Speeches by Downie.

“You have answered some of the questions I was about to ask, but I want to go back to something Gordon was talking about earlier when it comes to avoiding a rocket-and-feather effect. In my own patch in Dunfermline, we see that prices are already 4p to 5p a litre higher than even a few miles down the road. Would it not …”

“Do you work with the National Cyber Security Centre as part of the exercises that you both described?”

“To be honest, that would be my larger concern. A large attack on one thing is easier to spot. It is much easier to assign blame, frankly, and it would have larger global consequences. Small distributed attacks may not immediately look like an attack.”

“What more do the Government need to do to help you do that?”

“And why?”

“You have just picked up the next point, actually. Maybe I will ask Dan and Ana to pick that up. I am thinking about what co-operation we need to have with allies, whether it is Norway or the Netherlands, and who pays for this. Dan, you say you have done a lot of work in this area generally, but are there things you wan…”

“That does not really help if there are two retailers that are essentially controlling the prices in an area.”

“And why?”

“Is that co-ordinated with the Ministry of Defence and other Departments?”

“Does the acceleration of these things include the oil and gas price mechanism that we heard about from the earlier panel? They may not be entirely enjoying the detail, but they would like to see it happen much more quickly. Are you in discussions with Treasury about how fast that can be done?”

“Do you work with the National Cyber Security Centre as part of the exercises that you both described?”

“Is that co-ordinated with the Ministry of Defence and other Departments?”

“What would you like to see that guidance say? What should the role be of Government in that? What should that guidance say and how strong would it be? How do you assess the current threat?”

“Which Department is that?”

“I want to develop some of the points that Lizzi has just been talking about around defence and energy security. Dan, I am aware that you just had to answer all of that. I will come back to something with you around cyber in a second, but to David and Ana in particular, given the threats that we see from both physical a…”

“Which Department is that?”

“There are other sectors to approach. I would suggest perhaps the NFU, certainly in Scotland. Those I met yesterday raised that very briefly with me as part of a much larger conversation.”

“Thank you, Minister, for your patience this afternoon, given that we are running late. I would like to go back to some of the points that the Chair was making at the beginning when he was talking about the energy price cap. We have heard Government use the rhetoric of “whatever it takes”, which is a phrase that you use…”

“Can I ask you to elaborate on some of that? The action on heating oil, for example, is very welcome. You have previously talked about how the energy price cap gives time and space to see how it plays out and where we end up through a monitoring period. What are the other areas that you currently see as priorities to do…”

“Does the acceleration of these things include the oil and gas price mechanism that we heard about from the earlier panel? They may not be entirely enjoying the detail, but they would like to see it happen much more quickly. Are you in discussions with Treasury about how fast that can be done?”