Emergency Communications

Lord Harris of Haringey Excerpts

Monday 26th June 2023 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Camrose (Con)]

Indeed, I recognise the risk that the noble Lord describes. One of the absolute priorities must be to identify whether there is a broader systemic risk of which the unfortunate events yesterday were a symptom or whether this is isolated; the ongoing investigation will absolutely establish that.

[Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)]

My Lords, I refer to my interests in the register, in particular that I chair the National Preparedness Commission. As we understand it, this was a failure of the 999 system itself. What consideration have the Government given to circumstances in which there is an interruption in electrical power? That could mean, first, that there will need to be reliance on analogue systems—as the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones referred to—but also that most domestic landlines will cease to function and, within a couple of hours, so too will most mobile phones, because masts will no longer have power.

[Viscount Camrose (Con)]

It will be an area covered by the report. I stress that, from the information that I have so far, BT was able to implement its disaster recovery planning and system and return, albeit at a slightly slower pace, to the ability to answer 999 calls. I very much take the point that the wrong combination of catastrophic failures would indeed create a very serious and broad situation.