Amendment of the Law

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 4:43 pm on 21 March 2007.

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Photo of Rob Marris Rob Marris Labour, Wolverhampton South West 4:43, 21 March 2007

I humbly suggest that the hon. Gentleman should make his speech and let me make mine. I am not talking about causes—that is not the point that I am trying to make. If he wishes to speak about causes and behaviour, he will be very welcome to do so, if he can catch the eye of the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. I am talking about effects. There is something in the Budget about effects. It is not enough, but I will go on to speak about it.

Last Thursday, the Minister for Climate Change and the Environment and I went to a conference in Oxford that was held by the UK Climate Impacts Programme. It was very weird for me to go to a conference in the morning that was held at my wife's old college and then to go to a community meeting in the evening that was held at her old primary school, although that seemed to bookend the day nicely. UKCIP is doing wonderful work on climate impacts—this is on the effects side of the equation—although I think that it is underfunded, so I hope that the comprehensive spending review will address that. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development places us as a world leader in addressing the effects and impacts of climate change—the adaptation, as the scientists call it—but we need to do far more.

Many of the issues that we need to address relate to water. Summer droughts will increase, as will winter flooding. It is likely that coastal erosion will increase, as will coastal flooding caused by higher tides. Sadly, I think that that took place in north Norfolk last night. We need to address the effects of those changes, whether that is by building better sea defences, larger diameter storm sewers to take away excess winter rains, or more reservoirs. There is a whole host of stuff that we could do, although I will not go into it now—anyone who is especially interested can look up in Hansard my previous speeches on the matter. UKCIP is driving forward, with an incredible amount of regional involvement, all the stuff that is going on below the surface on adapting to climate change that we never really talk about in the House.