Britons scramble to withdraw cash from ATMs after Labour issues ominous ‘Be Ready’ emergency guidance

Saturday’s average of roughly £95, up from approximately £90 the week before, set an all-time record for any Saturday in Link’s records, which stretch back to 2014.

Sunday also broke new ground, with the typical withdrawal topping £90 for the first time ever on that day.

Despite the higher individual amounts, total Saturday withdrawals of £204million were actually 11 per cent lower than the same day in 2025, which Link attributed to stormy weather keeping people indoors.

Graham Mott, Link’s director of strategy, said it “seems likely that at least some people chose to take the Government’s advice and take out some extra cash to be ready for some sort of emergency”.

The withdrawals followed the launch of Labour’s “Be Ready” campaign, which urges every household to keep three days’ worth of essential supplies on hand in case of a crisis, whether caused by conflict, a cyber attack or a natural disaster.

A Government checklist recommends stockpiling nine litres of drinking water per person, along with non-perishable items such as tinned meat, vegetables and dried fruit.

Households are also advised to have a wind-up or battery-powered FM radio, torches, blankets, a charged power bank, a first aid kit, pet food, baby supplies, toiletries and copies of key documents.

Prime Minister Andy Burnham defended the initiative last week, stating: “We’re having the conversation with people about being better prepared because we’re living in a world where unexpected events seem to be becoming more and more common.”

Defence Secretary Wes Streeting went further, warning that households and businesses must consider how they would cope if sophisticated cyber attacks disrupted essential supply chains.

“How would we cope if the payment systems at the local supermarket went down?” he asked, speaking at the opening of a new gun hall in Telford on Thursday.

Mr Streeting cautioned that threats from hostile state actors, terrorists and organised criminals exploiting AI-driven tools would only grow, urging the public to be “alert but not alarmed”.

Appearing on BBC Question Time, Mr Streeting rejected an audience member’s suggestion that the campaign risked triggering panic buying reminiscent of the Covid-19 pandemic, insisting that European allies were “way ahead of us on some of this stuff”.

Shadow foreign secretary Tom Tugendhat described the preparedness advice as “a perfectly reasonable thing to ask people”.

His Conservative colleague Alicia Kearns, the shadow national security minister, took a sharper tone, accusing Labour of “lecturing the public” while neglecting its own responsibilities.

She said: “It isn’t families that are failing to fund our defence or secure reliable energy; it’s Labour. With rising threats to our national security, we must all be ready to face all eventualities. We each have a role to play, but the Government must lead by example.”

The “Be Ready” campaign was unveiled against the backdrop of a major global cybersecurity crisis, after a critical vulnerability was discovered in PHP, the programming language underpinning nearly 70 per cent of websites, according to Cloudflare.

The National Cyber Security Centre urged organisations to patch their systems immediately or take affected sites offline.

Thirty-two Government services were pulled offline on Thursday, with four more partially disrupted, as officials worked to address potential exposure.

Attempts to exploit the flaw were detected within hours of its disclosure, Amazon and Cloudflare reported.

Mr Streeting warned: “We’re going to find these sorts of things happening more and more.”