Strengthening Community Resilience

Alistair Carmichael Excerpts

Tuesday 27th October 2026 Commons Chamber

[Dan Jarvis]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, and I think he raises an important point. I am limited in the time I have to respond, but I can update him that there has been positive progress on that area of work. It sits adjacent to the discussion we are having, but he is right to raise it. At points of everyday emergency, or where particular communities are subject to emergency circumstances, there are those who may seek to use it as an opportunity to sow misinformation and disinformation. The Government are of course extremely mindful of that, which is one of the reasons why the Prime Minister recently announced the creation of the national centre for information defence.

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

Laying in three days’ supplies in the Northern Isles is what we do if we are confident that we are having a mild winter. Just four years ago, parts of Shetland were without electricity for six days, so resilience looks different in different parts of the country.

To take the Minister back to his answer to the hon. Member for Huntingdon (Ben Obese-Jecty), the Government recently launched a consultation on critical undersea infrastructure, security and resilience, in which they seemed to see the answer as one of regulation and legislation. As the hon. Gentleman told the Minister, we need the capacity to effect repairs to undersea cables, and to do so without long delays, as currently occur. Will he take away that need and the experience of my constituents in recent years, who have suffered a number of digital outages as a consequence?

[Dan Jarvis]

The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to raise this issue. He and I have discussed it previously, and he explained with great clarity the impact of the loss of that capability on his constituents. I hope he gets a sense of the seriousness with which we take it, but I will write to him and the hon. Member for Huntingdon (Ben Obese-Jecty) with more details of the work we are doing.