Labour is placing folks, the financial system and the atmosphere in rising peril by failing to behave on the consequences of the local weather disaster, the UK’s local weather watchdog has mentioned.
Flooding, droughts and heatwaves are all rising in severity on account of local weather breakdown, however present plans to guard folks, land and infrastructure towards excessive climate have been judged insufficient in a scathing evaluation of the UK’s preparedness.
Girl Brown, the chair of the variation subgroup of the Local weather Change Committee (CCC), the statutory adviser to authorities, mentioned: “We’re seeing no change in exercise from the brand new authorities, even though … it’s clear to the general public that the present method simply isn’t working. The nation is in danger, persons are in danger, and there’s not sufficient being completed.”
She mentioned it was horrifying that the federal government was not taking severely the quickly rising danger of flooding and was as an alternative contemplating cuts to flood defences.
The Treasury has indicated that flood spending wouldn’t be ringfenced and might be diminished within the spending evaluate in June.
Brown mentioned: “If meaning they’re pondering of slicing the cash for resilience to flooding, we’d ask them to suppose once more. I can’t be clear sufficient about our message: we can not wait to take motion. This isn’t tomorrow’s drawback. It’s in the present day’s drawback. And if we don’t do one thing about it, it’s going to turn out to be tomorrow’s catastrophe.”
She pointed to floods in Valencia that killed 220 folks in October and floods in Germany and Belgium in 2021 with related numbers of deaths. “These are very near house. This stuff might occur within the UK and we want authorities to recognise that that is the catastrophe that might be taking place tomorrow and begin to actually take this severely,” she mentioned. “It’s fairly horrifying that the proof we’ve acquired exhibits that it isn’t but.”
With out elevated deal with making the UK’s infrastructure and financial system extra resilient to excessive climate, the impacts of the local weather disaster might destroy about 7% of the UK’s GDP by 2050, the CCC discovered. This compares with a price of slicing greenhouse gasoline emissions to web zero by 2050 of about 0.2% of GDP per yr.
The CCC’s newest two-year evaluation of the UK’s progress in adapting to local weather change, printed on Wednesday, discovered failure throughout each measure and each type of infrastructure, from transport and vitality to communications. Folks’s well being was being put in danger by the failure to adapt, the report discovered, and the pure atmosphere was being broken.
One in 4 properties can be susceptible to flooding by 2050 until pressing motion is taken, up from about 6.3m properties in the present day, the report discovered. Greater than a 3rd of the railways and highway networks are already susceptible to flooding, which can rise to about half by 2050.
Greater than half of England’s high-quality agricultural land is already susceptible to flooding, and harvests like final yr’s – the second worst for arable on document – might turn out to be extra widespread.
Though lots of the findings within the CCC evaluation relate to measures taken below the earlier authorities, Brown mentioned that Labour was failing to answer the threats. “We’re seeing no enhance in motion,” she mentioned.
The Atmosphere Company warned final yr that inflation was consuming into flood defence budgets, which means fewer folks had been being protected for a similar expenditure. The Nationwide Audit Workplace warned of 1 / 4 of latest flood defence initiatives being deserted.
A authorities spokesperson mentioned: “As a part of our plan for change we’re investing a document £2.65bn to restore and construct flood defences, defending tens of hundreds of properties and companies and serving to native communities turn out to be extra resilient to the consequences of local weather change corresponding to overheating and drought.”
Flooding is the obvious impression of the local weather disaster within the UK, however rising temperatures are additionally taking a toll. Drought has meant 20 million persons are subjected to water restrictions, wildfires are outrunning the capability of the hearth brigade to extinguish them – the realm burned in 2025 has exceeded the earlier annual document earlier than summer time has even began – and heatwaves are forecast to turn out to be extra frequent and intense.
The local weather disaster is already imposing prices on the NHS. There have been greater than 3,000 extra deaths in England within the heatwave of 2022, and one in 5 docs reported that surgical procedures and operations had been cancelled, the CCC discovered.
Philip Evans, a senior local weather campaigner for Greenpeace UK, mentioned: “Britain’s firefighters and insurers have already warned we’re not arrange to deal with the rise in floods, wildfires and heatwaves. Now local weather consultants affirm it’s not getting higher. This implies our farms are below water, meals costs are going up, properties are wrecked and unusual folks depend the price.”
He known as for taxes on fossil gasoline firms to pay for the preparations wanted. “The federal government should bolster Britain’s resilience. Oil and gasoline firms are fuelling this excessive climate and making billions from doing it, so we want local weather taxes on these income to pay for adaptation measures and shield us from the intense prices of climate chaos.”
Tom Lancaster, the pinnacle of land, meals and farming on the Power and Local weather Intelligence Unit thinktank, known as for ministers to rescind the cuts to sustainable farming programmes. The ECIU estimated that that the impression of the local weather disaster added about £360 to the common family meals invoice in whole for 2022 and 2023.
“Investing in [support schemes for sustainable farming] can be wanted to construct the resilience of UK meals manufacturing, and can be a key check of whether or not the federal government has taken the criticism on this report on board,” he mentioned.
