Reservoirs: Protection from Contamination

Lord West of Spithead Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

I asked about that earlier today, because it is important that we understand it. My understanding is that there has not been such an incident, but that does not mean that we should be complacent. We know that our water and energy infrastructure are both potentially vulnerable to hostile attacks.

[Lord West of Spithead (Lab)]

My Lords, if I could correct my noble friend, because she is probably not aware of it, in 2008 there was an attempt by eight al-Qaeda operatives to poison north London water supplies. I am pleased to say that our agencies worked brilliantly to stop it happening. As a result, in the Home Office we put in hand a whole series of work on police response times, indicators of where the outflows from reservoirs went and new barriers. Where has all that work gone? These things somehow seem to disappear. There should be some reports, and hopefully someone did something about it.

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

That is extremely interesting and very helpful of my noble friend. I will certainly look into it, because it is an important point. Clearly, the department did such an excellent job when there was a potential attack that it has never been picked up. However, if he would ever like to take over the Defra brief, I would be very happy to swap with him.