4.17pm BST
Reynolds: Chinese EV decision will depend on UK interests Business secretary Johnny Reynolds has insisted any decision to impose tariffs on Chinese EVs will be about British, not EU interests .
He told the business select committee that some were under the misapprehension that the EU wanted the UK to put tariffs on EVs because they feared the Chinese could use Britain as a “backdoor” to the bloc, circumventing trade defence measures including tariffs on EVs and quota on electric hybrid cars.
He point out that this Chinese cars exported from the UK “would not qualify” for duty free exports to the EU under the rules of origin clauses in the Brexit trade and cooperation agreement”.
He was also asked about last week’s Franco-German paper proposing that the UK would be included in the upcoming Made in Europe legislation on condition London aligned with EU trade defence measures.
But he said the “detail” of that proposal, which has yet to be adopted by the EU in any new drafting of the Industrial Accelerator Act, “has not been surfaced to the degree to which we’d be able to definitively say that that is what the ask is of the UK.”
3.35pm BST
Google Cloud outage: A summary Time to recap…
A power outage at a Google Cloud data centre near London has caused serious failures to services today, affecting operations for several UK banks.
Problems were first detected just after 7am this morning, disrupting “multiple services” in Google’s europe-west2 region (London).
Google blamed the problem on a ‘power issue’ – just afternoon today it said this event had been mitigated. By 1pm UK time services were recovering, and at 3pm Google said services were back online for most customers, with only “a very small number” still affected.
But by that time, millions of customers had been left unable to access and send cash at banks including Lloyds, HSBC and Revolut .
Revolut said:
“We are currently experiencing a service disruption affecting multiple services. We can confirm that all our customers’ money and data are safe. We’ve been working to fix the issue since it was identified this morning and apologise to anyone affected and for any inconvenience caused.”
A spokesperson for Lloyds added:
“Our app is online and customers can log in normally, though we understand some are having issues with certain online services this morning. We are aware of similar issues affecting other organisations and are monitoring the situation closely.”
Legal proceedings were disrupted, because the video system used by defendants, lawyers and other parties to attend court hearings remotely across England and Wales which failed to work throughout the morning.
The City regulator, the Financial Conduct Authority , confirmed it was in touch with Google and seeking more information about the outage.
This outage will be the first major test for the FCA and Bank of England , since the City watchdogs were handed powers to regulate Google and other rival services that have been supplying “critical” cloud services to UK financial firms this summer.
Tech experts said the outage was another reminder of the dangers of relying on a small number of technology providers for cloud services, a year after problems at Amazon Cloud caused more widespread disruption.
Related: Google cloud failure hits millions as UK courts and banks knocked offline
3.20pm BST
Google: We'll publish an analysis of what went wrong Google add that it does not plan to provide further updates about the outage on its Service Health page – another sign that it thinks it has pretty much resolved the problem with its cloud services today.
It adds:
We will publish an analysis of this incident once we have completed our internal investigation.
We thank you for your patience while we’re working on resolving the issue.
3.15pm BST
Google: issue has been mitigated for most customers Newsflash: Google has declared that it has won, pretty much, its battle against today’s tech outage at its London-based cloud computing systems.
In an updated status message , Google says:
Multiple services were experiencing issues in the europe-west2 region.
The shift to the past tense is significant – until now, the messages said that services “are” experiencing issues.
Google then declares that all but a few customers have now been helped, saying:
The issue with impacted GCP products has been mitigated for most of the customers and it is believed to be affecting currently a very small number of customers and our Engineering Team is working on it.
If you have questions or are impacted, please open a case with the Support Team and we will work with you until this issue is resolved.
3.09pm BST
Royal Mail has said it was aware of the issues caused to its services by the Google Cloud outage, and added that there was no effect on letter and parcel deliveries.
Not that those deliveries are always good enough!
Businesss secretary Johnny Reynolds has said he has summoned Royal Mail bosses in for talks to discuss changes to improve the services, my colleague Lisa O’Carroll reports.
He told a parliamentary business committee that the Royal Mail is not delivering “the level of service people expect”.
Royal Mail have not met their first or second class standards for almost 10 years, the committee heard.
Reynolds said the government had negotiated the take over by Czech billionaire Daniel Křetínský last year which included a curb on dividends “until performance improved”.
“I know for parliamentarians this in oral questions on Thursday and other correspondence with members of Parliament that it is one of the most significant issues they’re facing,” Reynolds told the committee.
He said the government “recognised the need for regulatory reform” but Ofcom was taking a lead at the moment on this subject.
“I am going to have Royal Mail and the unions in for a conversation about this. I need to respond to what MPs are being told.
“Royal Mail is a really important institution and business, and I know it has significant ramifications when it’s not hitting the levels of service. And I can promise you, chair, whether it’s work with Ofcom, whether it’s work with, with, you know, any part, any key player, any stakeholder in this, we will do what we can to make sure Royal Mail is the service it needs to be.”
2.49pm BST
Lloyds: expect services to get back to normal soon Lloyds Banking Group, which includes Halifax, is hopeful that services will be restored soon.
A spokesperson for Lloyds tells us:
“We understand the root issues have been resolved, so we expect to all our services back to normal soon.”
2.28pm BST
UK regulators want answers from Google about Cloud outage The Financial Conduct Authority and Bank of England are pushing Google for details of today’s cloud services outage, as they face their first major test as new regulators of “critical” tech suppliers to UK banks.
Both the FCA and Bank of England were handed powers in July to start directly overseeing the local arms of Google Cloud and three other Silicon Valley rivals - Amazon Web Services, Oracle and Microsoft – after being designated as critical third parties by the UK government, as their services become a crucial part of increasingly digital banking services.
A spokesperson for the FCA said they were in touch with Google and seeking more information about the outage. The Bank of England’s Prudential Regulation Authority is also understood to be speaking with the tech firm about the service outage which began this morning ( details start here ).
The watchdogs are in charge of ensuring that the cloud providers are resilient and actively reducing the risk of cyber-attacks and major outages like the one experienced today, which has disrupted services for millions of people and businesses across the UK.
For its part, Google is meant to prove it is carrying out proper stress testing, including how it would respond to imagined emergency scenarios that would put their operations under severe strain. They’re also meant to have reported any major incidents, including this power outages, to the two regulators (though it’s unclear in what time frame).
Updated at 2.30pm BST
2.11pm BST
Low-paid workers and hospitality firms face disruption The failure of banking apps due to the Google Cloud outage could disproportionately affect those most struggling with the cost of living, argues audit, tax and business advisory firm Blick Rothenberg .
Blick Rothenberg partner Andrew Sanford explains:
“Weekly or fortnightly paid employees, often those on lower wages, may have found that they are unable to access their funds on the very day where they have payments or commitments to make.”
“The hospitality sector will also be disproportionately impacted by those people affected by the outage with no means of making payment, who simply do not go the pub or restaurant.”
2.02pm BST
Affected companies coming back online again There are signs that the companies affected by Google’s outage are getting online again.
Emma , the personal finance, budgeting, and money management app which was taken down by the Google Cloud outage ( see 10.11am ), has posted on X that it is operating again.
Emma says:
We’re back ✅ Emma is up and running again after this morning’s Google Cloud power outage in London . Your data and money were safe throughout. Some balances may take a little while to refresh. Thanks for your patience 💜
1.51pm BST
Google: We are seeing the recovery of services for most workloads Newsflash: Google says service are being restored in its London-based cloud region after today’s outage.
The company says:
“We are seeing the recovery of services for most workloads in europe-west2.”
This isn’t the end of the story, though – Google are promising another update by 3pm UK time.
Updated at 1.51pm BST
1.15pm BST
Google added that they will provide an update by 06:00 PDT (2pm BST) with “current details” of the situation.
1.06pm BST
Google: The power event is mitigated Newsflash: Google says the ‘power event’ which affected its London-based cloud computing operating and caused widepread disruption to services in the UK has been ‘mitigated’.
In a new statement on its Service Health page, Google reports seeing signs that services are being restored.
It says:
A power event caused an outage within europe-west2-b zone. The power event is mitigated. We are seeing the recovery of services and are prioritizing the recovery of existing workloads.Customers may not be able to yet create new workloads.
Full recovery of existing workloads should be completed, tentatively by Tuesday, 2026-10-20 06:00 [Pacific Daylight Time].
[ CORRECTED: 6am PDT is 2pm UK time.]
Updated at 2.32pm BST
12.56pm BST
The Google Cloud outage could result in some companies losing sales, and they might struggle to get much compensation, suggests Ryan Gracey , partner at law firm Gordons.
“Many businesses will be discovering today that their cloud contracts protect the supplier far more than they protect the customer.
“When a provider goes down, the usual remedy is a modest credit against future fees. That is small consolation set against lost revenue, frustrated customers and damage to reputation.
“Liability for those wider losses is typically capped or excluded altogether. The real exposure sits in the gap between how heavily a business depends on its provider and how little its contract actually guarantees. For banks, the stakes are higher still. Regulators expect them to keep essential services running even when a key supplier fails.
“Outsourcing a service does not mean outsourcing responsibility for it. Boards should be asking, not just what their contracts promise, but whether the business could keep going if its provider went dark for a day.”
12.36pm BST
Google: power event disrupted our Cloud services Google are blaming a ‘power event’ for the disruption at its L