Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what recent steps he has taken to ensure the UK is not highly vulnerable in relation to climate change.

We have already taken significant steps to safeguard communities from the impact of climate change, particularly from increasingly frequent episodes of flooding, and know that we must do more to prepare for the potential impacts of a warmer world.

The Climate Change Committee’s Independent Assessment of UK Climate Risk offers a detailed insight into the growing risks and opportunities the UK faces from climate change. This evidence has informed our third Climate Change Risk Assessment, which we laid in Parliament on 17 January 2022, and will inform the development of the third National Adaptation Programme, expected to run between 2023 to 2028. Our ambition for NAP3 is to have a clear set of objectives for adaptation, and a systematic and robust set of policies, programmes and investments to meet those objectives.

In terms of recent steps, we are taking a holistic approach to flood risk management including encouraging more natural flood management where appropriate, alongside engineered defences. We are engaging with infrastructure providers, regulators and public bodies by inviting them to submit reports on their climate preparedness under the Adaptation Reporting Power. In our third adaptation reporting round, we received reports covering over 100 individual organisations, setting out how they are preparing for climate change. This includes those responsible for water, energy, transport, environment, heritage, health and finance.