Undersea Cables

Lord Fox Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

There are two vessels. The “Sovereign” is the repair vessel I referred to, which the cable companies pay for and is on standby 24/7 to repair the cables. “Proteus” has a different purpose; it is an MoD vessel that can take account of all underwater structures. It is not a DSIT vessel but an MoD vessel with broad responsibilities.

[Lord Fox (LD)]

My Lords, one way to mitigate risk is to have redundancy in the capacity of the cables, but redundancy costs money for the commercial organisations that own those cables. What is DSIT doing to ensure that there is sufficient redundancy to give us the protection that we need?

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lord for a very important question. As I said, there are some 64 cable systems and 116 cables. We have a lot of redundancy in the system. Despite getting 10 to 20 breaks every year, they do not lead to an interruption because of that redundancy. Three things are important for the redundancy: the number of cables, the geographical diversity or spread of the cables—which provides protection—and the 24/7 emergency repair capability, with a planning consent that allows the vessel to get in very quickly.