L

Lord Katz (Lab)

Speaking in the House of Lords on 8 September 2026

Debate

El Niño

Contribution

I thank my noble friend for his question and for all his work on national preparedness. To be clear, I am not saying that there will not be any impact on supply chains but, on wider food security, we can at the moment have greater certainly around the evidence that there will be an impact. He raised a very important point about cross-government preparedness for the consequences of wetter weather and flooding. Activities are currently under way. The national flood response centre will be stood up for a testing exercise very shortly. The Floods Resilience Taskforce, which is across departments, government, and local, regional and devolved national Governments, is preparing an assessment of flooding risk and preparedness. It will meet in October to discuss those plans. I also note that Flood Action Week begins next month on 12 October and it coincides with national resilience week, which will help combine the importance of these messages.

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