UK Undersea Infrastructure: Hostile Activity

Lord Stirrup Excerpts

Tuesday 25th April 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

I think we all agree that the overall objective of increasing our usage of renewable energy is laudable and to be commended, but my noble friend is correct that the installation of infrastructure brings with it an obvious degree of risk. As I indicated to the noble Lord, Lord West, across government there are a range of departments with responsibilities in this field. As far as the MoD is concerned, we actively monitor threat. When it comes to looking at, for example, Russian activity in either the Baltic Sea or the North Sea, noble Lords will understand that we regularly assess by our maritime presence what is happening. The Russians know that we know they know what we are doing.

[Lord Stirrup (CB)]

My Lords, protecting against threats is clearly important but there is no such thing as perfect defence. With what degree of urgency are the Government addressing our resilience in this area of our critical national infrastructure?

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

The noble and gallant Lord will be aware that we have operational assets which we can deploy. For example, in the wake of Nord Stream we deployed HMS “Somerset” to monitor what was happening. We also have our MROS programme; one of those ships has been bought and is currently being readied for operational activity, and the other is to be built.