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National Security

My Lords, I welcome this timely and balanced Statement. In particular, I am delighted that so many of the issues raised in the work that I led in relation to the Metropolitan Police Authority—it involved consulting Londoners over a year—have been addressed in it. I also welcome the emphasis on the prevention of violent extremism; that is why it is so important to balance extra measures on security with measures that will reach into the different communities around the United Kingdom. Did the review look at the issues around the electronic security of the critical national infrastructure in view of, for example, evidence of state-sponsored cyber-attacks on a number of countries and of the very high technological and IT knowledge of some of those who have been arrested in respect of terrorist matters in this country? Is my noble friend satisfied that the Centre for the Protection of National Infrastructure—which I understand is not a statutory body—has sufficient powers to require that those organisations that constitute our national infrastructure are properly protected electronically against cyber-attack?