Storm Arwen: Power Outages

Grahame Morris Excerpts

Monday 6th December 2021 Commons Chamber

[Greg Hands]

I thank my hon. Friend for his invaluable assistance on Friday in Aberdeenshire. I do not think he and I will ever forget meeting the engineers who had been working up to 17-hour shifts just outside of Kemnay. They had been at that all week, including with help from right across the UK. My hon. Friend makes a very good point about the communications network. We have become more dependent on electricity and networks. I am sure that that will be part of the review to see what lessons might be learned and whether there can be other ways to approach the communications problem in future.

[Grahame Morris (Easington) (Lab)]

I might be able to enlighten the Minister, given his earlier comments about Met Office warnings, because we need to give it some credit: it was right on the ball originally about Storm Arwen regarding the wind strength, the timings and the wind direction. It has issued two warnings today, Minister, that tomorrow—7 December—Storm Barra will bring strong winds and snow to my constituency and further north.

Storm Arwen and the response have exposed the deep north-south divide in this country. Individuals and communities in my constituency—I have not had any ministerial visits—have been left without support for over a week. It took five days for the Secretary of State to make a statement, and he did not do that willingly. It was only after multiple requests through the Speaker from Members on both sides of the House from Monday onwards that the Secretary of State came to make a statement, and it took five days for a major incident to be declared. It is too easy to put all the blame on Northern Powergrid and poor comms. At every level, be it the Minister’s Department, local government, the resilience forum or Northern Powergrid, questions must be asked, and I believe that a public inquiry is the only independent and fair way to assess the whole scandal and hold all those involved accountable. Will he support a public inquiry?

[Greg Hands]

I appreciate the hon. Gentleman’s comments as a local MP, but I reject absolutely his allegation of some kind of north-south divide. The response was very swift from the engineers, and that was the most important part of the response. As I mentioned, 630 engineers came from across the UK. I put on record my thanks to Western Power Distribution—117 came from western England and Wales—to Northern Ireland Electricity Networks, which sent 26 engineers, to the Isle of Man, and to the Electricity Supply Board in the Republic of Ireland, which sent 27.

The NEWSAC process started on the Friday before the storm came in. Obviously, time is needed to see the impact of the storm and where the engineers should be deployed from and to. Simply a forecast that a big storm is coming does not, in any sense, give a prediction of where the damage that will need to be repaired will be. The NEWSAC process is the right one. I have confidence in that and I want to minute again my thanks to the engineers from right across the United Kingdom who helped out by doing the incredibly difficult job of restoring and sometimes rebuilding—in Weardale, I saw a whole process of rebuilding the power line. We cannot underestimate the difficulty and very intensive nature of that job, particularly at a time of poor weather.