Emergency Alert Service

Lord Harris of Haringey Excerpts

Thursday 5th September 2024 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

To ask His Majesty’s Government how many alerts have been sent using the Emergency Alert service since the national test in April 2023; and when the next national test of the system will take place.

[Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)]

My Lords, in begging leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper, I refer to my interest as chair of the National Preparedness Commission.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Culture, Media and Sport (Baroness Twycross) (Lab)]

Since the launch of the UK Government’s emergency alert system, the capability has been deployed twice: in February in Plymouth to aid an evacuation effort following the discovery of an unexploded World War II bomb; and in April this year as part of flood mitigation in Cumbria. At present, a second national test is not scheduled; however, the Government will continue to ensure the resilience of the system through regular technical testing and consider national tests as appropriate.

[Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful for that Answer. I am sure that a further national test would be useful, both because there were one or two problems identified first time round and because it would help habituate the general public to these alerts. I am pleased to hear that there have been two cases where the emergency alert system has been used in localised areas. It could, for example, have been used with benefit to inform residents of Grenfell Tower about the change in evacuation policy had it been available at that time. What progress has been made in developing local protocols to ensure that fire services, local police services and maybe local authorities and others are ready to use that system? How quickly can the Cabinet Office authorise those?

[Baroness Twycross (Lab)]

Our thoughts go to everyone touched by the Grenfell Tower inquiry phase 2 report yesterday into the 72 victims of the Grenfell Tower fire. I am sure all noble Lords across the House share the determination expressed by the Prime Minister yesterday that nothing like this must ever happen again. My noble friend will be aware that alerts can currently be targeted down to electoral ward level and that, therefore, in a future incident akin to the horrific events at Grenfell Tower, the emergency alerting tool could now be an important aspect of the emergency response. I reassure him and Members across the House that all local resilience forums can both request an emergency alert and receive extensive training on this capability, which has been made available through the ResilienceDirect website. The Cabinet Office has also worked with the College of Policing’s multi-agency gold incident command programme to integrate awareness of emergency alerts.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Twycross (Lab)]

Some of the issues the noble and gallant Lord refers to were highlighted by the Covid inquiry module 1. The Government have committed to respond to that within six months and I anticipate that the very valid point he makes will be addressed in that response.

[Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)]

My Lords, if I might come back, following on from the noble and gallant Lord’s question, can my noble friend give us some indication as to how quickly a localised emergency alert can be authorised? I understand that a whole series of processes has to be gone through, including finding the Cabinet Office duty officer, potentially in the middle of the night. I am sure they are constantly available, but the question is: can it be done in real time, quickly? Obviously, an emergency situation develops very quickly.

[Baroness Twycross (Lab)]

All local resilience forums can request an emergency alert. In my experience, having chaired the London Resilience Forum, the duty officers from the Government are indeed available and able to respond and carry out this type of action very quickly, as would be appropriate given the speed of some incidents that might occur.