According to the Joint Committee on National Security Strategy (JCNSS), the government needs to do much more to improve the resilience of critical infrastructure to the ravages of climate change.
The committee warns of “an alarming lack of government action” and calls for the appointment of a minister for infrastructure resilience.
“We have unfortunately uncovered an extreme weakness at the centre of government on a critical risk to the UK’s national security,” it says.
In its report, Readiness for storms ahead? Critical national infrastructure in an age of climate change*, published today, the JCNSS writes: “The evidence is overwhelming that the effects of climate change on our critical national infrastructure are already significant, and are set to worsen substantially under all reasonable climate change scenarios. Buckling train lines, flooding of major infrastructure sites, landslides and power outages are all realistic outcomes. They may also happen simultaneously, causing multiple cascading effects across different infrastructure sectors. The scale of the challenge facing government, operators and regulators is clear: there is an urgent need to adapt our infrastructure to the potentially rapid effects of climate change.”
The committee is comprised of MPs from different parties and members of the House of Lords.
They write: “During the course of our inquiry, the UK experienced major weather events such as Storm Arwen, including extensive power outages and a knock-on effect on communications. We concluded our inquiry in the midst of an unprecedented heatwave, taking evidence from government ministers and officials while the country faced significant rail disruptions, flight delays and power cuts. These events have moved climate adaptation more firmly into the public eye and demonstrated that poor adaptation poses a threat to UK national security, but they have also shone a light on an alarming lack of government action in this vital area.”
The report criticised the lack of cross-government co-operation and planning on the issue.
“The UK’s critical national infrastructure (CNI) is fundamental to the smooth running of the economy and of society. It is becoming increasingly interconnected, and all CNI sectors are heavily reliant on a stable energy supply….Yet we have found very little join-up between CNI sectors, with no formal mechanism for collaboration or information-sharing on interdependencies. This has resulted in some worrying near misses and an apparent lack of planning and foresight.”
There is also criticism for delay in publishing the planned National Resilience Strategy.
“In 2020, the National Infrastructure Commission (NIC) made strong, evidence based recommendations to improve CNI regulation in relation to resilience, which would have been highly applicable to CNI operators’ preparations for climate change. Unfortunately, the government has delayed implementation of these reforms until its National Resilience Strategy (NRS) is published. The NRS itself has been delayed several times, despite being a key commitment of the Integrated Review over 18 months ago. The costs of failure are extremely high, as demonstrated by the fatal rail accident near Stonehaven in 2020; these ongoing delays to implementation are therefore extremely unfortunate.”
The JCNSS says that someone in government needs to be given specific responsible for tackling these concerns.
The report says: “We recommend that the government establishes a minister of state for CNI resilience and a team within the Cabinet Office to focus on this issue, across a range of national security threats and hazards. To drive forward this work across departments, the government should also re-establish a ministerial committee on resilience, following the recent abolition of the National Security Council and its sub-committees (including the resilience sub-committee of National Security Ministers).”
In fact there is supposedly a minister in the Cabinet Office with responsibility for CNI resilience already, but he refused to meet the committee.
The report notes: “Instead of making the resilience of CNI a priority, the then minister for the Cabinet Office – self-described as the minister for CNI resilience – simply refused to give oral evidence to us on this topic, despite having submitted two pieces of written evidence. This acknowledgment of his lack of command of this issue – the reason given for his refusal – was in itself shocking, and suggests a severe dereliction of duty on the part of the government. It appears that no minister is taking responsibility for this topic, and there are no cross-Cabinet committees driving forward the government’s work on adaptation and CNI resilience.”
* Readiness for storms ahead? Critical national infrastructure in an age of climate change – First report of the Joint Committee on National Security Strategy, published 27th October 2022, is available at publications.parliament.uk
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