This Drought Must Be a Turning Point

England and Wales just recorded their driest July on record. Following four record breaking heatwaves since May, half of England is now in a 1-in-500-year drought.

Across Newbury and West Berkshire, farmers are battling extreme conditions as crop yields have almost halved. Bone-dry fields are also fuelling wildfires, with Berkshire Fire and Rescue called to more than 35 incidents in just three days.

Home-grown food production is a vital part of our national resilience. If harvests continue to shrink, we will all feel the impact through higher food prices and greater pressure on family budgets. The National Farmers Union warns that Britain could face food shortages if conditions continue, we must start treating it as a top priority.

That is why we need stronger support for farmers, including a £1 billion boost for long-term food resilience, fairer funding schemes where the Sustainable Farming Incentive has fallen short, and planning reforms that make it easier to develop sustainable water storage and natural flood management.

Before Parliament rose for Summer Recess, I tabled a series of Written Parliamentary Questions pressing the government in these areas (UIN 9929, UIN 9755, UIN 9760) and will continue working with MPs from rural constituencies to ensure farming receives the attention it deserves.

Yet while farmers are adapting to increasingly extreme weather, our water system is failing them and failing the public.

Residents across Newbury and West Berkshire are being asked to conserve water, but Thames Water continues to lose around 570 million litres of treated drinking water every day through leaks. That is five times the amount that could be saved through a nationwide hosepipe ban.

After decades of underinvestment and directors’ bonuses totalling more than £4 million this year, households are paying the price. Valuable drinking water is being lost, sewage streaming across Lambourn streets, swamping family gardens in Newbury and Thatcham, and poisoning our precious chalk streams. 

In Thames Water’s draft Drought Plan, there is still no urgent strategy to urgently plug leaks in the network. During precarious periods like this, effective water management is the company’s basic and essential responsibility.

This drought has exposed a simple truth: Britain does not just need a strategy for managing extreme weather. We need one that protects food production and fixes a broken water system.

The Prime Minister has previously backed direct public control of utilities, he now needs to act on that and follow the Liberal Democrats’ and my calls to immediately place Thames Water into special administration and permanently restructure the company as a mutual, run for the benefit of Newbury and West Berkshire households, rather than shareholders.

Every summer our fields yellow and water levels drop, but this is now the third drought in five years. What once felt exceptional is becoming normal. If this summer is teaching us anything, it is that drought preparedness, food security, and water security can no longer be treated as separate issues. They are all part of the same challenge, and we cannot afford to keep delaying action.