Ms Julie Minns

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Barker. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline and Dollar (Graeme Downie) for bringing us this important debate. In remote villages and communities such as mine, severe weather can often lead to prolonged power outages. Following Storm Arwen last year, one village in my Carlisle constituency was without electricity for five days. Data analysis found that the storm triggered a rapid, severe and sustained decline in mobile performance across all operators on a scale not seen before. Historically, when electricity networks were hit by power cuts, people could still rely on the old copper wire telephone network to remain in service. However, with the full retirement of the public switched telephone network scheduled for January next year, our communications infrastructure will become increasingly dependent on digital fixed lines and mobile networks, both of which require power. That raises an important question about resilience. It is not difficult to imagine a scenario in which a prolonged power outage leads not only to the loss of electricity but to a telecommunications blackout. Mobile masts are currently required to have only one hour of back-up power, which is nowhere near sufficient when there is a real possibility of a multi-day outage. I recognise that mandating longer power back-up on every single mast would be disproportionate. A more proportionate response would be to require mobile network operators to maintain a fleet of mobile electricity generators that could be towed to mast sites to restore power while the electricity network is repaired. With extreme weather events becoming more frequent and intense as the climate warms, I believe that the UK’s preparedness for national weather-related emergencies requires the Government and Ofcom to look again at the adequacy of the current regulatory requirements for power back-up to mobile masts.