelled as accepted. The Government’s response was in July this year. In the light of the dramatically worsening drought situation, I hope to hear greater urgency from the Minister today.

The scale of the challenge is stark. The Environment Agency’s National Framework for Water Resources 2025 warns that in a do-nothing scenario, England’s public water supply could face a deficit of 5 billion litres per day by 2055, driven by climate change, population growth and water-intensive industries. More than 60% of that future shortfall must be met through demand management and leakage reduction while new infrastructure is built, says the report. In regulatory speak, that means we must all use less water. As Minister Hardy said in evidence to the committee,

“The cheapest way to increase water capacity is to reduce demand”.


That is the threat I wish to pursue today: reducing demand by reducing waste, improving efficiency and making better use of the rain we already receive, because these are immediate, urgent actions that will bring the results that we desperately need.

Our report is clear that water security for people and the natural environment requires a whole-of-society effort to waste less water and to use it more efficiently, from Whitehall to water companies, from farmers to businesses, and in every home, school, hospital and community. We heard evidence that the public want to play their part. Friends of the Earth told the committee that 68% of people are willing to reduce their water consumption to protect the environment, yet a recurring theme of our inquiry was the lack of public awareness of how much water people use, where it comes from and how scarce it can easily become.

There remains a persistent belief that we are a wet country surrounded by rain, but rainfall is not the same as reliable water supply. Rain that falls heavily and quickly can run off land, overwhelm drains and cause flooding while reservoirs and groundwater remain depleted. England can experience flooding and drought at the same time. We must get better at capturing and storing rain rather than letting it run out to sea. There is a strong argument to invest in measures such as soil moisture monitors and rain gauges—easy things, easy tools—that could help improve soils and our management of soils so that they are able to hold moisture better, something that was recommended in the report. The Government’s response was vague, yet they labelled this recommendation accepted. It would be helpful if the Minister could give clarity about the intention to use tools such as those to give us the data that we need.

The Government also accepted the recommendation to conduct a full economic and environmental assessment for each of their drought scenarios, citing their possible delivery of a drought data hub and early warning system. Can the Minister say whether the lackadaisical commitments—because that is what they were—to soil moisture monitors and rain gauges augers well for a drought data hub? Can he confirm the status of the drought data hub? Is it a possibility? Is it a probability? Does it exist? Will it exist?

The Government have accepted our recommendation calling for a whole-of-society approach to water resilience by promoting a year-round communication plan by December 2026, working with stakeholders across the water system. Indeed, as mentioned earlier, their national framework for water resources prioritises water demand reduction. The Government in their response point to the water efficiency campaign launched this summer by Ofwat and water companies across England and Wales, which aims to reshape the public’s relationship with water and embed water-saving behaviours in daily routines. I welcome that initiative but I must confess that I did not see any of the ads. They did not reach me.

I must ask the Minister how its effectiveness has been measured. How are the Government able to point to that as success, when the Environment Agency’s figures say that total leakage rates show no improvement and remain at 19%, and that household water use has gone up from 136.5 to 136.9 litres per person per day? Households can help to identify leaks, choose efficient appliances, take shorter showers, run full loads, turn off taps and use rainwater. We heard this repeatedly in our evidence. There is also a particular issue with leaking toilets; a continuously running or quietly leaking toilet can waste a huge volume of treated drinking water, often unnoticed behind a closed door. Individual actions matter, but they must be enabled by the Government. The mandatory water-efficiency label, which we are told is currently under consultation, should help consumers to compare products and choose those that use less water. Can the Minister update us on that consultation?

Enhanced water-efficiency standards in building regulations should ensure that new homes are designed for a water-scarce future and do not lock in wasteful consumption for decades. The report’s recommendation 5 calls for urgently strengthening Part G of the Building Regulations 2010, so that new homes use no more than 105 litres of water per person per day. The Government told us that the outcome of the consultation on the regulations is expected in 2026. We are nearly at the end of 2026, so can the Minister tell us what is happening there?

New developments should incorporate water efficiency from the outset: efficient showers, taps and toilet appliances, and well-designed plumbing, metering and leak detection. Where appropriate, homes should include rainwater harvesting and grey water reuse for watering gardens, flushing toilets, vehicle washing and other non-potable uses. These measures, multiplied across millions of households, will make a substantial difference.

I have spent a great deal of my available time speaking of actions that must happen now to prepare the country for possible emergency drought situations, given the drought events this summer and the distinct risk of failed winter rains. The Government must get the urgency of the message across; there is no reason why they cannot undertake to do so straight away.

The public are being asked to play their part. The water industry must now visibly and consistently demonstrate that it is playing its part too. Looking down the speaker list, I have confidence that the shortcomings of the water companies will be exposed again, and that the anomalies of water pricing for industry, the required reform of abstraction licences, measures to facilitate the building of on-farm reservoirs, nature-based solutions and many other issues pertinent to delivering water resilience will receive good coverage.

In conclusion, the Government have accepted many of our recommendations and now they must deliver them. I call on the Government to give a commitment that they will publish clear milestones, identify responsible organisations, report publicly on progress and ensure that households, businesses, farmers, firefighters and the natural environment are equipped with the resources, information, incentives and protection that they need. With large parts of England still in drought, severe temperatures persisting in the south-west and south-east, and a daily projected shortfall of 5 billion litres, this is not a challenge that the country can afford to meet unprepared. The taps must not be allowed to run dry. I beg to move.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Sheehan (LD)]

I thank the Minister very much for his full engagement on the issue, and all noble Lords who have spoken in this debate. It has been exemplary—an exemplar of the breadth and depth of the experience that Members of your Lordships’ House bring to debates such as this. I am in awe of the quality of the contributions that I have heard. I will not keep noble Lords very long; I want to make just two points.

The first relates to the circumstances in which the inquiry was carried out. It was following the drought, as we have heard, and in the confident knowledge that winter rainfalls would be 10% above where they used to be in the 1970s. The conclusion was that to survive drought, we had to capture and store the rain that did fall using solutions including nature-based solutions, reservoirs, household efficiency measures, et cetera. But I have been shocked. I thought I was not complacent about climate change, but I have been shocked by what we have seen this summer. Two droughts in succession is unprecedented. What has shocked me even more is the possibility that the winter rains may fail. That was not a possibility that we considered when we were doing this report.

I think it was the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, who said that climate change is moving quickly and things are going to change. They certainly are. It was in that context that I concentrated my remarks on the most immediate measures that we could take. I hope very much that it will not be necessary but, just in case, let us not just trust our luck. Let us put in place some emergency measures now, other than just asking people to stockpile water bottles.

The only other point I want to raise, which was not covered and which I wanted to cover in my opening remarks but did not have time to do so, is the use of water by businesses. Some 59% of potable water is used by households, 20% is leaked into the environment through sheer negligence by the water companies and the other 20% is used by industry and businesses. Of the water that is abstracted from the environment, businesses use far more than farmers. Businesses are big users of water, but they do not have to tell us how much water they use. I fully take the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Roborough, that data centres could be efficient users of water because they can have closed-loop cooling systems et cetera, but the temptation to use cheap water, which becomes cheaper if you buy in bulk, must be great. We do not have mandatory reporting of water use by businesses. That is something we require for absolute transparency. It is what the Environment Agency and Ofwat told us they want to see. I leave the Minister with a final question: when will we see that?

I thank everybody again and commend this report to the Committee.

Motion agreed.