Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what recent assessment she has made about the [i] relevance and [ii] effectiveness of the current level of threshold for the use of the national emergency alerts system.

All Emergency Alerts must meet an agreed set of criteria for use. Those criteria were met on the 14th August. On the day the Alert was issued, the National Fire Chiefs Council reported 43 active fires and 11 major incidents nationwide. Mutual aid was in play, with fire and rescue services across the country supporting each other. In south Wales, the military had been deployed to tackle major wildfires.

We took the decision working with fire and rescue services on the ground, in response to the latest understanding of the risk picture.

Encouragingly, in the 72 hours following the Emergency Alert, the Chair of the National Fire Chiefs Council Phil Garrigan noted there was a reduction in the number of wildfires. The Alert was effective in heightening the public’s awareness of the risk affecting the country.

The government remains ready to deploy the capability at short-notice in response to risks that pose a danger to life, including but not limited to flooding, severe weather and wildfires.