The joint committee on national security strategy has said that UK ministers are failing to act with “a meaningful sense of purpose or urgency.”

The comments come amid rising fears of a catastrophic cyber attack on the UK’s critical infrastructure, which is considered to be a top-tier threat.

The committee believes the UK is lagging behind other foreign countries in terms of cybersecurity, while countries such as Russia are expanding their capability to mount disruptive cyber attacks the ministerial oversight at home was “wholly inadequate.”

Comprised of senior MPs and Peers, the committee called upon the Prime Minister to urgently appoint a cybersecurity minister in cabinet to take charge and be a driving force behind building-up the nation’s cyber resilience. Additionally, it urged the Government to prioritise the continued information-sharing and collaboration on cyber attacks with the EU during the Brexit negotiations.

It acknowledged that ministers had recognised the need to improve resilience but said their efforts to act upon it failed to match the risk, which could have potentially devastating consequences.

Identifiable Leadership Lacking

The committee said: “While we applaud the aspiration, it appears the Government is not delivering on it with a meaningful sense of purpose or urgency. Identifiable political leadership is lacking. There is little evidence to suggest a ‘controlling mind’ at the centre of government, driving change consistently across the many departments and CNI sectors involved.

“We are concerned that the current complex arrangements for ministerial responsibility mean that day-to-day oversight of cross-government efforts is, in reality, led by officials, with ministers only occasionally ‘checking in’. This is wholly inadequate to the scale of the task facing the government, and inappropriate in view of the Government’s own assessment that major cyber-attacks are a top-tier national security threat.”

Although the committee welcomed the establishment of the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) as the national technical authority, it raised concerns that resources being provided to the NCSC were inadequate. The committee stated that expectations of the NCSC of what it could achieve were “outstripping the resources put at its disposal”.

The committee asserted that the recent tightening of the regulatory regime “was not the Government’s own initiative but instead flows from our acceptance of EU-wide regulations.”

It added: “It appears that the Government is reluctant to move more forcefully and, by default, continues to rely on market forces to improve operators’ cyber resilience, despite recognising the previous failure of this approach.”

The committee’s chair, the former foreign secretary Margaret Beckett, said: “We are struck by the absence of political leadership at the centre of government in responding to this top-tier national security threat. Too often in our past the UK has been ill-prepared to deal with emerging risks. The government should be open about our vulnerability and rally support for measures which match the gravity of the threat to our critical national infrastructure.”