Whitehall crisis officials are co-ordinating the response to the major IT outage hitting airlines, train companies and banks.
The Cobra system that deals with matters of national emergency or major disruption has been fired up, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster Pat McFadden said.
Ministers are in touch with their sectors to tackle the fallout from the IT failures, with Transport Secretary Louise Haigh saying she is working “at pace with industry” after trains and flights ground to a halt.
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Businesses and institutions around the globe have been knocked offline by the outage, believed to have been caused by a faulty update to widely used cybersecurity software.
In the UK, transport networks have been thrown into chaos, GP surgeries are unable to book appointments or access patient records and Sky News went off air.
Restaurants in Parliament appear to be affected too, with catering services only accepting cash payments.
Mr McFadden, who is in charge of the Whitehall machine, said on X: “Many people are being affected by today’s IT outages impacting services across the country and globally.
“Ministers are working with their sectors and respective industries on the issue.
“I am in close contact with teams co-ordinating our response through the COBR response system.”
It came after the Liberal Democrats demanded ministers convene an urgent meeting of the Cobra emergency committee.
The party’s Cabinet Office spokesperson, Christine Jardine, said: “The public needs to be reassured that the disruption to their travel or their desperately needed GP appointments will be minimised.
“Getting critical infrastructure up and running again must be priority number one. The National Cyber Security Centre should also be working with small businesses and other organisations to help them deal with the outage.
“This once again lays bare the need to improve our digital infrastructure and truly modernise our economy in order to prevent the incidents from happening again.”
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Train companies are reporting delays and there are long queues at airports such as Gatwick, Luton and Edinburgh.
Transport Secretary Ms Haigh tweeted: “We are aware of IT failures impacting several transport operators and terminals today, and we’re working at pace with industry and across Government on the issue.
“There are no known security issues at present.”