Alex Ballinger

It a pleasure to follow the Liberal Democrat spokesperson, who raised a number of important points, particularly about Palantir operating in the national health service. I support this carry-over motion, which will allow Parliament to complete its work on legislation that is vital to our national security, our civil preparedness and our economic resilience. Having completed its Lords stages earlier this week, the Bill is now within reach of the statute book, and the need for its protections is increasingly urgent. Just yesterday, the chief executive of the National Cyber Security Centre warned us: “The cyber threat has increased faster than our defensive capabilities”. The threats are increasingly obvious. As the hon. Member for Harpenden and Berkhamsted (Victoria Collins) mentioned, this week, nine countries have been attacked; supermarket fridges were turned up to 50°C, ruining millions of pounds-worth of food. That comes on the back of attacks against French supermarkets only three weeks ago. The National Cyber Security Centre’s review describes Russian intelligence exploiting routers to target critical infrastructure, widespread disruption caused by Iranian proxies and the ever-expanding reach of Chinese cyber-espionage. These operations form a fast-evolving hybrid threat to our economy and the infrastructure on which our essential services depends. For those of us in the west midlands, last year’s attack on Jaguar Land Rover brought these threats right to our doorstep. Production lines ground to a halt, orders were disrupted and suppliers placed under crushing financial pressure. The cost of the attacks was estimated at £1.9 billion and while the Government responded quickly, providing a £1.5 billion loan to help sustain JLR and its supply chain, the best response and the best protection we can give businesses is prevention. JLR’s ordeal underscores the need for the Bill and the changes it makes to the 2018 framework, requiring IT service providers, data centres and other critical bodies to meet rigorous cyber-security standards, strengthening incident reporting and giving the Government the power to respond to national security threats. For Halesowen and the west midlands, these changes would boost the resilience of businesses, keeping them trading and production lines moving, and data centres and livelihoods secured, so I support the motion so that we can complete this legislation promptly and put its protections into practice as soon as possible.