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Scientific Advice (Emergencies)

I thank the hon. Gentleman who, in Chester, is my neighbour. He is always posing me challenging questions, but he makes a fascinating point. The threat to national security from cyber-attack is clearly as serious in the private sector as it is in the public sector, and probably more so. That is a great challenge. We cannot have a world in which everyone who worked in a bank would be security cleared to the level that the Minister's staff are—that is not realistic and it could not be done for every utility. That is why a extensive sharing of expertise across boundaries is necessary in the sector, to ensure that lessons from the public sector are learned in the private sector, and vice versa, including sharing information with academics. The hon. Member for City of Chester must recall one academic witness, a man who was held in extremely high regard by the current Government because he was party to writing a paper for them, when they were in opposition. He said that he did not want to be security cleared. So there are some interesting dichotomies. The Minister needs to contemplate that problem and, I hope, answer the challenging question posed by the hon. Gentleman. In that complex world, without becoming obsessed by security clearance for everyone on the planet, how do we improve information sharing and expertise in and out of and across the boundaries between the private and public sectors? Soon after the second volcanic ash event, when we were reflecting on the report and talking about some of the information, communication and technology issues, one of the officials said in a meeting I was at that, when the second volcano erupted, they reached for the Select Committee's report to see how to handle things. I know that that was intended to butter me up a little—I welcome it—but, all in all, the Committee has done a sound piece of work which I hope is taken on board by the Government. I hope that Members will agree that our inquiry on ““Scientific advice and evidence in emergencies”” continues to be pertinent to how disasters and emergencies, here or abroad, are handled by the Government. Last winter we had a resurgence of swine flu cases, and we are currently approaching the peak flu season this year again. This May there was another volcanic eruption, which affected our airspace briefly in Scotland and northern England. Severe weather is occurring more frequently, and last winter we had extraordinarily low temperatures that I do not recall having before. Also, as I said earlier, we are approaching the solar maximum. I do not want to scaremonger and create panic. What I want to do is to highlight the fact that the issue is live. With the right processes in place, and good use of scientific advice and evidence, emergencies can be planned for and effectively managed and information can be communicated to the public. We all in the House would agree that it is our responsibility, collectively, to handle situations such as the ones I have described in a manner that crosses the political divide. I hope that the Minister will agree that we can all learn lessons from each other and we need better ways of working with outside agencies, whether that is people responsible for communicating information to the public or experts who can provide information. I hope that the House will take note of our report and that the Government will act positively on the outstanding issues I have listed.