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National Security: Infrastructure

Answer

Defence is continuing to work closely with the Cabinet Office and other Critical National Infrastructure (CNI) Lead Government Departments to deliver the Strategic Defence Review recommendations for a new deal for the protection of CNI.

Defence recognises that effective protection of the UK’s CNI requires close partnership between Government, industry and international allies. Communicating the threat and risk to the private sector is key in ensuring the protection of the UK's CNI and mitigating the impact of any potential hostile activity. Lead Government Departments for the CNI sectors maintain regular engagement with industry, while Government provides advice and support to CNI operators through the expertise of the National Technical Authorities.

We are also working across Government to take a data-driven approach to identifying the CNI most essential to the UK’s ability to sustain and respond to conflict. By contributing Defence data to the Cabinet Office's CNI Knowledge Base, we are fulfilling the commitments set out in the Resilience Action Plan and improving our understanding of the infrastructure, dependencies and vulnerabilities that would be most critical in a conflict scenario.

This analysis is informing our Home Defence planning by ensuring that we align Defence resources and capabilities to the protection of the most important infrastructure against a broad spectrum of threats, from hybrid activity through to conventional conflict. It will also help to identify what Defence could contribute to support the protection of other priority CNI that is essential to the functioning of the country.

Secondary information

Type

Written question

Reference

21617

Session

2026-27

Related items

Deposited Paper DEP2025-0341
Monday, 2 June 2025
Deposited papers
House of Commons

Subjects

Infrastructure Private sector National security

Link

View this Written question on www.parliament.uk