Michael Shanks

I have spoken to colleagues across the Department on these questions. They are rightly constantly looking at how we review our processes. Importantly, they are also working outside of Government and trying to break down some of the silos, so we are co-ordinating with different parts of Government that have different responsibilities. But the right hon. Member is right, and we will constantly push to do more of that. The question of exercises is important. We had a really significant exercise under the previous Government, which looked at the Government’s response to a significant power outage. We are putting in place many of the recommendations from that exercise, which are important to take forward, but more exercise is useful. I would slightly separate the response from the infrastructure itself failing, which is what we need to investigate quickly. The Kelly review set out that Heathrow’s response to the incident was in line with its response plan. Although the outcome was clearly not what any of us would have wanted, it goes to a wider question about the infrastructure at Heathrow, not so much the actual plan put in place when the incident did occur. Those are two slightly different things, but they are both extremely important.