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Protection of Critical Infrastructure

My right hon. Friend points to a matter that I hope will be thoroughly negotiated out of these documents by the Minister. [Interruption.] The Minister says from a sedentary position that my right hon. Friend is wrong. Well, my right hon. Friend has referred directly to the document in question. [Interruption.] He is now holding it up for the Minister’s edification. I shall allow my right hon. Friend and the Minister to have private discussions behind the Speaker’s Chair, but the point that my right hon. Friend makes is entirely valid. There are assets and infrastructures that we own nationally and there are assets and infrastructures that we jointly own or in respect of which we are tenants in common through, for example, NATO and certain aspects of the EU, and which should not become the subject of open-air discussion. It alarms me to think that our foreign policy and our counter-terrorism policy might be subjected to debate or decision of the ECJ, and I trust that that also alarms the Minister. As I have said, it is suggested in the documents that a European plan for critical infrastructure protection should be drawn up and that it should identify, among other things, critical infrastructure and produce a common approach to its protection and information sharing. That is of relevance to the point my right hon. Friend made a moment ago. I might have misunderstood the nature of EU critical infrastructure while at the same time having a clear understanding of the delicate nature of our own national infrastructure, but it seems to me—I do not mean to sound complacent, as no one could be so given the attacks on our country over the past 40 years—that as we are an island we might have some geographical protection from attacks on other EU states’ water systems, electricity grids, telephone and communications systems and key Government services. That point is not a case of relying on the sentiment behind the pre-war London newspaper headline, ““Fog over channel: Europe cut off””, but I understand that in continental Europe other factors might apply. The Benelux countries, France and Germany, France and Italy, France and Spain and the Baltic countries—to give just a few obvious examples—will have integrated infrastructures that far outstretch the examples that apply to the United Kingdom, such as the channel tunnel, the shipping traffic between the UK and Europe, and the services shared by Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. The hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk mentioned the channel tunnel. It is a subject that will cause some debate. From one point of view the channel tunnel looks like a bilateral infrastructure between France and the UK, but the manufacturers of, for example, Belgium, Italy or Spain who wish to export goods from their country to ours via road or rail might say that it affects more than two countries within the EU, and that therefore it is an EU infrastructure asset which ought to come under the control of the directives. I foresee endless discussion in dark committee rooms in Europe of such matters. Of course we know that attacks on food supplies, or attacks on, or interference with, the internet and electronic communication systems or the banking and financial sectors at a strategic level can have a cross-border effect, regardless of whether they are the result of terrorist activity or natural causes such as storms and floods. To destroy the London stock exchange is to damage the global trade in financial instruments; to poison the Rhine is to damage the natural environment—river, sea and land based—in many countries; and to corrupt the immigration authorities of one member state will have a knock-on effect on other EU states. However, I question whether we need to raise the need for sensible, thoughtful, well planned international co-operation at a multilateral or bilateral level to the level of having an EU institution with all the expenditure, directives, regulations and bureaucracy—and infrastructure—that these documents urge upon us. How, for example, do we define whether a particular piece of infrastructure is critical to the EU as a whole, or to at least two states, or only to one? We cannot do that without creating endless directives following endless committee meetings in several locations, at which the representatives of member state Governments and the Commission argue about whether country A’s sewerage system is of European significance whereas country B’s telephone system is only of national significance. The documents tell us that EPCIP"““will be an ongoing process””." We need have no doubt of that. We are also told that its action plan will have three work streams, that there will be a critical infrastructure warning information network or CIWIN, and that there will be expert groups. There will be a CIP—critical infrastructure protection—information-sharing process and an identification of interdependencies. There will be national critical infrastructures, contingency planning and an external dimension, and there will be an ““all hazard”” approach—which would be a fitting description of the present jostling for the leadership and deputy leadership of the Labour party. There is no doubt that those matters, when stripped of the jargon, are sensible things to think about and deal with, but I am concerned that we should not as a country or a Government allow ourselves to be distracted with yet further EU navel gazing when we have plenty to do at home to provide better national security of all types and when there is so much that we can do bilaterally and multilaterally in discrete areas to protect our vital infrastructures. Terrorism, even outside the confines of the Crevice trial, is universally to be condemned and all of us, in and out of the EU, must take steps to prevent it and to create conditions that do not allow it to thrive or to take hold. However, we should not allow these documents and the policies that lie behind them to dilute our resources and efforts, no matter that we are acutely aware that an approach that goes beyond terrorism is in other jurisdictions appropriate, and more immediately so. Our primary, if not our total, focus must be on counter-terrorism and on protecting our constitutional framework, national institutions and liberties, as citizens of this parliamentary democracy. We must have the confidence to realise and understand that, despite the attacks we have seen from the IRA, al-Qaeda and so-called animal rights activists, the systems of Government, Parliament and local authorities and our emergency and public services are resilient and robust and, more importantly, democratically accountable. I do not denigrate the motives behind the policies outlined in these documents, but I do question their utility. I urge the Government to be strong in their EU discussions, and to ensure that we arrive at a scheme that is relevant, proportionate and cost-effective. The concerns outlined by the Minister, which we share, should be taken on board by his counterparts when he travels to Europe to meet them.