Undersea Cables

Lord Griffiths of Burry Port Excerpts

Thursday 8th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

The noble Lord raises an important point. As far at the Sunday Times report is concerned, I can say that the reporter was unable to access any secure section of the facility. The essential point about this is that there is resilience in the system. There are 11 landing sites, for example, for transatlantic cables, in different places. Because of the resilience of the system, when one particular cable is broken the system continues. As far as prosecution is concerned, most of the breaks in the cables—and there are a considerable number each year; about 30 to 40 each year—are as the result of accidents. That is why it is not normally necessary to prosecute. However, these are civil actions because the cables belong to individual companies. It is up to them to seek damages.

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)]

My Lords, the DCMS is a wondrous part of our governing system; within it, so many amazing things come together for consideration. I had not realised until looking at this Question that 97% of global communications come via cables, when I had fondly imagined that satellites took up a lot more than that. But my question is to ask why a Question that relates to security is being handled by the DCMS at all. I have come to enjoy the company of the Minister and to admire his competence across such a wide range of fields of interest, but perhaps he can reassure the House that the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport will indeed be in the closest possible relationship to the Department of Defense to reassure us on the questions of security as maintained in this Question.

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

My Lords, I am speechless. The reason why DCMS is answering this Question is that we are responsible for co-ordinating the resilience of the telecoms sector in the UK. Telecoms is one of the UK’s 13 critical sectors and we are in close touch with other departments, particularly the Home Office, which is responsible for GCHQ, and the Ministry of Defence. I am not the only Minister who has answered on this; in December my noble friend Lord Howe answered a similar Question.