Ian Murray

The banking sector is obviously in the regulators’ scope for cyber-security, and there have been a number of outages, as my hon. Friend mentions. The general principle is that cyber-attacks no longer come in through the front door, but through third parties and suppliers. We have seen that, for example, in the recent incidents at Heathrow and in cloud outages with Amazon Web Services and other such companies. They are covered by their own regulations. As I said in answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Lichfield (Dave Robertson) about Jaguar Land Rover, those companies will not be in the scope of the Bill, but we hope that the financial services sector, which is a leader in cyber-security for a whole host of fairly obvious reasons, will take that forward. The recent attacks on British icons such as Marks & Spencer and Jaguar Land Rover will loom large in people’s minds. Many Members across the Chamber have already mentioned them. Supply chains were thrown into chaos, with small businesses paying the price, which clearly shows the ripple effect across the economy—on other businesses, smaller businesses and patients, such as in the public service examples mentioned earlier—when one part of the system is attacked. We are clear that all businesses—that covers financial services, Jaguar Land Rover, Marks & Spencer and others—must take immediate steps to protect themselves. That is why, in October, members of the Cabinet wrote to the FTSE 350 companies urging them to strengthen their defences by doing three things: first, to make cyber risk a board priority; secondly, to require suppliers to have a cyber essentials certificate; and thirdly to sign up to the early warning service. That was followed by a similar letter to entrepreneurs and small businesses in November with bespoke advice for smaller teams. We know that those actions work. Organisations with cyber essentials are 92% less likely to claim on cyber insurance than those that do not. Businesses know best how to protect themselves; we are not here to regulate for the sake of regulating. Government are taking action too. As I announced this morning, the Government cyber action plan sets a radically new model for how Government will strengthen their cyber-resilience and is backed by over £210 million of investment. Government Departments will be held to standards equivalent to those set out in the Bill. That is why the public sector and the Government are not included in the scope of the Bill. The Government should not need to legislate for themselves; we should just get on with making sure that we are leading the charge and that the cyber action plan strengthens the Government’s cyber-resilience. [Interruption.] I do not know if that was an attempt at an intervention from the Opposition Front Bench, but I am happy to take it.