Cyber Security and Resilience (Network and Information Systems) Bill (Third sitting)

Debate between Kanishka Narayan and Chris Vince

Committee stage
Thursday 5th February 2026 Public Bill Committees

[Kanishka Narayan]

I might just make a slight bit of progress. As I mentioned in a previous session, the programme reached 415,000 students, and it has now been evolved into the wider TechFirst scheme as well.

The shadow Minister, as well as the hon. Member for Bromsgrove, made a very important point about resilience in particular and sovereign capability. Particularly for those reasons, I am really proud of two things. One is that the Bill includes suppliers that may not be resident in the UK but provide essential services in the UK. This is a critical means through which we can secure our capabilities here. The second, which is close to my particular interests in the data centre and compute world, is that, through our initiatives on sovereign AI, and having launched a very innovative advance market commitment in the chips part of the stack, which ends up crowding in wider demand—not least through companies such as Nscale, a fundamental part of our AI growth zone in the north-east—this Government are finally rectifying the errors and omissions of the last Government, in making sure that Britain does not do what it did in the last commercial cloud context, but instead, in this AI compute world, has some actual chips on the table.

Thirdly, I will not try to settle the thrilling debate between the shadow Minister and my hon. Friend the Member for Lichfield on the philosophy of regulation. I will simply make the humble suggestion that in this context we have arrived at, not a full-fat compendium, as the shadow Minister described it, but a very targeted Bill, which has been the result of extensive industry engagement—indeed, some of it was carried out by the prior Government—that aligned on the sectors in question and the inclusion of critical suppliers in scope.

On the shadow Minister’s question about the thresholds and definitional specificity of large load controllers in the Bill, I will of course remain very open to ensuring that the secondary powers, which are intended precisely to enable us to move flexibly as the clean power industry moves, give us the flexibility to move with it. At the same time, the threshold of 300 MW reflected the point at which a large load controller could pose an unacceptable risk to the electricity system and our CNI. This threshold was set very clearly in partnership with technical experts, including the National Energy System Operator. Of course, as the market grows, the potential for cyber-incidents will grow, and we will keep that under close review.

[Chris Vince]

On the point about flexibility, I think we would recognise that the legislative process in this House does not always move as quickly as we might want it to, but there are reasons for that, because scrutiny is really important. Does the Minister agree that the changing nature of the cyber-threats we face and the changing nature of technology, which he understands far more than me, are the reasons why it is so important to have flexibility in the Bill?

[Kanishka Narayan]

I thank my hon. Friend for that point. The reality is that neither he nor I am placed to judge exactly where the thresholds should be set on a permanent basis. That is exactly why we have secured the flexibilities that we have in the Bill.

Clause 5 brings Crown-operated data centres into scope of the NIS regulations, ensuring that Government data centres meet robust standards comparable to those in the private sector.  Bringing Crown data centres within scope closes a critical gap and guarantees that public sector infrastructure is protected against evolving threats.  Exemptions will apply only in defined cases in which a data centre service is provided by an intelligence agency or a facility handling highly classified—“Secret” or “Top Secret”—information. These data centre services are already governed separately, and applying the NIS regime could cause conflict. I urge that clause 5 stand part of the Bill. 

Finally, clause 6, on large load controllers, introduces the essential new service of load control under the energy subsector of the NIS regulations. This will capture organisations—

Cyber Security and Resilience (Network and Information Systems) Bill (Fourth sitting)

Debate between Kanishka Narayan and Chris Vince

Committee stage
Thursday 5th February 2026 Public Bill Committees

[Kanishka Narayan]

On the first point, I am afraid that I do not think that was an appropriate characterisation, because where the sectoral scope is clear and where there is a clear risk of critical national infrastructure and essential services being directly exposed, we have specified that in the Bill. We have looked at the impacts set out in the impact assessment. For the critical suppliers in those sectors—I would expect them to be very limited in number—we have made sure that regulators and businesses have the flexibility to set the requirements directly, rather than them being set here in Parliament.

[Chris Vince]

I was going to intervene on the hon. and gallant Member for Spelthorne, but he is bigger than me. I recognise the points he made about the number of critical suppliers, but I come at the question from the other angle: doing nothing may leave critical suppliers at risk. Although we might not know the exact number, as he correctly asserted, it is important that we do something and introduce the regulations as soon as we can to protect our critical infrastructure.

[Kanishka Narayan]

I thank my hon. Friend for that point. This issue has not come out of nowhere. Industry and a number of organisations asked that we introduce the measures in the clause.

Beyond the very clear five-step test for critical supplier designation, the Bill provides that the requirements on critical suppliers are proportionate. The reason why we have both the five-step test and the provisions in the Bill is that, in most cases, if the risk assessment suggests so, the security requirements set out in the Bill will be less onerous in most cases. They will be specified in secondary legislation and guidance.

On the question of schools, and more broadly the question of public sector authorities, I entirely accept that the handling of pupil data in schools is a critical aspect of our public service operations. The reason why public service authorities have largely been left out of the Bill’s scope is because we do not need to wait for the legislative process to act. We have been working, not least closely with the Government’s cyber-security strategy and the cyber action plan, to ensure that pupil data is kept securely and robustly.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Kanishka Narayan and Chris Vince

Wednesday 12th November 2025 Commons Chamber

[Kanishka Narayan]

The hon. Member’s campaign has been noticed and I would be very happy to meet her to discuss how we can work together to ensure that enforcement is robust on this question.

[Chris Vince (Harlow) (Lab/Co-op)]

Sadly, the glamorisation on TV of drug taking is not a new phenomenon, but I particularly worry about the nature of the internet and social media, and about the short clips that people watch in which the true consequences of drug taking and drug culture are not really shown properly. What can the Minister do to use the internet and social media for good, and show young people in my constituency the dangers of drug taking and drug culture?

[Kanishka Narayan]

My hon. Friend is a master of short clips in the Chamber, so I will take both his skill and his sincerity on this question to heart and work with him to ensure we robustly enforce the duties already placed on Ofcom under the Online Safety Act.