09:51 Margaret Greenwood (Wirral West) (Lab)

As the Minister will know, the UK food security report also listed several factors that threaten the stability and long-term sustainability of global food production, one of which was climate change. The report stated:

Over the past few days, we have seen stark warnings in this regard, with record temperatures recorded across the UK, fields and buildings on fire, and emergency services facing unprecedented challenges. I hope the Minister and her colleagues will impress on the new leader of the Conservative party—and our new Prime Minister—the critical importance of addressing climate change as a matter of urgency. I have to say that the lack of concern put on this issue by the leadership candidates in recent days has been extremely worrying. The future Prime Minister bears a huge responsibility in this regard, not only for this generation but for future generations.

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10:10 Drew Hendry (Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey) (SNP)

Thank goodness somebody—the hon. Member for Wirral West (Margaret Greenwood)—raised the issue of climate change. It is an issue that we do not address enough in this Parliament—when I say “enough,” I am being very generous. It is another impact in the heady mix that we have to pay some attention to. We had record temperatures yesterday and houses burning as a result. This is something we are living with now, and hon. Members should be talking about it all the time. It is another impact that farmers are having to deal with; they are seeing changes to their environments, their farms and their livestock, with different ways of having to manage them. Again, that brings costs and puts pressures on the industry, including whether the farmers have the will to keeping working in it sometimes.

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10:27 The Minister for Farming, Fisheries and Food (Victoria Prentis)

Thank you very much for your sensible approach to the heat, Dame Angela. I am sure we all felt for the farmers who were harvesting yesterday, in extraordinarily hot conditions. I know that many of them will have harvested all night in order to have a slightly more comfortable time. I would like to reassure the hon. Member for Wirral West (Margaret Greenwood) that climate change is a very large part of the discussion about leadership in the Conservative party at the moment, and rightly so.

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10:40 Christian Matheson

I accept the gentle admonishment from my good friend the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey (Drew Hendry) about not putting the climate crisis at the forefront of this debate. He is absolutely right about that. One of the potato farmers in my area tells me that when potatoes are growing and it gets too hot, they stop growing, so the current temperatures will affect this year’s potato crop. As I say, the hon. Gentleman is absolutely right and I thank him for that gentle kick up the backside.

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