Speaking to Sky News, Shapps said Johnson was "still in charge" when questioned why the prime minister didn’t chair a recent emergency COBR (cabinet office briefing room) meeting on the record-high temperatures the UK is facing.
"The prime minister chairs Cabinet, which is the ultimate body, and COBR sits under that," he said. "I know the PM’s keeping in touch with [the climate emergency], he was on the phone to me over the weekend about it and we spoke about several aspects of it.
"It also depends on what the issue is. It’s not that record temperatures aren’t a big enough issue, but Cabinet is a bigger platform for the prime minister than COBR, which is a sub committee."
Shapps also said the government is looking to upgrade rail infrastructure so it can handle "extreme" temperatures in the future.
"We’ve never seen temperatures like this," he added. "A lot of our infrastructure is just not built for these types of temperatures, on the railways for example, it’s not just the 40C temperatures we might hit outside, but the rails could heat up to 50C/60C, which means they are in serious danger of buckling."
