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Protection of Critical Infrastructure

If my hon. Friend will bear with me, I will come to that point in a moment. First, however, it is important to explain the contextual background that brings us to where we are today. The EPCIP communication sets out a voluntary framework, including an EU action plan, support for the national protection programmes, and extensive research funded from the €137 million financial perspective. The draft directive provides the one binding aspect of the programme, establishing a uniform approach to identifying and designating European critical infrastructure and assessing the need to improve protection standards. For this process, the directive considers critical infrastructures to be essential service providers and certain hazardous sites with the potential for cross-border impact. The programme as a whole offers EU-wide benefits, and will therefore also benefit the UK. I will come to the point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Luton, North (Kelvin Hopkins) in a moment. Events such as the power failure in Germany demonstrate that any country could be significantly affected by incidents in other member states. We need to understand that, with more than 1.6 million UK citizens living in other EU countries and relying on the critical infrastructures of those member states, we have a vested interest in ensuring that there are high standards of protection in those countries as well as our own. We must also bear in mind the broader point about the activities of British business interests in the European Union. As the motion implies, however, while the Government note the documents, our support for their adoption is subject to the satisfactory resolution of outstanding concerns with certain elements of the directive, which we are trying to resolve through negotiations in the civil protection working group in Brussels. Our concerns include the criteria for defining European critical infrastructure, the absence of the consent clause that appeared in earlier drafts, the security of information provided as part of the protection of national infrastructure, and the imposition of legal requirements for owners and operators to produce operator security plans and appoint security liaison officers. Our concern about the designation of European critical infrastructure is to ensure, as my hon. Friend has suggested, that only infrastructures that are truly European and critical are designated. Given that this is all about European critical infrastructure, it is entirely reasonable that the infrastructures should be critical and European, but we are having some difficulties with where the documents are at in that regard at the moment. In order to achieve a satisfactory outcome, the Government would like to tighten the criteria for defining European critical infrastructure. For example, we are seeking a definition based on a significant level of impact to Europe that would result from the destruction or disruption of the infrastructure. Early drafts of the proposed directive included references to member states providing their consent to infrastructures on their territory being designated as European critical infrastructure, but the consent clause does not appear in the present draft. The Government would prefer to see the inclusion of such a clause, to prevent the identification of European critical infrastructure in the United Kingdom that we do not believe is appropriate. This relates to the point raised by my hon. Friend. Such a move could allay some of our concerns arising from the proposed definition of European critical infrastructure and ensure that only truly critical infrastructure is covered, and that it would be truly European in the sense that its disruption would impact on three or more countries, which we think is the appropriate number.