Wildfires

Earl of Shrewsbury Excerpts

Thursday 12th June 2025 Grand Committee

[The Earl of Shrewsbury (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Caithness on securing this important debate. It is a great pleasure to follow my noble friend Lord Jack and to congratulate him on an excellent and most informative maiden speech. We look forward to hearing from him on many occasions in future. Looking on the internet this morning, I was delighted to see that my noble friend is a former chairman of the River Annan board—another Scottish river on which I have failed miserably to connect with a fish. I declare my interest as a member of the National Farmers’ Union.

In its wildfire rapid response assessment, the United Nations Environment Programme emphasised the importance of auditing full wildfire costs and investing in planning, prevention and recovery—not just response. This is because the costs of wildfire mitigation and prevention are a fraction of those associated with suppression by the emergency services and the economic and environmental impacts of a wildfire. However, no such systematically collected data exists in the UK, and until the direct and indirect costs of wildfires are understood and recorded, their challenge to humanity will be dangerously overlooked.

The costs go far beyond the obvious direct costs of suppression by the fire services. Wildfires impact our health, close roads to traffic, impact schools and businesses, lead to the evacuation of residential areas, damage our infrastructure and homes, impact our water supplies and water quality, and release carbon and pollutants into the atmosphere while destroying crops and killing wildlife. If they occur on peatland, you can add to that list the loss of stored carbon accumulated over millennia.

All these costs are simply not recorded as a matter of course and are therefore not fully accounted for in the decision-making process. Individual assessments exist, such as the £21 million cost of the health impacts from the Saddleworth Moor wildfire of 2018, due to a 300% increase in PM2.5 levels; the £83.5 million insurance payout in 2022 due to farm fires; and the almost £2 million of publicly funded restoration costs lost in the 2018 wildfire on Saddleworth Moor.

By bringing these diffuse sources together, the Moorland Association has estimated that, to date, wildfires have cost the UK more than £350 million in 2025, as my noble friend Lord Caithness said—the same amount of money that the Government committed in 2020 to help heavy industry reduce carbon emissions. These costs are a potential avoided loss if wildfire policy is focused on mitigation through managing the fuel load.

I must point out that moorland management, including controlled and specific moor burn carried out by highly trained and skilled gamekeepers, plays a vital role in the prevention and control of wildfires, as was seriously demonstrated in my area of the Peak District earlier this year. That fact needs to be noted and appreciated by Natural England and others.