Surviving Drought (Environment and Climate Change Committee Report)

Lord Frost Excerpts

Wednesday 11th November 2026 Grand Committee

[Lord Frost (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I chose to speak today partly because I very much enjoyed my time on the Environment and Climate Change Committee, under the chairmanship of the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, but also because I want to set out some reservations, not about the global climate but about the intellectual climate that has shaped this report, which is interesting in many ways. That intellectual climate has crept up on us; it is a reluctance to accept that providing more of the good things of life is a necessary and desirable aim of public policy. This aim has given way to a rather miserabilist vision, in which the task is to restrict consumption, manage expectations and persuade people to be content with that. That was symbolised for me by the Minister’s remark in the evidence session that the cheapest way to increase water capacity is to reduce demand.

The noble Lord, Lord Trees, mentioned the need in this country to be self-sufficient in food or to get closer to it. By that logic, the best way to achieve that would be simply to tell people to eat less rather than to grow more. I do not think that this is a satisfactory prospectus for prosperity, and it is frustrating, because there is a lot in the report on which we could build a better approach.

The summary acknowledges the key facts: we are not short of rain; in fact, we have 10% more than we used to, even if it falls at different times of the year. This could have been the basis for a clarion call to build more infrastructure and to get on with it but, unfortunately, we do not quite get that. It is not that it is not mentioned, and it is acknowledged in the Government’s response, but that it feels half-hearted. Much more is said about the need to exercise restraint, reduce demand and manage human behaviour.

With that in mind, I will briefly mention four issues. First, the report slips into overly alarmist language at times. In the summary, it says that

“drought impacts will, without mitigation, endanger life as we know it today”.

I ask whether that is really consistent with having 10% more rainfall in the country. The problem with the alarmist language is that it makes a particular set of choices about consumption, investment and regulation seem like they follow naturally from an existential challenge rather than being what they really are: highly contested.

Secondly, we are asked to accept a faintly Soviet-sounding permanent campaign for good behaviour—a whole-society approach to drought, sustained all year long, and a government communication plan to that end. The Government’s response tells us that:

“We all must go further and faster to … be mindful of our water consumption”.


We are even told that some stakeholders think temporary use bans are not about reducing consumption but

“an effective awareness mechanism for educating the population”

about changing their behaviour. The feeling, sometimes, is that citizens are seen as kind of conscripts in a permanent national struggle against drought, not customers entitled to expect reliable provision.

Thirdly, I think the deepest problem is a suspicion of abundance as a policy goal. In paragraph 138, the National Preparedness Commission is quoted as saying:

“Allowing the myth to perpetuate that water will always be in plentiful supply, is in some way a citizen’s or business’s ‘right’”.


It regards that as a myth. Of course, no system can guarantee unlimited water in every circumstance, but plentiful, reliable supply ought at least to be an ambition to realise, not an expectation that has to be educated out of the public. People might be entitled to ask why the answer to growing demand should so readily become a campaign to suppress demand instead. For that is what is intended; paragraph 86 quotes figures and a planned balance in which 50% of the projected supply deficit is met by “customer-side demand management”. In other words, reduced consumption becomes the dominant answer, rather than asking what it would take to provide enough and whether that is the better way forward.

Demand management starts by being voluntary but ends by being compulsory, which has already been alluded to a little. We see it in the recommendation that the new building regulations for new homes should require a maximum water usage of 105 litres per person a day. The Government have accepted that recommendation, although I guess they did so before the Chancellor said in the Budget that there will be no further major changes to building regulations for the remainder of this Parliament. Can the Minister, in winding up, say whether this is still government policy or whether it has been superseded by events?

My fourth and final point is on affordability. The word does not actually occur in the report, and its discussion of price seems to see it primarily as a tool for managing demand down. It seems to think that water is fundamentally too cheap, in some sense. That is fine—well, not really fine, but understandable if you are well off. What about those who struggle? Do they not deserve some concern in policy-making in this area too? The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester has already alluded to this issue. By all means, introduce more of a market in water, but only if there are also measures to increase supply. I think that we will instead see supply restricted, in practice by state fiat, coupled with demand managed through high prices. That is a regressive policy and one that I think the report could have commented on a little more.

The right objective is more reliable water and more of it at prices that people can afford. To repeat the committee’s own phrase, we need

“better storage, supply and reuse”,

not more public enthusiasm for having less of it. I worry that we are importing into water policy the same mistaken instinct I see in energy policy: treating scarcity as something to organise society around, not a problem to overcome. The public are entitled to expect better than that, and the policy really ought to be a determination to provide it.