Cyber Security and Resilience (Network and Information Systems) Bill (Fifth sitting)
New clauses 6 and 7 sit together and are linked by the same practical concern regarding clarity and workability when an incident is unfolding. I will start with new clause 6. Ransomware is no longer an occasional or unusual cyber-event; it is now one of the most common and disruptive threats facing essential services, digital providers and their supply chains. Written evidence to this Committee was clear that ransomware incidents are now routine, high-impact events, and that uncertainty at the outset of an attack often makes the consequences worse. The Bill rightly broadens the definition of an incident to capture events that are capable of causing harm, not just those that already have. That is the right direction of travel, but when organisations are under pressure, particularly in the first 24 hours of an incident, uncertainty slows action. Time is lost debating definitions rather than focusing on containment, escalation and reporting. New clause 6 addresses that problem directly. It makes it explicit that a ransomware attack is an incident for the purposes of the NIS regulations, and sets out clearly what is meant by ransomware attack. It would not create a new duty; it would remove doubt from an existing one. Clear definitions support better behaviour when organisations are operating under real pressure. New clause 7 follows naturally from that point. If we want faster and clearer reporting, the system into which organisations are reporting has to work in practice, not just on paper. The Bill expands reporting requirements and introduces new notification duties. That is understandable, but UK Finance told the Committee that many firms already support cyber-incidents under multiple regulatory regimes and that additional reporting layers risk duplication rather than resilience. When an incident is live, that duplication causes friction, slows the response and increases costs. It can reduce the quality of information being shared because teams are stretched across parallel processes rather than focused on managing the incident itself. We do not seek in new clause 7 to reopen the policy intent of the Bill; the new clause would require a review, once these changes are in force, of how the reporting requirements are working in practice. That review would consider costs and interactions with other reporting frameworks. The new clause would also require that proposals for a single cyber-incident reporting channel be published. That is not a bureaucratic exercise; it reflects concerns raised in evidence that resilience is undermined, not strengthened, when reporting becomes fragmented at moments of stress. Taken together, new clauses 6 and 7 are about making the system clearer at the front end and more usable overall. Clear definitions encourage timely reporting and coherent reporting channels make that reporting effective. I hope that the Committee will give serious consideration to both new clauses.