Chris Bryant

I will not give way for the moment; I want to make a few points first, if that is okay. It was also preposterous to me that still very few people had any understanding of what was happening in their own home and that most operators had no proper connection with a list of vulnerable patients or customers, despite the fact that local authorities, health boards and a whole series of other public sector bodies have precisely that information. As I said, the very first thing I did was to stamp my foot and we got everybody round the table—I think it was in July last year, and we had another meeting later in September. I was forceful with all the operators in this field. First, I wanted to make sure that every single local authority was written to and told that they must provide that list of vulnerable customers to the operators. They started saying things about GDPR and I said, “No, you know perfectly well that we are able to get round these issues for this specific purpose.” Secondly, I was trying to make sure that there was much greater resilience in the system—the point that several Members have made. Thirdly, of course the Ofcom rules say batteries only need to have one hour of back-up, but it is not just Vodafone that offers more than that; BT, KCOM and Zen Internet have all announced, following discussions I had with them back in September and November, that they will now have a battery power of between four and seven hours. Of course, that is not perfect—if there is a flood or something that will knock out the systems for several days—but that is when other resilience measures from local authorities really need to kick in. I have acted in all those different areas from the beginning. I say this as gently as I can to the former Minister, the right hon. Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds): the briefing that I had was that previous Ministers were utterly complacent in this area, and that is why I was determined to act.