Heathrow Substation Outage: NESO Review

Debate between Ruth Cadbury and Michael Shanks

Wednesday 2nd July 2025 Commons Chamber

[Michael Shanks]

I have spoken to colleagues across the Department on these questions. They are rightly constantly looking at how we review our processes. Importantly, they are also working outside of Government and trying to break down some of the silos, so we are co-ordinating with different parts of Government that have different responsibilities. But the right hon. Member is right, and we will constantly push to do more of that.

The question of exercises is important. We had a really significant exercise under the previous Government, which looked at the Government’s response to a significant power outage. We are putting in place many of the recommendations from that exercise, which are important to take forward, but more exercise is useful.

I would slightly separate the response from the infrastructure itself failing, which is what we need to investigate quickly. The Kelly review set out that Heathrow’s response to the incident was in line with its response plan. Although the outcome was clearly not what any of us would have wanted, it goes to a wider question about the infrastructure at Heathrow, not so much the actual plan put in place when the incident did occur. Those are two slightly different things, but they are both extremely important.

[Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)]

I, too, thank the Minister for making this statement, and NESO for this damning report. Heathrow Airport Ltd’s power set-up internally virtually guarantees hours of disruption in a scenario like this. On 21 March, that meant over a quarter of a million passengers were affected; airlines lost significant revenue, for which they will not be compensated; and countless time-critical freight loads were also affected. Yet in Spain and Portugal, airports did not close when those countries had full power outages. By any definition, surely Heathrow airport counts as critical national infrastructure as it undeniably requires operational continuity. I note that the Minister confirmed the airport’s responsibility for its own power resilience, but does the Government have a role in ensuring that end-to-end power supply to critical national infrastructure is robust and that risks like power outages are managed adequately?

[Michael Shanks]

I thank my hon. Friend for the question and for her thanks to NESO, which has done a comprehensive job on this report in a fairly short space of time. There are lessons to be learned for Heathrow, and it will be learning those lessons. I am in communication with the Transport Secretary, who of course has immediate responsibility for Heathrow as a piece of critical national transport infrastructure. It is worth saying that its back-up generators did operate in the way they were supposed to, but Heathrow is a huge piece of infrastructure, and it is not intended that those back-up processes would continue to run normal operations in a huge airport beyond the immediate situation of being able to land planes safely and ensuring other critical systems within the airport.

The question Heathrow has to answer is on having three points of electricity generation coming into the airport. It clearly needs to look at the way the network is configured and take forward the wider question of its resilience and ability to adapt to such situations. The Government have an incredibly important role, as my hon. Friend rightly says, and we will do all we can to ensure that National Grid is doing its bit, that the distribution operator is doing what it needs to do, and that Heathrow Airport Ltd is also meeting the expectations that we would expect from our most important piece of transport infrastructure.

Energy Grid Resilience

Debate between Ruth Cadbury and Michael Shanks

Wednesday 30th April 2025 Commons Chamber

[Michael Shanks]

I congratulated the hon. Lady yesterday on her remarkable marathon; I think she ran it two hours faster than I did, which leaves considerable room for improvement on my part, but congratulations to her again. She is right to raise this point, and I have answered questions on it before. I have met Centrica on several occasions to discuss various things, including that proposal, but it is a commercial matter for Centrica to bring the proposal to us. The Rough storage facility, which we last talked about in this House a few months ago, was mothballed for a number of years under the previous Government. We are looking in the round at the role it could play in energy security and at the value-for-money arguments. We want to ensure that value for money for the public is protected alongside the security of energy.

[Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)]

My issue with the hon. Member for Gordon and Buchan (Harriet Cross) is that she has knocked me off my place as the second-fastest woman MP marathon runner—but I will be back.

While thousands of airline passengers were impacted by Monday’s outage across Spain and Portugal, only 500 flights were grounded out of a possible 6,000, the rest managing to fly. That is because there were no airport closures. Is there a lesson here for UK airports?

[Michael Shanks]

My hon. Friend is perhaps referring to the most recent situation at Heathrow. The Secretary of State commissioned a report after that incident to find out what the causes were, and that report is due. Airports in this country are private businesses, but given that they are clearly critical national infrastructure, the Government have a role in ensuring that they function. If there are any lessons we can learn, it will be invaluable for us to learn them, but I do not want to be drawn on the conclusions of a report that the Government have not yet seen.