Storm Arwen: Power Outages

Edward Miliband Excerpts

Monday 6th December 2021 Commons Chamber

[Greg Hands]

I commend my hon. Friend, with whom I spoke on Tuesday and Wednesday. It was a pleasure to visit his constituency. At Ireshopeburn, I saw the generator being connected to the community centre by engineers from across the UK, including from UK Power Networks in south-east England. I saw the relief centre at St John’s Chapel and I was in Eastgate, so I saw things first hand in his constituency.

To answer my hon. Friend’s question about our assessment of the comms, I have already mentioned that the comms from Northern Powergrid were not good enough in those first days. I am sure that that will be part of the review process that the Government will do with Ofgem as part of the response to all these storm events. On Northern Powergrid, we put the experience of many Members of the House and their constituents in those first few days firmly to Mr Jones, and I think that that message landed.

[Edward Miliband (Doncaster North) (Lab)]

I thank the engineers, the Army, the emergency services and, most of all, local people in affected areas for their heroic response to the crisis. It is totally contemptuous for the Business Secretary to be available for a photo opportunity yesterday but not to be available today to come to the House to account for the Government’s performance. That simply adds insult to injury for communities in the north of England that have been badly let down by the power networks and by central Government in their crisis response and oversight of the system.

I will ask the Minister some questions. Some 10 days into the crisis, why has the Government’s emergency committee Cobra still not met to co-ordinate the response? Over the weekend, a local Conservative councillor in Durham said:

“if this happened in London…or in the south-east, everything would have got thrown at it.”

Are people in the north not entitled to think that he is right and that they have been treated as second-class citizens? Why did it take a week for the Army to be called in when Members on both sides of the House were calling for that at the start of last week? Why are thousands still without power when the Secretary of State told us last Wednesday in the House that people would be reconnected by Friday? Will the Minister now apologise to communities in the north for the Government’s performance?

The Minister said today, as the Secretary of State said yesterday, that he wants to learn lessons, but we have been here before. After the 2013 storms, multiple reports were produced—I have them here for him—that identified problems of communication, the vulnerability of the network and the complacency of the companies. After that event, during which 16,000 people were cut off for 48 hours, customers were told that they could expect to see “significant improvement”. This time, however, the performance has been far worse. Is not the only conclusion that the Government have been asleep at the wheel not just in the last 10 days but for the best part of a decade?

The climate crisis means that we will face many more such events. The Government must get a grip. Instead of a cosy Government-led process, overseen by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and Ofgem, will the Minister now establish what the situation demands—a proper independent inquiry into the performance and failures of power companies, regulators and the Government to ensure that our country and communities are never left that vulnerable again?

[Greg Hands]

Let me deal with each point in turn. It would not be fair to say that yesterday was a photo opportunity. The Secretary of State visited the armed forces, engineers, local residents, the relief centres and so on. It was most definitely not a photo opportunity, but an opportunity, as I discovered in County Durham on Wednesday and in Aberdeenshire on Friday, to thank those who had responded. Engineers had come from Northern Ireland and the Isle of Man to assist and we felt that it was right to go and thank them for their efforts. The Secretary of State is on a call at the moment with the Prime Minister and the head of Northern Powergrid.

On the response, the point here is that the mutual aid system is in place between the distribution network operators. The right hon. Member will know from his time as Secretary of State the importance of the mutual aid system—the NEWSAC, or North East South West Area Consortium, system—whereby different companies across the United Kingdom provide help to each other when a storm comes in. That is why engineers can be deployed right the way across the country. That is the most effective thing, because restoring power involves quite dangerous, health and safety-intensive work to restore overhead power cables, and those are the people one needs to be able to do the job.

The right hon. Member says it took a week to bring in the Army, but it is for the local resilience forum to say what the needs are locally. As soon as the local resilience forum in Aberdeenshire and that in Durham gave us the call, the Army was deployed very quickly indeed. He talks about investment, and I mentioned earlier that £60 billion has been invested in the network over the last eight years.

I learned at first hand on Wednesday in County Durham and on Friday in Aberdeenshire about the particular nature of this storm. There was the unusual wind speed and the fact that, rather than the prevailing south-westerly winds, the wind came in from the north-east, which makes a big difference for the power network. There was also the nature of the icing and the accumulation of icing on cables, which was a particular part of the storm. One of the engineers I spoke to in Durham on Wednesday described how he had experienced this particular set of circumstances only once before in his 35-year career in the industry.

Finally, on climate crisis, the right hon. Member is right: of course, there will be similar events like this and more of these events in the future. That is why we need to do everything we can—for example, with our net zero strategy in October—to make sure this country becomes more resilient to these kinds of events. We are currently doing the joint consultation with Ofgem on the future system operator, and that is exactly the kind of response that we need: a net zero strategy for how we equip the country overall, plus in particular how we make sure that the grid becomes more resilient to these kinds of events in the future.

--- Later in debate ---

[Greg Hands]

I do not think that a public inquiry is the right course. It would inevitably take a long time. It would be better to use the established and effective review mechanism that we already have in place, and I invite the hon. Member and all right hon. and hon. Members to participate in it and give their views. I would say that NEWSAC, the mutual aid scheme, was deployed as soon it practicably could be, actually in advance of the storm coming in. I think that that has worked well. On the role of the Army, it is principally a matter for the local resilience forums to make assessments of the resources they need and then to put in that call. From my experience in Aberdeenshire on Friday, I can tell the House that, when the local resilience forum put in that call, the response was close to immediate.

[Edward Miliband (Doncaster North) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. Can you give me some guidance on the absence of the Secretary of State from this urgent question? Yesterday, he claimed to be getting a grip on this crisis, but today he has run away from answering questions in this House. The truth is that there are very serious issues here, and the Minister has had to come up with a hastily arranged “dog ate my homework” excuse in which he claims that the Secretary of State is on the phone to Northern Powergrid at the moment. He could have been on the phone before this urgent question or after it. This is an insult to the people in the north of England and an insult to this House.

[Mr Speaker]

It is not for me to choose who comes to the Dispatch Box. It is up to the Government to decide who they provide, and the Minister was very thorough in his long answers to questions. You have also been in government, and you were the ones who chose who stood at the Dispatch Box. I do not think the points you raise will have gone amiss. You did say that the Secretary of State was meant to be on a phone call, and it was with the Prime Minister as well. I am sure people will check to see if that is the case, as I am sure it is. If the Minister says it is the case, it must be the case.