Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether there have been any power cuts on their Department's property in each of the last three years.

There have been no power cuts on the Department's property in the last three years.

We have generators at our key sites, and these are maintained and tested regularly to mitigate the risk of power cuts. In addition, we have UPS units (uninterruptible power systems) across the estate to protect our IT networks and users from the effect of short-term power outages.

Defra also participates in business continuity exercises such as Exercise Mighty Oak, which was run earlier this year by the Cabinet Office to test the Government’s response to a national power outage.