Whitehall crisis officials working on IT outage, Cabinet minister says

Whitehall crisis officials are co-ordinating the response to the major IT outage hitting airlines, train companies and banks.

An emergency Cobra meeting was held at official-level – rather than ministers – on Friday morning to discuss the chaos, Downing Street said.

Ministers are being kept updated and are in touch with their sectors to tackle the fallout from the IT failures, with Transport Secretary Louise Haigh saying she was working “at pace with industry” after trains and flights ground to a halt.

Cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike is “actively working” to fix the flaw in a software update that sparked the outage that knocked businesses and institutions around the globe offline.

In the UK, transport networks were thrown into chaos, GP surgeries were unable to book appointments or access patient records and Sky News went off air.

Pat McFadden, who as the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster is in charge of the Whitehall machine, said on X: “Many people are being affected by today’s IT outages impacting services across the country and globally.

“Ministers are working with their sectors and respective industries on the issue.

“I am in close contact with teams co-ordinating our response through the COBR response system.”

The public needs to be reassured that the disruption to their travel or their desperately needed GP appointments will be minimised

A No 10 spokeswoman later told reporters: “Officials have met in the Cobra unit on this this morning and of course are updating ministers regularly on this issue.”

Asked why Sir Keir Starmer did not chair Cobra – which deals with matters of national emergency or major disruption, the spokeswoman said the Prime Minister had been meeting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his Cabinet on Friday morning, and that she was not aware of plans for a gathering of the committee with ministers present.

The spokeswoman also said she was not aware of any Whitehall departments being hit by the outage.

It came after the Liberal Democrats demanded an urgent Government response to the IT debacle.

The party’s Cabinet Office spokesperson, Christine Jardine, said: “The public needs to be reassured that the disruption to their travel or their desperately needed GP appointments will be minimised.

“Getting critical infrastructure up and running again must be priority number one. The National Cyber Security Centre should also be working with small businesses and other organisations to help them deal with the outage.

“This once again lays bare the need to improve our digital infrastructure and truly modernise our economy in order to prevent the incidents from happening again.”

Train companies were reporting delays and there were long queues at airports such as Gatwick, Luton and Edinburgh.

Transport Secretary Ms Haigh tweeted: “We are aware of IT failures impacting several transport operators and terminals today, and we’re working at pace with industry and across Government on the issue.

“There are no known security issues at present.

“If you’re planning to travel today, please follow operator advice and check ahead before leaving.

“Manual check-in may be required at airports and there may be train cancellations and delays.”