Jacob Rees-Mogg says 'mollycoddling' emergency phone alert is 'part of the nanny state'

Former Tory cabinet minister Jacob Rees-Mogg has criticised the government’s mobile phone alert system which is set to be tested on millions of devices this weekend.

Mobile phones across the UK will emit a loud alarm and vibrate at 3pm on Sunday as a test run.

The government has said the alerts could eventually be used to sound the alarm for terror attacks, nuclear threats and dangerous criminals on the loose.

But ex-business secretary Rees-Mogg is unhappy with the system and described it as "mollycoddling" and "part of the nanny state".

Read more: Emergency phone alert: Should people turn it off?

Rees-Mogg told his GB News show: “If something is building up to a great disaster, are we to assume that people are so stupid that they haven’t paid any attention to what’s been going on? And this seems to me to a mistaken role for the state to be taking.

“It is back to the nanny state, warning us, telling us, mollycoddling us, when instead they should just let people get on with their lives and make sensible decisions for themselves.

"And really it’s an intrusive extension of the information that was used during COVID.”

Read more: Emergency phone alert: How to turn off warning message to your mobile

A Whitehall source hit back at the criticism, pointing out that Rees-Mogg was a Cabinet Office minister when the policy was approved.

During a press conference on Monday, a Whitehall official said: “At the moment our plans for this first pilot phase relate to severe weather and flooding, but we do expect the use of the system to broaden out.

“This is about threats to life and limb and situations where specific advice can be issued.

“Therefore, you can conceive that we could use this in an abduction situation, or where there was a dangerous criminal on the loose, or where we require the public to look for something for that reason.

“We’re going to be led by discussions with the police and other emergency services on this.

“If we were to move to the use of the system for this reason, we do so quite cautiously.”

Officials also noted “car bombs” and “civil nuclear incidents” as examples of crises that could trigger future alerts.

They added that while it would not be used for a “marauding terror attack” because it is difficult to give helpful advice in such a situation, “there are other types of terrorist incidents where it might be relevant”.

Several tests have already been run in communities of around 20,000 people in East Suffolk and Reading, Berkshire.

Some 5% of people tested in Reading opted out of the system after being part of the pilot, and there is an “active community of opposition” to it online, but overall “the level of public support for this is incredibly high”, according to Whitehall.

The government has also been working with charities, including those for domestic abuse victims, to ensure that the test alert will not adversely affect vulnerable people.