Scotland Office written question – answered at on 29 October 2025.
John Hayes
Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings
To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland, what steps his Department is taking to ensure that critical services continue to run in the event of a major internet outage.
Kirsty McNeill
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Scotland
Government has a robust set of policies in place to ensure there are well-defined and tested incident management processes in place, and to ensure continuity of essential functions in the event of system or service failure.
The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology will publish the Government Cyber Action Plan this Winter, which will set out a clear approach for the Government and the Wider Public Sector to manage cyber security and resilience incidents.
The Scotland Office uses the information technology system provided and operated by the Cabinet Office, which has responsibility for all hardware and software procurement, administration, support maintenance, security, and integrity of the system.
We work closely with the Cabinet Office to understand the range of possible impacts from short to long term outage or disruption and to minimise the likelihood, impact, or time and cost of recovery. Measures to respond to major internet outages are built into our Business Continuity Planning.
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Secretary of State was originally the title given to the two officials who conducted the Royal Correspondence under Elizabeth I. Now it is the title held by some of the more important Government Ministers, for example the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs.
The cabinet is the group of twenty or so (and no more than 22) senior government ministers who are responsible for running the departments of state and deciding government policy.
It is chaired by the prime minister.
The cabinet is bound by collective responsibility, which means that all its members must abide by and defend the decisions it takes, despite any private doubts that they might have.
Cabinet ministers are appointed by the prime minister and chosen from MPs or peers of the governing party.
However, during periods of national emergency, or when no single party gains a large enough majority to govern alone, coalition governments have been formed with cabinets containing members from more than one political party.
War cabinets have sometimes been formed with a much smaller membership than the full cabinet.
From time to time the prime minister will reorganise the cabinet in order to bring in new members, or to move existing members around. This reorganisation is known as a cabinet re-shuffle.
The cabinet normally meets once a week in the cabinet room at Downing Street.
