Undersea Cables: National Security Threat

Baroness Goldie Excerpts

Monday 27th October 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

There are certainly plans to do exactly as my noble friend asks. There certainly needs to be work on those plans, and they need some more detail to them, but there certainly are plans to do that. I have said a number of times from this Dispatch Box that the threats we face from others are now different in many respects from the threats we faced in the past. The disruption to data, the disruption to energy supplies and the disruption to communication are all part of the threat that we now face. Clearly, we are going to have to do more as a homeland to stand up against that. Part of it will require a conversation with industry, the public and the defence sector in order to protect ourselves.

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

My Lords, following the line just observed by the Minister, in recent months the principal threat to United Kingdom infrastructure has been from cyberattacks, notably against Jaguar Land Rover, Marks & Spencer, Co-operative Group and Heathrow Airport. Can the Minister confirm that the National Cyber Security Centre, currently located within GCHQ, is adequately resourced to deal with what it recognises is an escalating challenge? How does the National Cyber Security Centre liaise with the CyberEM Command, now sitting within the Strategic Command in the MoD?

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

There is a co-ordinating committee, whose name escapes me, that brings together all those various parts of government to which the noble Baroness has just referred to ensure that we have that co-ordinated defence and co-ordinated work that, as she rightly points out, we need. I would say, without going too far, that we see it as a major priority for the Government, which is why we have established that new command to defend ourselves against cyberattack, but we also need to work closely with private industry and private business to achieve that. Suffice it to say that it is a really important point and something we are working on very hard to ensure that we protect our country.