Storms: Weather Resilience

Baroness Hayman of Ullock Excerpts

Thursday 11th January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

My noble friend is right that these problems are going to get worse: what we are suffering at the moment is almost certainly the impact of an El Niño effect, which has meant a warmer, wetter start to our winter. This will, we hope, be followed by a dryer but perhaps colder end to it, and we can look to the future. The Government are absolutely looking to the future, and he was right in his leadership of the Climate Change Committee to make sure that all departments are being resilient to the effects of climate change. I will just say that we have achieved much more than some of our closest neighbours. We are going to reduce greenhouse gases by 65% by 2030; the European Union has a target of 55%. We are doing a lot to address this, both globally and domestically.

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

My Lords, I want to pick up on an issue arising from yesterday’s Statement. In May last year, the EFRA Committee published a report on rural mental health, which found that extreme weather events and animal health crises left farmers, workers and vets dealing with mental health trauma with little support. It called on the Government to provide dedicated emergency funding to enable local areas to quickly access more resources to respond to rural communities’ mental health needs, both during and, crucially, after crisis events. Can the noble Lord explain why the Government disagree and have refused to allocate this funding?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

If the noble Baroness looks at our rural proofing annual report, she will see a firm commitment in it to issues relating to mental health in rural areas. She is absolutely right that events such as this trigger severe problems for people whose homes are flooded, or who lose their business or a large part of it, and we are seeing that in the farming community. The Government are providing a range of mental health support measures for people in these communities, and I applaud the work the NFU and others are doing, with the Government, to make sure that we are accessing those in need and providing them with the support they require.