Preparedness for National Emergencies

[Paula Barker in the Chair]

[Paula Barker in the Chair]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered preparedness for national emergencies.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Barker, and I am grateful to colleagues for coming to this important debate. As the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy has set out, the assumptions underpinning UK security are being challenged to an unprecedented degree in what it describes as

“an era of radical uncertainty”.

This is not a distant or theoretical challenge; it is happening now, and it is shaping the lives of our constituents already. We are rightly beginning to recognise that resilience at home—across our infrastructure, our communities and our economy—is vital. In opening this debate, I want to do four things: reflect on a recent example of where preparedness fell short; set out the changing nature of the threats we face; address the need for stronger co-ordination across Government; and reflect on the role of the public.

During Storm Éowyn in January 2025, thousands of homes across my constituency lost power, many for several days. That came during a period of cold weather, leaving people without heating, electricity and, in some cases, access to essential medical equipment. People did not know where to turn, but they were receiving inconsistent information and had very little clarity on when the situation would improve. What stood out to me was not a lack of commitment, as energy companies, emergency services, local authorities and community organisations worked tirelessly. What it showed was that when the system came under real strain, the weaknesses were clear. Preparedness cannot be about having plans on paper; it must be about whether those plans work when they are actually needed.

It was really useful to observe the Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland Resilience Forum test exercise to understand what could go wrong and how it would deal with it. Does my hon. Friend agree that local resilience forums are crucial to our preparedness in national emergencies, because they know what our local communities need?

I could not agree more. A lot of planning had gone into severe weather events in Fife over the years, but it had never been tested. A lot of it was out of date, and staff had moved on. For example, in High Valleyfield, a former coal-mining village, there was an almost 10-year-old resilience plan that said that the local community centre would be opened. The community knew about the plan, but the council had totally forgotten about it. They did not even know who had the keys for the community centre, so the community figured it out for themselves.

Broader lessons were also highlighted during that event, such as vulnerable customer data not being shared, confusion about support for care homes, a lack of generators, limited logistical capacity to deploy that provision, and access to temporary accommodation. Those are very practical failings, but they had very real consequences. The challenges we face now are broad and evolving—cyber-attacks, infrastructure sabotage, supply chain disruption, hybrid threats from hostile states, climate-related events and health and bio-security emergencies.

This weekend, in my Paisley and Renfrewshire North constituency, there were flight delays due to fuel shortages, which were no doubt caused by events in the middle east. Does my hon. Friend agree that that is precisely the type of event we should be mitigating against, before it becomes a national emergency?

My hon. Friend is absolutely correct: we need to ensure that we are preparing for all these eventualities, regardless of what causes them—I believe that individual case was caused by one driver shortage. The need to plan and have contingencies in place is vital.

Last year was monumental in terms of the number of events suffered in the UK and internationally; think about the economic damage to Jaguar Land Rover and Marks & Spencer, and there were power outages across Spain and Portugal for 10 hours. There is a real need for wider resilience. Certain other countries have made further progress on the issue, ensuring that each individual has, say, a “go bag” that will give them seven days’ provisions to ensure that they survive any natural catastrophe or other such event.

I am about to go on to that point; I will mention the need for resilience to be across Departments and involve the public.

The impact of these events is often not immediately dramatic but gradual, cumulative and enduring. One crisis flows into another, as I am sure Ministers feel every day. We must think of preparedness as being not just for an event but for a different type of world altogether. In that context, I refer to article 3 of the North Atlantic treaty, which is often overlooked but is highly relevant. It puts a duty on nations to maintain and develop their capacity to resist attack through continuous and effective self-help and mutual aid. Article 3 refers to an armed attack, but I believe that in the unstable world we live in we should read that in the broadest possible terms. Attacks no longer happen instantaneously, as they did when NATO was created, and neither do they come just from other states.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who is being typically generous in taking interventions. Last week, the director of GCHQ spoke about Russian hybrid warfare against the UK and how pervasive it consistently is. That is understood by defence experts, but is perhaps not well enough understood by the general public. Does my hon. Friend agree that there is a duty on Government to educate people about the scale of Russian hybrid warfare against the UK, so that we are properly prepared?

I absolutely agree; that is a point I will come to later. We must engage with the public if we want their permission to plan for resilience.

Article 3 tells us that preparedness must be constant and not confined to defence Departments. It must be collective, but it requires active participation across the system. I would be grateful if the Minister picked up on how resilience is being embedded across Departments in the areas of threat highlighted by the national security strategy.

I commend the hon. Gentleman for bringing this issue forward; I spoke to him beforehand. Does he agree that if groups tasked with preparedness training, such as the building resilience in communities project in Northern Ireland, are to be effective, they must be well funded? The work carried out with local groups to build grassroots disaster resilience can bring about results only if there is the scope to invest in reaching out and if groups are not hampered by tiny budgets. This is not just about England but Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland collectively.

As ever, I agree with the hon. Gentleman—I always agree with his interventions, particularly when they are made so well. There is a need to make sure that we break outside of the M25, frankly, when we talk about resilience. We also need to look seriously at the resilience of our critical national infrastructure. What is striking about many of the risks we now face is that they do not require a full-scale conflict. They can arise from hybrid threats, as my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow South (Gordon McKee) mentioned: those are much below the threshold of war but are capable of causing real and widespread disruption.

In a recent discussion with senior officials about the threat of Chinese-manufactured cellular internet of things modules, in my role as chair of the Coalition on Secure Technology, it was suggested to me that because the threat from such modules was theoretical—even though it was acknowledged that it was clearly feasible and would have a significant impact—there might be no need to prepare for it. Most risks are theoretical until they are very real, and the public then wonder why we were not prepared. I ask the Minister to specifically say what conversations he is having about the threat of cellular modules to the UK. Which Departments have been involved in those discussions?

I move on to our energy system—a key and particularly sensitive part of our infrastructure. We have seen how Vladimir Putin has used energy as a weapon against ordinary Ukrainian people, and he would be more than willing to do the same to British people as well. Without reliable energy, hospitals cannot function, communication systems begin to fail and supply chains break down. The Energy Security and Net Zero Committee, which I am a member of, will hold an evidence session on this very topic tomorrow. I have raised the issue with Defence Ministers before, but I believe that there are areas where we lack clarity on the legal position when it comes to hybrid attacks on our offshore infrastructure. I would welcome the Minister’s thoughts on what role the Cabinet Office can play in resolving that, as there seems to be an unclear boundary between the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero and the Ministry of Defence in particular.

My hon. Friend is making a powerful argument. He has mentioned the M25 a few times; people may not expect South Hampstead to suffer from frequent surface water flooding. I have been contacted by two groups, the Hillsiders and the Hampstead and Highgate Climate and Nature Group, who would like to talk about strengthening education, especially about climate change in the national curriculum. There is limited information in the national curriculum when it comes to climate change and the climate emergency. Does my hon. Friend agree that strengthening education for children and young people would help in the long run when it comes to tackling national emergencies?

I absolutely agree. We need to make sure that we are preparing clear information about the risks that we face, what a climate emergency means in reality, and how communities can help respond to that fully and effectively.

We also need to make sure that we are providing practical guidance for individuals and communities, as well as a shared understanding of what resilience is.

Often when we are talking about building confidence among the public, we tend to think about it at the moment of crisis, rather than making sure that we explain the causes of the crisis that we need to prepare for. Particularly in the context of the energy crisis that we are living through, it is more important than ever that we emphasise that those global drivers could end up having consequences for our own communities. We need to be working to prevent them collectively, collaboratively and at an international level in order to be part of our national security and resilience.

I agree with my hon. Friend. We have discussed that issue many times, both in the Energy Security and Net Zero Committee and outside. The need for collective action is required and we must make sure the public are a key part of that. They must understand why certain crises are happening. Sometimes they are outwith Government control; we are affected by what happens in the world and we must make sure that we are bringing them along in that conversation.