6 Responsibility in Government
87. The House of Commons Science and Technology
Committee held an inquiry last year into "scientific advice
and evidence in emergencies". One of its case studies for
the inquiry was severe space weather. Its Report recommended that
a Lead Government Department be identified specifically in relation
to severe space weather. The Committee suggested this would be
announced alongside the 2011 edition of the National Risk Register,
which has yet to be published. It noted:
A severe space weather event could have impacts cutting
across Departments' responsibilities and therefore coordination
is important in preparation for a potential emergency. We note
with concern that the Royal Academy of Engineering has stated
"there is little indication of any coordination across Government.
[87]
88. In the course of our inquiry we have found
it difficult to establish the lines of responsibility in relation
to this matter. The Cabinet Office handles civil contingencies,
and its Centre for the Protection of National Infrastructure (CPNI)
has responsibility for providing "integrated security advice
(combining information, personnel and physical) to organisations
which make up the national infrastructure."[88]
However, the CPNI's website does not list space weather or EMP
threats as particular concerns. Energy security as a whole lies
within the Department for Energy and Climate Change, terrorism
within the Home Office, and the use of and defence against such
potentially devastating weapons within the MoD. As a result our
witness panels were drawn from several Departments and there was
more than usual difficulty in assembling them. We are grateful
to those who, like the Chief Scientific Adviser, altered their
diaries at short notice to accommodate us.
89. Asked where responsibility would lie should
there be a severe EMP event, Dr Kerridge of the British Geological
Survey responded "the difficulty here is identifying a lead
Department that would take responsibility for the overall risk.
There probably not only one, because it goes across MoD, transport
and, for the National Grid, DECC. That is a difficulty."[89]
He added:
In terms of the SEIEG [Space Environments Impact
Expert Group] we have self-organised and said "this is an
important issue", in a sense we need a customer to tell is
to do the work. At the moment we are working on the basis of "we
think it is a good idea and we ought to co-ordinate". Of
course there will be difficulties to the extent to which, say,
the private sector remains in something that is not driven in
some way by government.[90]
90. For the Government, asked which Government
department would take the lead in the event of a severe electro-magnetic
storm, natural or man-made, John Tesh said:
If we are talking about what we would call a level
2 crisis, which is one where the impacts are widely spread, then
the action moves into the Cabinet Office Briefing Rooms—COBR—and
one of the functions of the Civil Contingencies Secretariat would
be to advise the Prime Minister on who he should appoint as the
lead Government Minister for that crisis. Ordinarily, we would
have pre-identified Government Ministers, depending on the nature
of the crisis, and the main criterion is where the largest impact
falls. So if this was something which largely hit the electricity
generating industry and sector, then DECC would probably be the
person in the frame. If it was something that affected communications
rather more, then another Government Minister would be identified.
If it is entirely unclear who should be in the lead, then there
is a system for appointing a Minister without departmental responsibility,
simply to come in and deal with that particular crisis.
The system is well rehearsed, and usually functions
on the basis of pre-identified lead Government Ministers. In the
case of space weather, we have yet to get to that point, because
we have been doing a lot of work with SEIEG—the group that
Sir John Beddington was talking about—to identify exactly
what the impacts of a severe space weather event would be. When
we have done that work, we will be looking to identify lead Government
Ministers either overall or, as is perhaps more likely in this
case, for particular aspects of the crisis. Then we will have
the whole thing pre-identified. As it is, we will be working off
the evidence that we have received so far to identify any Government
Minister.[91]
He hoped that a lead Department would be identified
"within the next two or three months."[92]
91. Scientific advice would be co-ordinated by
the Chief Scientific Adviser. He said:
In the event that we move to some sort of Cabinet
Office Briefing Room response, because it is of that degree of
severity, I would put together a scientific advisory group in
emergencies, the acronym for which is SAGE. This would involve
the appropriate people from within Government, the list of Rutherford
Appleton, the Met Office and so on that I referred to, and some
of the chief scientific advisers—those from the MoD, DECC
and arguably Transport. It would also have some independent scientists
from industry and academia, who would be involved. SAGE would
then convene and questions would be posed by whoever is chairing
COBR at the time, and we would gather in emergency sessions. I
would bring the scientific advice, either on mitigation or, if
we had an alarm that a problem was coming, advice on how we would
deal with it. That mechanism is in place and it is truly cross-Government.[93]
When we suggested that the system appeared chaotic,
Charles Hendry, Minister of State at the Department of Energy
and Climate Change, replied "in my experience, this is one
of the most seamless examples of Government working, rather than
there being any sense of chaos in it".[94]
92. We are very concerned that
there appears to be no one Government Department identified to
take immediate lead responsibility should there be a severe space
weather event. It is not good enough to say that that will depend
on where the greatest impact fell. We support and reiterate the
recommendation of the House of Commons Science and Technology
Committee that the Government must urgently identify the Lead
Government Department for space weather events as a matter of
priority. We expect the National Security Council to play a major
role in this.
87 Science and Technology Committee, Scientific
Advice and Evidence in Emergencies, para 40 Back
88
www.cpni.gov.uk Back
89
Q 54 Back
90
Ibid. Back
91
Q 83 Back
92
Q 89 Back
93
Q 84 Back
94
Q 88 Back
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