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Protection of Critical Infrastructure

Well, there we are. I am sure that you are entirely right, Mr. Speaker. I shall endeavour to resist the urge to talk about parts of the infrastructure of this country, although we are a European member state and are affected by what is in the documents. The European Scrutiny Committee found the Minister’s written official response to the documents ““less than wholly reassuring””. It stated:"““In this connection, we recall that the European Council on 17 and 18 June 2004 called on the Council to prepare an overall strategy to enhance the protection of critical infrastructures ‘on the basis of a coordinated approach by the SG/HR5 and the Commission’. In circumstances where the role of the Council’s Counter-Terrorism Coordinator is not even mentioned in the Commission’s proposals, we find it open to question how far there has been any ‘coordinated’ approach of the kind referred to by the European Council…. As such, the measure is concerned essentially with national security and any internal market effects are, in our view, merely incidental. In our view, these incidental economic effects cannot be relied on to justify Community involvement in the maintenance of national security.””" It seems to all of us, I suspect, that attacks on our infrastructure do not simply constitute natural disasters such as floods and storms, or the pollution of main freshwater or sea water channels. We are talking about attacks on infrastructure in its widest sense—the definition given in the documents. I will not pursue my discussion of the lessons that the House could learn from the 2005 terrorist attacks, because that would fall outside your ruling, Mr. Speaker, but I ask Members—and particularly the Minister when he goes to Europe to have further discussions—to keep in the back of their minds when addressing this matter what I would have said. I had intended to say that the matters that I may not discuss are of relevance to the matters before us today, as no discussion of critical infrastructure in the European context can avoid the real and present threat to our own infrastructure and the imperative for this Government to take all necessary steps to maintain it, to protect it, to repair it and, in so far as its degradation will affect our EU neighbours, to ensure that we liaise and co-operate effectively with them to plan for that contingency. Not all EU states have been attacked by terrorists, but several have. Not all EU states have a growing number of immigrants from countries, societies and traditions that find our institutions, societal norms and national characteristics strange and even inimical, but several do. Not all EU states play a world, extra-European or extra-regional role in trading, diplomatic and military terms to the extent that our country does, but all of them, no matter how large or small, are potentially vulnerable to attacks on their infrastructures, and both individually and collectively we must pay heed to the attacks that we have endured over the past 40 years, in order to prepare for yet further attacks and be in a position to deal with them. In respect of such attacks, it is not a question of if, but of when. We would be foolish not to have contingency plans in place. However, the documents imply a yet further increase in EU competence over the affairs of member states. The hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk and his Committee have done us a signal service by introducing this debate. In an intervention on the Minister, the hon. Gentleman referred pointedly—and with relevance and accuracy, which the Government should acknowledge—to crucial issues relating to qualified majority voting and absolute majorities in respect of the subject we are discussing. My right hon. Friend the Member for Wells, who was one of the two negotiators on behalf of this Parliament on the future of the EU, is only too well aware of such issues. European critical infrastructure—ECI—degradation is covered by the proposals; the EU should govern matters if at least two members are affected, it is said. It is suggested that a European plan for critical infrastructure protection—EPCIP—should be drawn up which will identify, among other things, critical infrastructure and produce a common approach to its protection and information sharing.