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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, if he will make it his policy to coordinate a public engagement programme on adaptation including (a) the risks posed by climate change and (b) actions that individuals can take.

The Government is committed to hearing and learning from the views of different groups on how climate change impacts them, and how it can improve policies and programmes accordingly. The third National Adaptation Programme (NAP3) sets out the actions we will take across Government to manage the risks of climate change in the period to 2028. We are taking a dynamic approach to managing the delivery of NAP3, to learn from what works and to continue to develop our response based on the science and developing climate projections. This will be informed by engagement with stakeholders.

A public dialogue, overseen by Defra and in partnership with UK Research and Innovation’s (UKRI’s) Sciencewise Programme, Ipsos and the University of Leeds, explored the public’s perspectives on climate adaptation and how they think the government, businesses and civil society should address it. 120 members of the public took part in four locations across England. The report of this project was published in July 2023 on the Sciencewise website. It can be accessed at: https://sciencewise.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Climate-Adaptation-Dialogue-Report.pdf.