Emergency alert system could save your life, says OLIVER DOWDEN

Keep Calm and Carry On. That’s the British way - and that is exactly what the country will do tomorrow when the government carries out a nationwide test of our new emergency alerts system. It's what they have in the U.S., Canada and elsewhere to give people urgent information in life-threatening situations.

Tomorrow at 3pm, your phone will briefly emit a siren and display a short message informing people that this is just a test. You don’t have to do anything. Just swipe away and carry on with your day.

This is no different to testing a fire alarm. It’s a bit of a nuisance - but you wouldn’t want to leave it until a real-life emergency to test it for the first time.

In future, we’ll only use the system where there is risk to life – so hopefully you’ll never hear the alert ever again. If you do hear it, it’s likely to be a local event like a dangerous flash flood in your area, so that emergency services can get safety information to you as quickly as possible.

We're proud to be a free country, so of course people can turn the alert off if they want. They just have to go into their phone's settings and disable it. But we're also a sensible country that takes practical measures to keep people safe. And that's what this alert does.

Ultimately, it could be the sound that saves your life. But tomorrow, it’s just a test.