1800s law must be updated to protect the UK’s ‘backbone’ of undersea cables and pipelines

Britain’s hidden backbone – the undersea fibre-optic cables and gas pipelines that carry almost all the nation’s data and energy – is finally getting a 21st-century shield. A law dating to 1885 is to be overhauled, with telecoms minister Ian Murray telling Sky News the government will move “as quickly as possible” to lift the maximum penalty for attacking the infrastructure from five years to 14, and to impose unlimited fines on those convicted. The change follows mounting concern about suspicious Russian activity around critical undersea infrastructure in waters north of the UK.

A century-old gap

The legislation governing Britain’s subsea networks was drafted when telegraph cables were the cutting edge of global communications. Today those same routes – fibre-optic cables carrying around 99% of the UK’s international data, and gas pipelines supplying 74% of the nation’s gas – underpin everything from mobile signals and online banking to heating homes. Russia has been accused of running a covert operation against cables and pipelines using three submarines; the government believes the Kremlin hires criminals and other proxies to carry out sabotage, so the new penalties target those actors rather than hostile states directly.

Why it matters

A sustained severing of the UK’s digital arteries would halt payments, collapse communications and paralyse the logistics chains that keep shelves stocked. Prime Minister Andy Burnham’s government has made cyber and infrastructure resilience a central pillar of national security, and updating this law closes a loophole that left Britain defending its modern lifelines with Victorian statutes.

What happens next

The government is publishing a white paper setting out the proposals, opening a 12-week consultation with industry and experts. The revised bill is expected to reach Parliament before the session ends, as the UK seeks to match the hardening of NATO’s own subsea-defence posture in the face of repeated northern-European incidents.