National Energy System Operator: Blackout Risk

Gareth Snell Excerpts

Wednesday 15th July 2026 Commons Chamber

[Michael Shanks]

The right hon. Gentleman asks a number of questions. On his point about the governance of NESO, I engage with its chair but also with the Government’s independent director. NESO is regulated by the independent regulator, Ofgem, which has responded in the last few days by scrutinising and governing the outcomes of the inquiry, as we would expect it to do.

On the right hon. Gentleman’s wider point about documents, I am not going to comment on a process that is now under way to establish the truth. The version of events that I have seen suggests that that is not the case, but we are now doing an inquiry to establish the truth about version control, the sharing of documents and everything else. That is one of the key questions in the terms of reference.

The right hon. Gentleman is right to highlight the Public Office (Accountability) Bill, which we voted on yesterday, because transparency is important. I am not seeking in any way to suggest that we should not be transparent, but I am suggesting that we need to let the inquiry run its course so that we can establish the facts before we pass judgment.

[Gareth Snell (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

My constituents in Stoke-on-Trent Central are used to just plugging something in, switching a switch and there being electrical power, but I think we can all accept that with extreme weather becoming a bigger pattern in our lives, these events may be more frequent in the future. What conversations is the Minister having with colleagues across Government about developing public education programmes to explain how consumers can do their bit to help reduce demand at peak times, much like the water companies do when there is extreme heat? Given that we have discussed the speculation, and the whistleblowers who have rightly come forward, on the Floor of the House, can the Minister commit that once the independent inquiry has completed, the report is brought to the House so that we can discuss the outcome with the same prominence as we have discussed the speculation?

[Michael Shanks]

I thank my hon. Friend for both of his questions. On the first, he is right to imply that it is good that the vast majority of the public do not think about the electricity system at all when they switch things on or off. That is the system working as it should do. He is also right to say that extreme weather events will become more frequent in the years ahead, unfortunately, and we do need to respond to that. That is partly why we are investing in the grid.

My hon. Friend’s wider point is about how much we talk to the public about resilience. We are quite an outlier in Europe in not engaging with the public regularly on the question of personal and household resilience, whether during floods, storm events or any other incidents. We will take forward work as a Government to make sure that we are talking to the public much more, so that people are prepared for such circumstances and would be able to respond if they were to occur. On his final point, the report will be published when it comes forward, and I absolutely commit to making sure that the House has a copy.