Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:13 pm on 17 April 2018.
This week, we saw the unprecedented step of a joint statement between the UK National Cyber Security Centre, the FBI and the US Department of Homeland Security, warning of heightened risks to our internet infrastructure and hardware from Russian state-sponsored hackers. Newport is at the forefront of cyber security expertise, with the excellent National Cyber Security Academy located in that city. What discussions is the First Minister planning to ensure that—as we need to increase capacity in the UK to face this very real threat, with economic and political implications for us all—what discussions is he planning with the UK Government to ensure that it's not centralised in London, and that the UK response is actually shared between the different cities of the UK where expertise exists and, indeed, to go even further and to say that the expertise and the remit of the UK National Cyber Security Centre should be shared to the areas where there is already existing expertise, in places such as Newport?