Former MI6 chief Sir Richard Dearlove has warned that Britain is perilously close to an energy security “cliff edge”
Sir Richard Dearlove, the former Chief of MI6, warned that Britain’s energy policy had left the country dangerously exposed to hostile states and vulnerable to disruption.
Delivering the Global Warming Policy Foundation’s Annual Lecture on Wednesday evening, Sir Richard argued that Britain needed to rethink energy policy as a matter of national security.
In his lecture, entitled ‘Energy Security: Blowing in the Wind’, Sir Richard said that the UK’s approach to energy had been shaped too heavily by climate policy while failing to give sufficient weight to the strategic vulnerabilities created by dependence on foreign manufacturing, imported components and an increasingly weather-dependent electricity system.
He argued that Britain had already lost much of the industrial capacity needed to manufacture and repair critical infrastructure.
He said:
“We have as a nation negligently wandered close to a cliff edge and the adversaries I have described stand ready to help us over it.”
Sir Richard warned that Britain’s exposure was particularly concerning given the growing willingness of Russia and China to use economic, technological and infrastructural dependencies as instruments of geopolitical power.
He highlighted the vulnerability of undersea cables, pipelines and electricity interconnectors, as well as Britain’s dependence on foreign manufacturers for key components of the electricity grid.
He also argued that deindustrialisation had created a deeper strategic problem. Britain had lost not only industrial production but also much of the ability to rebuild its own energy infrastructure in an emergency:
“We have very little industry left to protect and we cannot rebuild non-existent industries which lie in foreign jurisdictions beyond our reach.”
Sir Richard called for the Government to develop a national ‘Grand Strategy’ for energy, identifying critical vulnerabilities and single points of failure and building greater resilience into the system.
He argued that national security should be treated as a legitimate consideration when implementing Net Zero, including through the introduction of national security exceptions to Net Zero where necessary.
He said:
“The first responsibility of government is the safety of the nation. However successive governments have forgotten this, and Britain is now caught in an energy trap, of its own making.”
His intervention came after a week in which the former MI6 chief had received significant national attention, including his reflections on the 9/11 attacks and warnings about the potential for China to exploit vulnerabilities in Britain’s electricity infrastructure.
Our Director, Lord Mackinlay of Richborough, said:
“Sir Richard brings a vital national security perspective to an energy debate that has been hijacked by our impractical and ideological obsession with Net Zero. He has identified critical vulnerabilities in our energy system that must be addressed as a matter of urgency.”