An influential Parliamentary Committee has accused the Government of dereliction of duty on UK for its ongoing failure to protect critical national infrastructure (CNI) from the increasingly serious impacts of climate change.

The criticism comes in a new report published this morning by the Joint House of Commons/ House of Lords Committee on the National Security Strategy - “Readiness for storms ahead? Critical national infrastructure in an age of climate change.”

In November 2021 the Committee launched an inquiry into “critical national infrastructure and climate adaptation”, examining adaptation as a national security issue.

Senior MPs and peers on the Committee have been considering the resilience of the UK’s critical national infrastructure (CNI) to the effects of climate change, which is predicted to result in an increase in extreme weather events such as flooding, droughts, wildfires and heatwaves, as well as rising sea levels.

During the course of the inquiry, the UK experienced major weather events such as Storm Arwen, including extensive power outages and a knock-on effect on communications. Storm Arwen led to power being lost from 140 wastewater sites, along with water treatment assets serving 17,500 properties, which were left without water.

The inquiry then concluded its in the midst of an unprecedented heatwave, which saw the country face significant rail disruptions, flight delays and power cuts. According to the Committee, the events demonstrated that poor adaptation poses a threat to UK national security, but they have also "shone a light on an alarming lack of Government action in this vital area.”

The report says the UK is “very vulnerable” to extreme weather and other effects of climate change, such as sea level rises and warns that major power outages, landslides onto roads, buckling train lines and flooding of infrastructure sites are all realistic scenarios. It also says that different infrastructure sectors are highly interdependent, so the shutdown of one CNI operator may cause knock-on effects on multiple other sectors.

"Extreme weakness at the centre of Government on critical risk to UK’s national security”

The Committee says it has “unfortunately uncovered an extreme weakness at the centre of Government on a critical risk to the UK’s national security.”

The report states:

“Instead of making the resilience of CNI a priority, the then Minister for the Cabinet Office — self-described as the Minister for CNI resilience—simply refused to give oral evidence to us on this topic, despite having submitted two pieces of written evidence.

“This acknowledgment of his lack of command of this issue—the reason given for his refusal—was in itself shocking, and suggests a severe dereliction of duty on the part of the Government.”

“It appears that no Minister is taking responsibility for this topic, and there are no cross-Cabinet Committees driving forward the Government’s work on adaptation and CNI resilience….It is hard to imagine the Government taking such a lax approach to any other recognised national security risk.”

” Little dispute that UK CNI faces a major adaptation deficit”

According to the Committee, there is” little dispute that UK CNI faces a major adaptation deficit”, which is already affecting its ability to provide essential services reliably.

The impact of climate changes on the UK’s critical national infrastructure (CNI) is “all too clear”, the report says, including:

• In recent years, wind and flooding have had a significant effect on the UK’s railways, accelerating asset deterioration and increasing the likelihood of “critical coping thresholds” for railway operators being exceeded, such as on rail temperatures or drainage capacity.
• UK telecoms is at risk from “all types of flooding, high winds, and lightning strikes”
• Energy supply can be disrupted by a range of severe weather events, particularly storms
• Without further investment in water storage or transfer infrastructure, along with action to reduce demand, there is a one in four chance of severe drought before 2050.

Additional “cascading” risks—spreading from one CNI sector to another, magnifying the impact of an event—were demonstrated vividly by the effects of Storm Arwen in late 2021, which led to extended major power and communications outages which left some people without access to their digital land lines, and no way of contacting emergency services.This summer’s heatwave also caused power cuts and transport disruptions.

Other extreme weather events which had major impacts on infrastructure include:

• railway drainage almost caused the National Blood Bank to flood.
• three people died near Stonehaven in Scotland when a passenger train derailed after hitting debris on the track, washed from a drainage trench by heavy rainfall.

The most recent independent Climate Change Risk Assessment published in June 2021 described the financial cost of infrastructure risks to the UK economy by 2050 as “very high” in a 2°C global warming scenario—the most severe category, meaning that the economic costs will be over £1 billion per annum. Based on the evidence outlined in the report, the real costs will be higher still without further Government action, the Committee concludes.

The Committee says the examples cited in the report show that poor adaptation to climate change is a “major threat” to the UK’s national security and prosperity. However, despite the major risks outlined in the report , “there are no formal mechanisms for collaboration or information-sharing between CNI sectors, and regulation is happening in siloes”.

“We implore Ministers to get a proper grip on this issue”

Saying “we implore Ministers to get a proper grip on this issue”, the Committee is calling on the Government to put a number of measures in place including:

• clear Ministerial responsibility for CNI resilience, as such, should be identified
• improved Government oversight of adaptation and resilience
• regular meetings with the Defra Minister for Climate Adaptation to ensure that the National Adaptation Programme drives forward a strong programme of activity to enhance CNI resilience to climate change
• re-establishment of a dedicated Ministerial committee on resilience
• establishing a statutory forum for CNI regulators on climate adaptation
• establishing clear resilience standards for CNI operators
• ensure that all operators have access to high quality weather, climate and impact forecasting and modelling, via the Cabinet Office’s Situation Centre
• setting up a programme of stress testing CNI against extreme weather and other effects of climate change
• establish a much clearer statutory remit for Local resilience forums (LRFs), and set up a programme of ‘exercises’ to plan for major regional extreme weather events with multiple cascading effects
• Government must undertake a more detailed cost-benefit analysis of climate adaptation for every CNI sector, and engages with insurance providers to explore options for a public-private insurance partnership, to incentivise investment in climate adaptation measures.

The report also points out that the National Resilience Strategy has been delayed repeatedly and has still not been published - despite being a key commitment of the Integrated Review, over 18 months ago.

"Costs of failure are extremely high - the Government must prepare for the worst"

The report says:

“These actions must be taken urgently. The costs of failure are extremely high, as demonstrated by the tragic rail accident near Stonehaven in 2020, caused by debris on the track after heavy rainfall. This summer’s heatwave also showed that even unimaginable scenarios can fast become a reality, and the Government must prepare for the worst.”

Environment Agency evidence - “£3 billion worth of investment in flood defences cannot secure the resilience of £200 billion worth of wider infrastructure investment”

The Environment Agency was among a wide range of organisations who sumbitted witten evidence to the inquiry. The Agency told the Committee that adaptation and resilience measures should be embedded into all publicly and privately funded infrastructure projects.

It also noted that nearly £650 billion of infrastructure investment is planned by 2030, according to the Infrastructure and Projects Authority’s 2021 Analysis of the National Infrastructure and Construction Pipeline—over £200 billion of which will occur by 2024/25. During the same period, around £3 billion will be invested in flood and coastal risk management infrastructure.

The Agency argued that “£3 billion worth of investment in flood defences cannot secure the resilience of £200 billion worth of wider infrastructure investment”.

The report says that witnesses to the inquiry had also called for a change in attitude towards CNI resilience to the changing climate and that instead of considering climate change as a gradual process, or even a predictable one, we should consider it to be “hugely volatile.” We should also appreciate that “what might seem impossible and even implausible can happen, and it can happen tomorrow.”

According to the Committee, the “evidence is overwhelming” that the effects of climate change on the UK’s critical national infrastructure are already significant, and are set to worsen substantially under all reasonable climate change scenarios.

“The scale of the challenge facing Government, operators and regulators is clear: there is an urgent need to adapt our infrastructure to the potentially rapid effects of climate change,” the report says.

Click here to download the full report

Climate change and growing flood risk – the upcoming Floodex 2022 event which takes place in London on 23rd and 24th November will highlight the need for multi-sector partnerships and collaboration to tackle growing flood risk in the face of the accelerating impacts of climate change. Click here to register for free entry