A joint UK Parliament Committee has reported on the country’s critical national infrastructure and its preparedness for increasing storm events.

The report says that the UK’s critical national infrastructure (CNI) is very vulnerable to extreme weather and other effects of climate change, such as sea level rises. Major power outages, landslides onto roads, buckling train lines and flooding of infrastructure sites: these are all realistic scenarios, and can lead to ‘cascading’ risks affecting other CNI sectors. Different infrastructure sectors are highly interdependent, so the shutdown of one CNI operator may cause knock-on effects on multiple other sectors.

This was illustrated starkly by Storm Arwen last November, when major power outages left some people without access to their digital land lines, and no way of contacting emergency services. Separately, a recent problem with railway drainage almost caused the National Blood Bank to flood. These examples show that poor adaptation to climate change is a major threat to the UK’s national security and prosperity.

Extreme weakness at the centre of Government

Here is an extract from the Committee’s news release: ‘As in our previous reports in this Parliament, we have unfortunately uncovered an extreme weakness at the centre of Government on a critical risk to the UK’s national security. Instead of making the resilience of CNI a priority, the then Minister for the Cabinet Office—self-described as the Minister for CNI resilience—simply refused to give oral evidence to us on this topic, despite having submitted two pieces of written evidence. This acknowledgment of his lack of command of this issue—the reason given for his refusal—was in itself shocking, and suggests a severe dereliction of duty on the part of the Government. It appears that no Minister is taking responsibility for this topic, and there are no cross-Cabinet Committees driving forward the Government’s work on adaptation and CNI resilience. This may be why the Government has accepted the Climate Change Committee’s finding that it is moving backwards on adaptation, and has failed to implement any of that Committee’s latest adaptation recommendations in full. It is hard to imagine the Government taking such a lax approach to any other recognised national security risk.’

Recommendations

• The new Prime Minister must waste no time in laying out the Government’s plans to make the UK much more resilient to the shocks that are becoming a reality of the uncertain times in which we live. To support this work, she should also re-establish a dedicated Ministerial committee on resilience.
• The Government should ensure that all CNI operators have access to high quality weather, climate and impact forecasting and modelling, via the Cabinet Office’s Situation Centre.
• Investment in adaptation can save money later on, so it is vital that the Government’s planned acceleration of infrastructure investment does not result in lower standards of adaptation.
• These actions must be taken urgently. The costs of failure are extremely high, as demonstrated by the tragic rail accident near Stonehaven in 2020, caused by debris on the track after heavy rainfall. This summer’s heatwave also showed that even unimaginable scenarios can fast become a reality, and the Government must prepare for the worst.

The Government has two months to respond to the recommendations. The summary report can be read here.