GREEN MP Caroline Lucas has criticised the government’s lack of preparedness for the heatwave, accusing it of “turning up with a watering can when we need a giant fire hose”.

In an urgent question to the government on the national heat emergency, the MP for Brighton Pavilion slammed the government for a “total absence of leadership” and accused the Prime Minister of spending his time on “juvenile photo-ops on an RAF fighter jet” than chairing emergency meetings to tackle the crisis.

Ms Lucas said: “Tory ministers and MPs are branding Britons as ‘cowards’ and ‘snowflakes’ for taking precautions during the country’s first-ever national heat emergency.

“The climate emergency is right here, right now, and it’s not going away any time soon - so we’re going to need to adapt. Yet the government has repeatedly failed to do so.”

She also called on the government to “turn the tap off new oil and gas”.

Cabinet Office minister Kit Malthouse rejected Ms Lucas’s criticism and said: “I’m confident all the guidance and support that is needed in schools, in hospitals, for our police forces, for other people involved in this effort, is now working its way out through the system and they’re all standing up well.”

Temperatures have crept close to record-breaking levels, with 38.1C reported in Santon Downham in Suffolk.

Meanwhile, Worthing West MP Sir Peter Bottomley told MPs that it is wrong that people in public services, particularly the ambulance services, are not equipped with summer gear.

He said that if they do not have such gear, they should be allowed where it is “safe and appropriate” to wear “their own summer gear”.

Mr Malthouse said that Sir Peter “raised an extremely important point” and that “each of those organisations and the leaders thereof will have to take that into account in the months to come.”

He said: “We must learn exactly these kinds of practical lessons, because while there are impacts on the transport network and elsewhere, it is probably the case that not all of them will be mitigated.

“We should certainly learn the lessons and he has raised a very important one for the future.”