I intervened in last Thursday’s debate to say: The Minister is absolutely right to describe climate change as the driver for the wildfires. Mitigation is always good in land management plans and so on, but what about the initial point of climate change? What more can the Government do? Can they go further and faster on various issues?
The noble Baroness is right. I have said before about climate change. I understand the Met Office predicts that the UK will experience more frequent and intense weather extremes. It is widely believed that the impact of climate change is likely to increase and intensify fire incidence. We are already doing so much. We are the leading department for wildfire response and own wildfire risk in the national risk register. We are looking at relationships and co-ordinating across government between key wildfire stakeholders. We have already appointed a national resilience wildfire adviser, who we will work closely with, and are working with the NFCC on the very important issues the noble Baroness outlined.
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