(Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD): When Storm Arwen hit
Cumbria two years ago, many of our villages and other communities
lost electrical power for several days due to damaged power
cables. I know that that has happened to many communities over
the last few days. What progress have the Government made since
2021 to make Britain’s power infrastructure more resilient—for
example, by creating a national bank of mobile generators to
ensure that communities are not left cold, dark and vulnerable
for days on end? Have the people hit by Storm Babet benefited
from lessons learned from Storm Arwen, or are we no further
forward?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food
and Rural Affairs (): I would like to assure the
hon. Gentleman that DEFRA has been working closely with the
Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, which has a strategy
for exactly this issue, because it is critical that power outages
are considered when emergencies such as this take place.
Effective action was taken over the Rolls-Royce plants
in the Derbyshire area; that was a very effective alignment with
the Energy Department. Just as an aside, we work closely with the
water industry on preparedness, should there be electricity
outages, some of which might be linked to flooding. In fact,
there was another incident near Derby and it had a clear
management plan.
