Asked by: Ben Spencer (Conservative - Runnymede and Weybridge)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, pursuant to the Answer of 25 November 2025 to Question 92210 on Internet: Outages, what assessment she has made of the potential impact of the Cyber Security and Resilience (Network and Information Systems) Bill on disruption to government services during the Cloudflare outage.
Answered by Kanishka Narayan - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)
The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) recognises the importance of robust protections for the services essential to our society and economy. That is why we introduced the Cyber Security and Resilience Bill (CSRB) on 12 November - by enhancing protections for the most important digital services, Government services that rely on them will also benefit.
As the digital centre of government, DSIT also recognises that a step change in cyber and digital resilience is required across the government sector. However, we do not need to wait for legislation to take action.
We are acting in parallel with the approach of the CSRB through our mandate to set robust cyber security standards across government organisations. Government services have been subject to the National Cyber Security Centre’s Cyber Assessment Framework since 2022, which promotes resilience against both cyber attacks and the types of system failure that we saw with the Cloudflare outage.
Despite this progress, we are not complacent. DSIT will publish the Government Cyber Action Plan, which will lay out a detailed programme of work with clear expectations, targets, and milestones to enhance Government's cyber and digital resilience.
Asked by: Ben Spencer (Conservative - Runnymede and Weybridge)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, what assessment she has made of the adequacy of the capacity of (a) sectoral regulators and (b) the NCSC to process and respond to cyber incident reports as a result of the expanded reporting requirements in the Cyber Security and Resilience (Network and Information Systems) Bill.
Answered by Kanishka Narayan - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)
Officials have worked closely with regulators and the NCSC in developing the Cyber Security and Resilience Bill and will continue to do so throughout its parliamentary passage and implementation planning.
The NCSC already leads the UK’s response to cyber incidents by triaging reports, supporting affected organisations and coordinating government action during major incidents. In the year preceding, September 2025, NCSC received 1,727 incident tips, 429 of which required direct support. The Bill will expand the type of incidents reported to regulators and the NCSC, strengthening understanding of the threat landscape and improving national cyber-defences.
The Bill will also bolster regulator resources by reforming cost recovery. Currently, regulators are constrained – for example, they cannot recover the cost of enforcement. The Bill will enable regulators to fully recover their costs and utilise flexible, sector-appropriate charging mechanisms, ensuring they are properly equipped to meet their duties.
Asked by: Ben Spencer (Conservative - Runnymede and Weybridge)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, whether (a) Government services and (b) critical national infrastructure faced disruption as a result of the Cloudflare outage on 18 November 2025; and what estimate her Department has made of the cost to the economy of that service outage.
Answered by Kanishka Narayan - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)
The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology is leading government’s response to the Cloudflare outage which occurred on Tuesday 19 November 2025. We understand that Cloudflare services were restored on Tuesday evening, and DSIT is engaging with Cloudflare to understand the full impact of this incident, and how such events can be mitigated in the future.
DSIT has identified disruption to some online Government services, which were restored within hours of the incident. We are not aware of any disruption to Critical National Infrastructure.
The outage affected a wide range of organisations across all sectors, and it will take some time to fully understand the scale of the economic impact.
The Government recognises the importance of robust protections for the services essential to our society and economy – that is why we introduced the Cyber Security and Resilience Bill on 12 November.
Asked by: Ben Spencer (Conservative - Runnymede and Weybridge)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, whether (a) Government services and (b) critical national infrastructure faced disruption as a result of the Microsoft Azure outage on Wednesday 29 October 2025; and what estimate her Department has made of the cost to the economy of that service outage.
Answered by Ian Murray - Minister of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)
The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) is leading Government’s response to the Microsoft Azure outage that took place on Wednesday 29 October 2025. We understand that all Azure services were restored on Wednesday evening, and DSIT is in contact with Microsoft to understand how such events can be mitigated in the future.
DSIT has identified disruption to online Government services across several departments, which were restored within hours of the incident.
We are not aware of any major disruption arising from this event affecting Critical National Infrastructure but will continue to work with relevant operators to understand the full impact.
The outage affected a wide range of organisations across all sectors and it will take some time to fully understand the scale of the economic impact.
Asked by: Ben Spencer (Conservative - Runnymede and Weybridge)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, what government services faced disruption as a result of the Amazon Web Services outage on Monday 20 October; and what assessment her Department plans to make of the cost to the economy of that service outage.
Answered by Ian Murray - Minister of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)
Many government departments use AWS services, and we are aware that the Home Office, DVLA, DWP and HMRC all experienced impacts as a result of the outage on Monday 20 October.
The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) is working with both departments and AWS to better understand the impacts, and will use this to inform future work on government digital resilience.
The cost of the outage is not yet known.
Asked by: Ben Spencer (Conservative - Runnymede and Weybridge)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, whether he has had discussions with Research England on their approach to the (a) coding and (b) processing of data relating to (i) biological sex and (ii) gender identity in research projects in the context of the Independent review of data, statistics and research on sex and gender, published on 19 March 2025.
Answered by Feryal Clark
No direct discussions have taken place on these matters. The review has been shared with all departments, and is available for all arms-length bodies and institutions to consider in light of ongoing work in this area.
Asked by: Ben Spencer (Conservative - Runnymede and Weybridge)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, what recent discussions he has had with Innovate UK on their approach to the (a) coding of and (b) processing of data relating to (i) biological sex and (ii) gender identity in research projects following the publication of the Sullivan report in July 2024.
Answered by Feryal Clark
No direct discussions have taken place on these matters. The review has been shared with all departments, and is available for all arms-length bodies and institutions to consider in light of ongoing work in this area.
Asked by: Ben Spencer (Conservative - Runnymede and Weybridge)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, whether he has had discussions with the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council on their approach to the (a) coding and (b) processing of data relating to (i) biological sex and (ii) gender identity in research projects in the context of the Independent review of data, statistics and research on sex and gender, published on 19 March 2025.
Answered by Feryal Clark
No direct discussions have taken place on these matters. The review has been shared with all departments, and is available for all arms-length bodies and institutions to consider in light of ongoing work in this area.
Asked by: Ben Spencer (Conservative - Runnymede and Weybridge)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, whether he has had discussions with the Natural Environment Research Council on their approach to the (a) coding and (b) processing of data relating to (i) biological sex and (ii) gender identity in research projects in the context of the Independent review of data, statistics and research on sex and gender, published on 19 March 2025.
Answered by Feryal Clark
No direct discussions have taken place on these matters. The review has been shared with all departments, and is available for all arms-length bodies and institutions to consider in light of ongoing work in this area.
Asked by: Ben Spencer (Conservative - Runnymede and Weybridge)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, whether he has had discussions with the Science and Technology Facilities Council on their approach to the (a) coding and (b) processing of data relating to (i) biological sex and (ii) gender identity in research projects in the context of the Independent review of data, statistics and research on sex and gender, published on 19 March 2025.
Answered by Feryal Clark
No direct discussions have taken place on these matters. The review has been shared with all departments, and is available for all arms-length bodies and institutions to consider in light of ongoing work in this area.