As Hurricane Irma has wreaked its toll over the past week, the damage to people’s lives has been unimaginable. Like the devastating mudslides in Sierra Leone this summer or the unprecedented floods across Bangladesh, India and Nepal that have affected more than 40 million people, Irma is the latest in a worsening pattern of extreme weather events borne out of climate change. We can be sure that the world will face more of the same.

'The situation is overwhelming': aid workers on responding to Hurricane Irma Read more

Irma is not just a humanitarian disaster for the Caribbean region, it is also specifically a national disaster for the UK, affecting our own citizens, on our own soil, destroying homes and infrastructure across Anguilla, the British Virgin Islands, the Turks and Caicos Islands and other British overseas territories. Writing on Sunday, Boris Johnson was finally clear that the overseas territories must be treated fully the same as the rest of the UK, noting, “we will help just as surely as if the hurricane had struck Inverness or Dover or St Ives”.

Against that measure, this government has fallen short. The aid and military assistance that is now – finally – trickling into the overseas territories is to be welcomed and the £32m in aid that has now been announced, along with several hundred soldiers, police and experts, is positive progress. But it is clear that the response should have been better prepared, more substantive, and quicker.

Tom Tugendhat, a Conservative MP and chair of the foreign affairs select committee, and Stephen Twigg, a Labour MP and chair of the international development committee, have argued that the UK government’s response to Hurricane Irma has been “found wanting”.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Kate Osamor, the shadow secretary for international development. Photograph: Courtesy of The Labour Party

The UK Overseas Territories Association (UKOTA) has questioned “the adequacy of its response”. Had this been the government’s reaction in Inverness, Dover, or St Ives, an outcry and ministerial resignations would surely have followed.

In times of crisis, simple human empathy matters: few will forget how the UK government and the prime minister, Theresa May, reacted initially after the Grenfell Tower fire. Donald Trump will head to Florida to visit those affected, and now Emmanuel Macron will fly to St Martin to oversee the French response there. The absence of May and Johnson from the British Virgin Islands, Anguilla, or Turks and Caicos is stark. Being there in person matters: it is a chance not only to show the UK government is doing everything it can, but to hear directly from people and see the situation with their eyes as they lead the response planning.

If May and foreign secretary Johnson want to show that they stand in solidarity with the overseas territories, they must visit this week, quickly establish a regional reconstruction fund, and build a longer-term economic plan to build the territories’ resilience over time against disaster.

It is also alarming that the government has failed to differentiate between its FCO-led response to the national disaster in the overseas territories and its obligations to the rest of the Caribbean region, led by the Department for International Development and funded by overseas development assistance (ODA).

The Labour party has written to the government to ask for urgent clarification as to how much of the aid and assistance already announced will go to the overseas territories and the Caribbean respectively, as well as which parts are being funded by ODA. The people of Antigua and Barbuda, St Kitts and Nevis, and other independent countries in the region with which we share important historical ties face enormous challenges. We must not forget them in their hour of need, and must invest in the region’s long-term disaster preparedness for when the next hurricane or flood hits.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Storm damage in the aftermath of Hurricane Irma in the British overseas territory of Anguilla. Photograph: Garson Kelsick/AP

With the frequency and scale of extreme weather events likely to grow in future, the UK must lead the way in preventing and effectively managing these crises. That includes championing real action on climate change internationally. The UK must do more to stand up publicly for the Paris climate agreement – challenge partners like the US that threaten to undermine it, take on polluters, and avoid downplaying the links between hurricanes, floods, and storms and climate change.

In the past few weeks, the government’s responses to the Grenfell Tower fire, the Sierra Leone mudslides and the South Asia floods have all been criticised for their slow speed, limited scale, and perceived lack of empathy. This trend must not continue. If the government is to learn lessons and the public is to get the answers it deserves, an inquiry is needed on Hurricane Irma.

Such an inquiry must look at whether a greater presence in the region, such as a second ship, could have produced a quicker response, or whether more could have been done to prepare in advance. It must also look at whether the government’s existing protocol for assessing and responding to humanitarian crises driven by extreme weather around the world is fit for purpose.

There will be a next time, and we cannot afford to repeat the mistakes of Irma.