Google just broke Britain's banks NHS systems and courts in one morning

So here's the real story.

One power failure. Inside one Google data centre region. And it took down British banks, the NHS and the courts, all at the same time.

That's not one company having a bad morning. That's dozens of Britain's most essential services, built on the same rented infrastructure, going down together.

And this was not some freak, unforeseeable risk.

Three months ago, the Treasury formally named Google Cloud EMEA Limited a critical third-party provider to the UK financial sector. Microsoft Ireland Operations Limited, Amazon Web Services EMEA SARL and Oracle Corporation UK Limited got the same label.

Why does a label like that exist? Because regulators already worried this could happen.

It happened anyway.

Revolut moved fast to calm its customers. It says quote "all our customers' money and data are safe".

That's the bank saying the cash is fine, even while the app was not working.

But here's the thing. Money being safe is not the same as a bank being usable. For hours this morning, millions of people could not check a balance, move money, or get into an app they use every day.

And it was not only banking. HM Courts and Tribunals Service leans on the same cloud infrastructure for remote hearings. When that went down, so did real court business, including the livestream of a high-profile ongoing trial.

So why does one outage reach this far?

Because Google Cloud's europe-west2 region is not some niche service. It's the shared foundation sitting underneath banks, government platforms and companies that have nothing else in common except which cloud provider they picked.

Google says the fault was a power event inside one zone, and that it told customers to shift their work to another zone or region if they could. Not every organisation managed that in time.

Now, Dame Meg Hillier has written to the Bank of England and the FCA. That's the first sign Parliament is not satisfied with a quick fix as an answer.

Her committee will want to know why a single power fault in London could cascade into banking apps, NHS systems and live court hearings within one morning. And what happens if it happens again, for longer.

Google says the region is fully restored.

Nobody in Westminster has said yet whether that is good enough.