There are certain sounds that should make the blood run cold. An air-raid siren. A smoke alarm at three in the morning. And, in modern Britain, the extraordinary electronic howl of the national emergency alert system suddenly erupting from millions of mobile phones. It is deliberately horrible. It is supposed to make you stop whatever you are doing, grab your phone and pay attention because something potentially very serious is happening.
So when phones across England and Wales suddenly began shrieking yesterday, it was hardly surprising that people reached for them with some alarm. Had there been a terrorist attack? Was a major wildfire advancing towards a populated area? Was a large meteor heading towards the planet? Had something happened involving China? No. Among the urgent instructions from Andy Burnham’s Government was a warning not to have a barbecue.
Now, before somebody in Whitehall reaches for the smelling salts, nobody sensible is suggesting that wildfires are a joke. The country is exceptionally dry, serious fires have occurred, homes have been damaged and firefighters have been doing an extraordinary job in dangerous conditions. Lighting a disposable barbecue on bone-dry grass at the moment would be monumentally stupid. But that is not really what this argument is about. It is about whether the Government should use one of the most serious tools in its national emergency arsenal to broadcast general preventative advice to tens of millions of people.
The national alert system is valuable precisely because it is extraordinary. Its effectiveness does not come from some clever piece of telecommunications technology. It comes from the reaction that noise produces in the human being holding the phone. When it sounds, we need to think: something serious is happening; I must read this immediately. We must never reach the point where the reaction becomes: oh God, what does the Government want now?
Yet that is exactly where this road leads. Yesterday we were told about barbecues. What comes next? “EMERGENCY ALERT: Temperatures are expected to fall below freezing tonight. Please consider wearing a coat.” Perhaps by October we can expect: “EMERGENCY ALERT: Heavy rain forecast. Take an umbrella.” Give it another year and Sunday lunch will be interrupted by a nationwide klaxon informing us that gravy contains salt and asking us to consider steaming our potatoes instead.
That sounds ridiculous, of course. But mission creep usually does until it happens. Governments have an unfortunate habit of acquiring a power for one exceptional purpose and gradually discovering a dozen perfectly well-intentioned reasons to use it for something else.
Yesterday’s alert matters because it crosses a line between warning citizens of an emergency and using emergency infrastructure to tell citizens how the Government would like them to behave.
And there is a much more serious danger here than irritation. People are already saying they have switched the alerts off. My neighbour said the alert had at least been useful in one respect: it prompted them to discover where the emergency-alert settings were on their phone so they could disable them. Another friend said they had opted out of future messages.
Think about how extraordinary that is. A system designed to make the public safer may have just persuaded members of the public to disable it. That is not an amusing unintended consequence. It should seriously concern the people responsible for national resilience, because one day this system may actually be needed. There may be a terrorist incident. There may be catastrophic flooding. There may be an industrial accident releasing something dangerous into the atmosphere. There may be a wildfire genuinely bearing down on a town and residents may have minutes to evacuate. In some future crisis, the message appearing on that screen really could save lives.
That is precisely why the system must be protected from political enthusiasm. Every unnecessary alert spends a little of its authority. Every time the alarm sounds for something people regard as mundane, another person learns to ignore it. Keep doing that and eventually we recreate the oldest warning in human civilisation: the boy who cried wolf, except this time the boy has access to every mobile telephone in Britain.
There is a perfectly legitimate use for this technology during wildfires. If a serious fire is advancing towards a particular community, send an alert to the people in danger in that ping catchment area. Tell them where the fire is. Tell them whether to stay indoors or evacuate. Tell them which roads are closed and where to go. I used to live in LA and experienced exactly that in California: a targeted alert telling people in an affected area to evacuate and giving them somewhere safe to move to. That is what this technology is brilliant at doing.
But broadcasting general behavioural advice across England and Wales is something quite different. We already possess an astonishing number of ways to tell people that the countryside is tinder-dry and lighting fires is a rotten idea. We have television. Radio. Newspapers. Government websites. Weather apps. Councils. Fire services. Social media. News alerts. Ministers can hold press conferences until their hearts are content. The Government has greater capacity to communicate ordinary public-safety information than any administration in British history. It does not need to make millions of phones scream.
There is another principle at stake too, and it is one this Government would do well to remember: your mobile telephone does not belong to Downing Street. It is not a digital tannoy through which the Prime Minister may materialise whenever somebody in Whitehall decides that the population requires correction.
There is something peculiarly intrusive about the state being able to make a device sitting on your bedside table, desk or car dashboard suddenly erupt with an alarm. We tolerate that intrusion because there are circumstances in which it could save our lives. That bargain depends upon restraint.
And please spare us the argument that people sometimes behave stupidly and therefore need telling. Of course they do. Some people will light barbecues on dry grass. Some people drive too fast. Some people go walking up mountains in flip-flops. Somewhere in Britain today, somebody will almost certainly attempt to remove toast from a toaster with a metal fork. Government cannot eliminate human stupidity, and it certainly cannot do so by buzzing everybody else’s trousers.
If Andy Burnham’s Government believes disposable barbecues present such an unacceptable risk during periods of extreme heat that their use should be restricted, then there are ordinary democratic mechanisms available. Make the case. Introduce regulations where the law permits. Bring legislation before Parliament where necessary. Let MPs debate it. Let journalists scrutinise it. Let the public argue about it. If restrictions are justified, pass them properly. That is government in a parliamentary democracy.
What ministers should not become accustomed to doing is bypassing all that messy democratic business and simply broadcasting instructions directly into the pockets and handbags of the population. The fact that an instruction might be sensible does not make the method sensible. Drinking water in hot weather is sensible. Wearing sunscreen is sensible. Looking both ways before crossing a road is sensible. We do not need a government emergency alert every time somebody in Whitehall thinks of something sensible for us to do.
Britain has developed an increasingly unhealthy style of government in which politicians seem unable to leave adults alone. Nudge us, warn us, remind us, advise us, regulate us and protect us from ourselves. There is apparently no aspect of ordinary life too small to escape ministerial concern. Now they can even make our phones shout at us.
Enough. We are citizens, not pupils on a school trip. Government has enormous and important responsibilities. Defend the country. Protect the borders. Maintain law and order. Keep critical infrastructure functioning. Provide competent public services. Prepare for genuine national emergencies. Stop the boats. There is quite enough on that list to occupy Downing Street without ministers assuming responsibility for supervising the sausages.
And perhaps that is why yesterday irritated so many people. It felt less like emergency management and more like performative government: the political need to demonstrate that something was being done. A meeting has been held. Officials have assembled. An alert has been sent. The machinery of government has whirred impressively into action. Whether millions of people actually needed their phones to howl at them is apparently secondary.
Some people, perfectly reasonably, take the opposite view. They argue that conditions are exceptionally dangerous, homes have already been lost and if one warning prevents one fire then sending it was worthwhile. I understand that argument. But it ignores the long-term cost of normalising an emergency system. The question isn’t simply whether yesterday’s message contained useful advice. It is whether sending useful advice in this way makes people more or less likely to respond when the next message contains life-saving instructions.
The emergency alert system should therefore be treated almost like a fire alarm behind glass: break only in an emergency. Use it rarely. Use it proportionately. Target it geographically whenever possible. And when that hideous noise does erupt from our phones, preserve the one thing that makes the entire system work: the absolute certainty in the mind of the recipient that they need to pay attention.
Because if Downing Street turns Britain’s emergency warning network into the Government’s WhatsApp group, people will mute it. Many already have.
And when the wolf eventually does come, the Government may discover that millions of people have stopped listening.
So, Prime Minister, govern. Make laws. Make arguments. Issue ordinary public information. Warn people about genuine dangers. Trust us occasionally to possess some common sense.
But unless the country is facing a genuine emergency, stay out of our phones.
By Claire Bullivant
