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By Sean Rayment
Britain is at risk from a “catastrophic” attack on its undersea cables that could trigger a complete civil collapse, a former defence chief has warned.
The scale of the threat facing the UK emerged during an investigation by Parliament’s Joint Committee on National Security.
Committee members were shocked to discover just how vulnerable the cables remain after a nine-month inquiry, according to one former defence chief.
The cables carry 95 per cent of Britain’s global data traffic and form the backbone of the digital economy.
However, MPs and peers were so concerned about alerting Russia to the most sensitive aspects of their findings that they took the highly unusual step of omitting them from their published report — released last month — and instead wrote directly to Sir Keir Starmer.
The disclosure was made by Lord Hutton, a former Labour defence secretary and one of the committee’s senior members.
Hutton said the sharp escalation of Russian aggression against NATO countries meant that “the game has changed and the level of threat has risen quite significantly”.
The Labour peer, who served as defence secretary under Gordon Brown, described the issue as “by far and away the thing that would keep me awake at night if I was still in government”.
“Undersea cables are now the most important part of our national infrastructure. Without them, we’d be propelled back almost into the dark ages,” Hutton said.
“The fundamentals of national life today would be at risk — how our health service operates, how our banking system operates.
“We’ve got to do much more than we’re currently doing, and it needs greater focus from government than it has so far.”
Speaking to The Times, Hutton added: “This is frontline defence territory now. It should be tattooed on the forehead of every civil contingency planner — ‘What about the cables?’”
The government must now assume “a worst-case scenario” in which President Putin could one day attempt a major attack on the cables in the opening phase of a new conflict with NATO, Hutton and the committee warned.
As well as crippling banks and the NHS, sabotaging multiple cables simultaneously could take down the internet and large parts of the retail and travel sectors — all within minutes.
Hutton said: “The biggest concern we had when we looked at our vulnerabilities is the financial services sector. Just imagine a country where you can’t access your bank account.
“You can’t get anything done. That’s a world of utter chaos, where civil order would hang by a thread if we don’t manage that properly.
“If you can’t pay your bills, your mortgage, access cash, buy food or fill your car with petrol — that would cause very significant problems: civil strife, law and order issues — because the entire fabric of our lives would begin to disintegrate, and it could happen literally just like that.”
Confirming the committee’s private letter to Starmer, Lord Hutton said it was intended “to highlight the real concerns that we have”.
He added: “The report is pretty hard-hitting and we’ve outlined the vulnerabilities starkly, but we certainly didn’t want to produce a sort of advertising brochure for our enemies to go hunting for targets.”
For years, government contingency planning focused on accidental cable damage caused by fishing trawlers or ship anchors.
But a series of recent acts of open Russian aggression have raised deep alarm. A major power line between Finland and Estonia was severed in December last year by the anchor of a Russia-linked oil tanker, Eagle S, in what was believed to be a deliberate act of sabotage by Moscow.
In January, a Royal Navy vessel was deployed to monitor the Russian spy ship Yantar, which spent several days positioned directly above transatlantic cables off the Cornish coast.
It was the second time in three months that Yantar, which is equipped with cable-cutting tools and two self-propelled submersibles, had entered British waters.
A total of 64 fibre-optic cables, insulated with steel and rubber, connect the UK to the US, mainland Europe and Africa. They run from four main hubs — Bude in Cornwall, Southwold in Suffolk, Margate in Kent and Southport in Merseyside.
Although repair ships are on standby, all are commercially owned. The committee discovered they could take up to 24 hours to leave port, and as long as 10 days to reach and repair cables in the Channel or Irish Sea — and up to a month in the Atlantic.
“There’s no doubt in our minds that what we have at the moment in terms of repair capacity isn’t good enough,” Hutton said.
He warned that the government has yet to fully grasp the immediacy of the threat. “Time is not on our side. We’ve got to crack on with this. We’ve got the next few years to solve this problem.
“My view is we should throw everything at it — the kitchen sink, the lot — to get it sorted.”
Hutton also called for an urgent injection of funding after the committee published a raft of recommendations to safeguard the cables.
These include the immediate purchase of a UK-owned repair ship, training Royal Navy personnel in cable repair, expanded monitoring and alert systems, stronger security at cable landing hubs, an update to the 140-year-old maritime legal framework, and increased interception of suspect vessels.
“We’re starting from ground zero in building a proper security strategy to protect this vital part of our infrastructure,” Hutton said.
“The government’s got to find the resources to do this properly. We’re not recommending a disproportionate cost — but some additional funding has to be found.”
The Joint Committee on National Security is made up of MPs and peers, including five former cabinet ministers — two of them ex-defence secretaries — as well as Lord Sedwill, the former cabinet secretary and national security adviser.
The committee clashed repeatedly with ministers during its evidence sessions, including one exchange with telecoms minister Chris Bryant, who accused members of being “unhelpfully apocalyptic”.
Hutton said the committee “had a profound disagreement with that comment”, adding: “A fundamental principle of civil contingency and defence planning is that you’ve got to assume the worst.
“It’s not a credible plan if you ignore the worst-case scenario and just deal with something you think you can manage.”
