Extreme Heat Preparedness

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 3:36 pm on 18 July 2022.

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Photo of Kit Malthouse Kit Malthouse The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster 3:36, 18 July 2022

The hon. Lady thinks she is asking a simple question but, as I said earlier, it is actually quite a complicated one. For example, the mitigations that we put in place on the railways to deal with extreme heat may cause problems when it gets cold. Dealing with both those issues is an engineering feat that I am afraid is beyond me here at the Dispatch Box. One thing we need to do over the next 48 hours is to learn about exactly the kind of impact she is talking about. We all hope that the system will perform well, but given that if we hit the record we will never have experienced these temperatures before, we just need to be cautious and learn from the experience.