Terrorism: Emergency Communications

Earl Attlee Excerpts

Thursday 5th July 2018 Lords Chamber

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey, for asking his Question. With the leave of the House I would like to speak in the gap. I apologise: I omitted to put my name down to speak, but it is just as well because I misinterpreted the Question on the Order Paper.

Many noble Lords touched on the need for electricity in modern society. My understanding until recently was that to restore power in the case of a total blackout across a large portion of the country would take several days—we have already talked about that today. That would be whatever the cause, whether it was a cyberattack, or a couple of power stations and a large substation being taken out simultaneously. I always thought that each thermal power station would have the ability to black start from cold and with no external assistance from the grid, and, most importantly, that it would have the ability to synchronise its frequency with the rest of the grid. The noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey, is shaking his head: I suspect he thinks that that is not the case—that it would not have the ability. I think it should. So can my noble friend the Minister write to me and tell me what is our capability of black starting thermal power stations? I think they all ought to be able to black start and synchronise their frequencies relatively easily. My understanding is that it is very difficult to do and that is why it would take several days to restore the power, with the attendant, very serious consequences.