Covid-19: Lockdown Costs and Benefits
Lord Harris of Haringey Excerpts(1 month, 2 weeks ago)
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Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)
That is more a matter for the Department of Health and Social Care than for me, but module 4 will look at vaccines, therapeutics and antiviral treatments across the UK. It is a public inquiry, and it is legitimate for people to make points from different perspectives. I welcome those, and I welcome the openness of this debate.
Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)
My Lords, I refer to my interests in the register. I am grateful to the Minister for how much she wants to take note of whatever emerges from the inquiry of the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Hallett. Why then are Government already unpicking some of the very practical arrangements that were put in place during the pandemic? If the Minister wants evidence of that, perhaps she should listen to Kate Bingham’s interview on the “Today” programme on Monday morning, where she highlighted that the Government are dismantling some of the arrangements that might protect us against future pandemics.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)
As it happens, I listened to Dame Kate Bingham, who we can all agree did such a good job with the Vaccine Taskforce. The decision on the Vaccine Manufacturing and Innovation Centre, which I think the noble Lord refers to, was made by the board of directors, but I should mention all the other things that have been going on to make sure that we have future access to vaccines. There is a 10-year strategic partnership with Moderna; there is an advance purchase agreement with CSL Seqirus; and my right honourable friend the Chancellor announced a terrific investment in a £450 million manufacturing site in Liverpool. All these are informed by what we need to do as a result of the dreadful pandemic.
Ministers: Legal Costs
Lord Harris of Haringey Excerpts(1 month, 2 weeks ago)
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Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)
As I said, it is long-standing practice. Indeed, the Secretary of State concerned made a statement this morning at the Lords Science and Technology Committee and explained the circumstances in full, including how she was engaged in official work and got support from officials on the disputed letter.
Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)
My Lords, will the Minister just explain how all of that works if this was a post on X at midnight?
Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)
I think the Secretary of State explained very fully. It took the course of two days to draft, clear and send the letter to UKRI’s CEO to ask for an investigation. She highlighted it on X, using the same medium as the original issue.
UK Government Resilience Framework
Lord Harris of Haringey Excerpts(7 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Lord Harris of Haringey
To ask His Majesty’s Government, further to the commitment in their UK Government Resilience Framework, published in December 2022, when they expect to publish the Annual Statement to Parliament on civil contingencies risk and performance on resilience.
Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)
My Lords, I refer to my role as chair of the National Preparedness Commission, and beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper.
The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Baroness Neville-Rolfe) (Con)
My Lords, the resilience framework set out the Government’s commitment to publishing the first annual statement to Parliament on civil contingencies risk and performance on resilience by 2025. Both Houses will be updated in due course regarding the timing, form and content of the statement, but the Government’s intention is to publish the first statement during this calendar year.
Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)
My Lords, I am very grateful to the Minister for that assurance. Could she tell the House with regard to that statement, against each of the various risks outlined in the latest risk register, what mitigation arrangements are in place, and do the Government think that they are adequate? What arrangements will be made for both Houses to debate that statement?
Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)
The statement is still in preparation. I take note of the noble Lord’s points and thank him for the contributions that he has made, notably on the debate that we had on resilience in January, which was very helpful. The Deputy Prime Minister has committed to giving a statement to Parliament this year. Both Houses will be given the opportunity to scrutinise this, and the Government intend to update both Houses in the appropriate way.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)
I very much agree. I have been a great advocate for making sure that children are taught both digital opportunity and digital risk. I will make sure that my noble friend Lady Barran is aware of the noble Lord’s comments, because it is important that the curriculum focuses on not only maths, literature and writing but the tech revolution and how it is changing the world so profoundly, as we all see from our own families.
Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)
My Lords, at the risk of all the nice words about me being rescinded, could I follow up the question of the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, on public engagement? As I am sure the noble Baroness knows, this is National Preparedness Month in the United States; every state is taking part in initiatives to try to ensure that the general population is aware of and ready to face risks. In Sweden, every household has received the booklet If Crisis or War Comes, which has practical things that they can do. When will the UK Government do something similar?
Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)
We learn from abroad, which I am always very much in favour of, but we also do things our own way. Noble Lords will remember that the Government launched and tested the emergency alert service earlier this year and we have strategies such as WeatherReady and “check for flooding”. We also have a local tier of work which I know to be very powerful from my local village; local resilience forums reach down into local communities and some of them communicate very well. Through the pilots that the Secretary of State for DLUHC has pioneered, we must ensure that best practice is replicated right across the country so that citizens are prepared and ready.
Electoral Commission: Data Breaches
Lord Harris of Haringey Excerpts(7 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)
As I understand it, it was reference copies. The registers—as the noble Lord probably knows—are kept by local authorities and by the constituency election officers. I think the answer—I will certainly confirm it—is that the marked registers would not have been made available.
Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)
My Lords, I feel that the noble Baroness speaking on behalf of the Government is being slightly complacent about all of this. We of course welcome the fact that the Electoral Commission is an independent body, and we hope that that will continue. However, the whole purpose of hostile state actors in disrupting or breaching the security of the Electoral Commission is to undermine public faith and confidence in the institutions of the country, as the right reverend Prelate said. That has to be a fundamental concern of the Government. How will they address that and make sure that we can continue to have confidence in our institutions and that they cannot be undermined by state actors, as may have happened in this case?
Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)
On a positive note, I will repeat two big things. First, we set up the Defending Democracy Taskforce to drive forward work on protecting UK democratic processes, because we knew and feared, as long ago as last year when this was set up, that there could be problems, and it has now set up a new and enduring election security capability—the JESP unit. The second point is that all the work we are doing through the National Cyber Security Centre is making things better, although this is not an easy area—whoever tries to run this area would discover that. Therefore, things such as GovAssure, the work on cyber skills, the web check and the resilience framework that we talked about in answer to the previous Question, as well as training—which nobody has mentioned and which I know the noble Lord is always advocating—remain very important.
Emergency Alert System: Fujitsu
Lord Harris of Haringey Excerpts(1 year ago)
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Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)
I sympathise with the point made by my noble friend. That is for Fujitsu, of course, and the process of looking at the awful history of the postmasters is still not finished. I agree with him that it can be helpful to say sorry, but that is a matter for Fujitsu. I am sorry that we are not talking much about the alerts, on which I have every answer under the sun. I will try to move things forward more broadly and, on the postmasters, to encourage the progress of the inquiry. We are all longing for the result of that.
Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)
My Lords, I declare my interests in the register and the fact that I have been campaigning for these emergency alerts to happen for a number of years. I think the first alerts were used in a number of countries way back in 2012. The Cabinet Office trialled them in 2013, and then nothing happened for virtually a decade. The system is proven in Australia, where a number of people were saved from dying in fires, and in India people’s lives were saved from floods and so on. This is very important, but emergency alerts require public trust in the authorities. I hope the Minister acknowledges that this small part of the contract that has gone to Fujitsu will undermine that trust. What further steps will the Government take to improve trust in the emergency alert system going forward?
Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)
I do not accept that the small addition of Fujitsu’s work in this area negates this very important piece of work, which the noble Lord was obviously involved in and agrees with. We need to get on with it. He is right that the US, Canada, the Netherlands and Japan already have such a system. We did have something of a system, as he will know, because we used texts during Covid, but we found that their coverage was not good enough. That is another reason why we have been spurred to move faster. Obviously, I am involved in this area and taking a big interest. I like to get on with things, as he knows. I very much hope that the test will work and that if we have a national crisis of the kind we very much hope not to have, these alerts will be helpful. They will also be useful locally, because the COBRA unit co-ordinating them will find them useful on occasions of local flooding and storms. At the moment, we get alerts but it is more haphazard than it needs to be.
Security of Government Devices
Lord Harris of Haringey Excerpts(1 year, 1 month ago)
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Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)
We have security and resilience frameworks which try to do just that, but obviously the police are independent, so the noble Lord’s question about the police goes beyond the areas in which I am expert today.
Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)
My Lords, I have been listening carefully to the Minister’s responses to the questions, and I am still not sure that I understand the logic for not including Ministers’ private phones in the ban, particularly as some of the security information will be common; for example, the location of the Minister concerned, and so on. If the argument is that the bit we are really worried about is that, if the security breach were on an official phone, it would include access to ministerial emails on government business, then the Minister really should have answered my noble friend’s question about whether the use of private phones for government business will be addressed in the review of the Ministerial Code. Can she do so now?
Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)
I do not have anything to say specifically on the review of the Ministerial Code; it is of course kept under review, and we now have a new ethics adviser. These sorts of matters are certainly being considered in the context of the new guidance on the use of non-corporate forms of communication, and I look forward to making a public statement on that in the not too distant future.
Emergency Planning
Lord Harris of Haringey Excerpts(1 year, 2 months ago)
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Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)
The Government had the advantage—or disadvantage—of the lessons from Covid, when they were conducting the review I mentioned. Since then, they have published the UK Government Resilience Framework, which shows a lot of frameworks. A completely independent review is also going on, the Covid inquiry, which I am sure will teach us more lessons on what to do in serious emergencies in the future.
Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)
My Lords, I refer to my interests in the register. Can the Minister tell us the Government’s assessment of the efficacy of the Serco contract delivering the Emergency Planning College? Can she comment on the future of the Emergency Planning College, given the suggestions that the site is likely to be sold?
Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)
This is not a contract that I have had anything to do with. The noble Lord always asks very good questions on contingency planning. I will look into it and get back to him.
Preparing for Extreme Risks (RARPC Report)
Lord Harris of Haringey Excerpts(1 year, 3 months ago)
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Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)
My Lords, I should declare my interest as chair of the National Preparedness Commission and as a visiting professor of resilience at Cranfield University.
I start by paying tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Arbuthnot, and his colleagues for producing such an excellent report. In the interests of transparency, I should point out that he and the noble Lord, Lord Rees, are both members of the National Preparedness Commission, and that I and another eight commission colleagues, including my noble friend Lady Twycross, were all witnesses in one capacity or another.
This debate is particularly timely. The UK Government Resilience Framework has just been published and I plan to focus on what it says, given the context of the committee’s report. As the framework says,
“We live in an increasingly volatile world”,
where the UK will face far-reaching crises
“greater in frequency and scale … than we have been used to.”
It is therefore right that, when it looks at the local level, local resilience forums are to be strengthened and better resourced. These require genuine partnership between central government and local services, but crucially must also work with local voluntary and community sectors and local businesses.
Within the framework, there are many references to partnership, but the Government need to recognise that this is about much more than simply communicating risks. Organisations need relevant, actionable information. A sophisticated approach is needed, so that these are genuine partnerships of equals that recognise the strengths and assets that the different sectors bring.
The framework is also somewhat weak on the role of communities. Again, partnership here should work both ways. This will require investment in voluntary and community sector infrastructure to enable proper engagement with the local statutory sectors.
The framework places a great emphasis on prevention and preparation. That too makes sense, but there needs to be an acceptance that this will not always be successful. Indeed, it is necessary to plan for failure, and it is irresponsible to encourage false belief in the myth of 100% mitigation. Then there will be risks, threats and crises that have not been foreseen or previously encountered.
The framework promises an annual statement to Parliament on national resilience. Again, this is sensible. However, there is a risk that over time this could become formulaic and not a hugely informative exercise. As a minimum, there should be an annual debate on this statement in both Houses, and consideration needs to be given to charging the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy—or possibly a new Joint Committee on national resilience—with monitoring and scrutinising progress.
The report of the committee chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Arbuthnot, was a call to arms. We need to make every level of government, every organisation and every community more resilient. If we do that, we will create a sort of herd immunity for a society better able to address future global crises—another pandemic, a massive cyberattack, climate change or whatever else it might be. However, this will require a mindset shift: a change from a “just in time” approach that we have been following for the last 40 years to one where “just in case” is given priority.
This is a generational mission: resilience and preparedness must be built into society’s fabric, designed into government at every level, into our cities and communities, and into all our businesses and organisations. Sir Oliver Letwin, who was Minister for National Resilience, writing for the commission last September, warned that he had seen,
“at first-hand how short-term political pressures and the dynamics of Whitehall can combine to prevent serious efforts to improve our resilience”.
Other noble Lords have made similar points in their remarks today. He called for a national resilience Act, modelled on the Climate Change Act, saying:
“Without a mechanism of this sort to focus the mind of government on national resilience, we can be sure that Britain will remain singularly ill-prepared to meet a range of crises”.
The generational mission has to embrace us all. In all our interests, the new resilience framework must be the first step in delivering that generational shift. This Government, and their successors, must see building our nation’s resilience as central to their mission. The task of Parliament is to hold them to it for all of us, for our children and our grandchildren.
Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
Did the Minister say that they have appointed a head of resilience?
Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)
I always like to be the bearer of good news from the Dispatch Box.
We are going to be updating the risk register, as everybody has talked about. I cannot give an exact date, but I can say that we are working on these issues with energy. I am delighted to be working now in this area, and obviously very keen to make progress. I do not think that I can say anything today about the very important issue of powers, because I was on the Back Benches during all the Covid measures, so I very much understand the points that have been made. We have got a Covid inquiry that is taking place, and there has to be some sort of interaction between the Covid inquiry and what we do for the future.
I am very grateful to my noble friend Lord Arbuthnot for his positive comments on the resilience framework. I am pleased that he recognises elements of his committee’s recommendations within it—in fact, nearly all the recommendations were accepted in whole or in part. My noble friend rightly raised transparency and challenge. We set our commitment to both in the framework and are already working to embed the principles across my departments, and across others. As an example, the national risk register, when it is published in the coming months, will include more detailed risk information and guidance than previous iterations, and it follows the new classified version of the national security risk assessment.
Noble Lords will be pleased to know that the development of the latter involved a great deal of external challenge this time, and the NSRA is more robust as a result. My colleague the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster will be chairing the next UK resilience forum in February—just one way in which we are incorporating more independent challenge and expertise from outside government. I hope that further work on resilience this year will demonstrate more progress, and we will update Parliament through our inaugural annual statement on resilience.
The noble Lord also raised the committee’s recommendation, as others did, for an office for preparedness and resilience, and the accountability issue was emphasised by the noble Lord, Lord Browne of Ladyton, who sadly had to slip away. It is a key factor of the framework and, while have not chosen to establish a new body, we are taking steps to address the spirit of the committee’s recommendations. We agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, on the need for culture change—a point that she rightly often makes—and that is already happening.
The strength and function at the centre of government build on the approach that we have got under way on things like procurement and infrastructure, and I am sure that it will lead to much better coherence and accountability in the resilience system. We are also strengthening the lead government department model of risk ownership and are establishing a sub-committee of the National Security Council to enable Ministers to focus on national resilience, because ministerial involvement is important in getting things effectively progressed. I need hardly say that the Government also agree with the report’s emphasis on training, conducting exercises and performing dummy runs as a fundamental part of our collective resilience.
We are not just going to carry on as before, as the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, rather mischievously said, and I look forward to giving evidence to his Built Environment Committee on infrastructure next week and to discussing the improved way we now monitor the progress of hundreds of infrastructure projects.
I am sorry that it has been over a year since the committee’s report was published, but the Government, as I have already outlined, have taken a number of steps to address the points that were raised. It is worth reiterating three key themes. On finalising a new classified national security risk assessment, the changes were informed by recommendations from the committee, but also by an external review from the Royal Academy of Engineering in September 2021. The intervention of the noble Lord, Lord Mair, showed the importance of bringing in the engineers.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)
I thank the noble Lord for his intervention, and I will reflect further on the best way of satisfying him.
I emphasise that the framework is important and strategic. It strengthens the systems, structures and capabilities which underpin the UK’s resilience to all risks and those that might emerge. It is based on three key principles. The first is a shared understanding of the risks we face. The second is a focus on prevention rather than cure, wherever this is possible, as several people have mentioned. Some risks can be predicted or prevented, but it is more difficult to do so for others. The third principle is of resilience as a whole-of-society endeavour. Everyone seems to agree on the importance of that. We are more transparent, and we want to empower all parts of society to make a contribution, so I was glad to hear from the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leicester about the possible role of faith groups and volunteers of all kinds. He is right about the contribution they make in crises, as I know from the work of the churches in my own local area of the Nadder Valley. Faith groups are also part of the local resilience forums. In London, for example, we have a voluntary, community and faith sector sub-group—but the key message is about resilience as a whole-of-society endeavour. Covid taught us the value of that.
Nobody has mentioned this, but central to delivery on those three principles is improving the communication of risks and impacts. We want people to better understand what they may actually experience, and what they can do to protect themselves, their families and their communities. We must drive early action on risks; that is at the core of the framework.
Some noble Lords will have looked at the framework, which sets out our ambition to 2030. It includes improved risk communication by growing the Government’s advisory groups to bring in experts, academics and industrial partners. We are strengthening local resilience forums, which has included extra DLUHC funding to improve multi-agency planning. I should say that my husband is chair of a parish council, so I know that resilience systems already assist in great detail towns and villages, and how important that was in marshalling voluntary effort during Covid. We need to build on those sorts of strengths. The measures include delivering a new UK resilience academy built up from the Emergency Planning College, thereby making world-class professional training available to all who need it. I have a lot of material on that, if noble Lords are interested. We are also establishing a new Cabinet sub-committee of the National Security Council. I suspect that we will have many more debates, because we are introducing an annual statement to Parliament on civil contingencies risk and the UK Government’s performance, which I hope will help noble Lords to hold us to account.
Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)
Excuse me, but the noble Baroness used the phrase “the civil contingencies risk”. That is contained throughout the new framework. Can she explain what exactly that excludes, and why?
Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)
I must make progress. If I can answer, I will do so—otherwise, I shall speak with or write to the noble Lord.
It is important to remember that data cuts through everything that we do—supporting innovation by helping us be more dynamic and spot risks early. At a local level, data enables us to support mutual aid between different areas to provide additional capacity where it is most needed. Data is also informing our approach to how we can use artificial intelligence to flag up areas of vulnerability or concern. We have strengthened our effort with the joint data and analysis centre in the Cabinet Office, as well as with the impressive National Situation Centre, which is providing real-time insights about what is happening across a plethora of urgent and high-priority topics and bringing data to crisis management.
We have to be realistic. There is much in life and politics for which we can neither plan nor prepare. While prevention is a key principle, it cannot replace careful and effective management of emergencies as they occur. For that reason, the framework also proposes actions to improve response, including in areas such as cyber and preparation for risks, and to ensure that partners throughout the system are able fully to play their part. There is a shift away from simply dealing with the effects of emergencies. It is fair to say—the framework shows this—that there has been a step change in ambition. We have the structures and focus we need to do much better.
I thank my noble friend Lord Hunt of Wirral for kindly bringing his expertise to this debate and I very much agree with much of what he said about the cold realities and challenges. The Government’s risk-assessment approach must draw on best practice from the private sector and we have made progress on this, as I have said. The framework commits the Government to creating a process for future iterations of the NSRA that invites challenge from industry, as well as from academia, the international risk community and others. Partners from the financial services are important. In the light of what my noble friend said, we will review opportunities to better engage the insurance industry, recognising the critical and practical role that it obviously places in forecasting extreme risk and dealing with national insurance.
The noble Lord, Lord Browne of Ladyton, raised the model of the Climate Change Committee, as did the noble Lord, Lord Thurso. It is the Government’s view that the existing committee system is the most effective means by which departments can be held to account for this responsibility. We will provide an opportunity for an overarching conversation on resilience through our new annual statement. The noble Lord also mentioned the report by the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy on critical infrastructure and climate adaptation. The framework sets out how we will continue to strengthen resilience across both public and private sectors.
The noble Lord, Lord Mair, drew attention to some very interesting examples. I do not think we can commit to setting up a register of critical infrastructure as he suggested, but I will keep that suggestion under review. We are very much focused on investment in ageing infrastructure and all departments are expected to monitor this, so I would like to bring his expertise to the piece in some way.
The noble Viscount, Lord Thurso, and the noble Lord, Lord Harris, questioned whether the Government are providing enough money and resources. The lead government department model for individual risks means we have clear accountability for individual risks, with risk owners responsible for ensuring investment in their areas and the Cabinet Office supporting. However, the framework will ensure that resilience is considered as an integral aspect of almost all policy-making. There is devoted funding for some specific areas, such as local resilience forums, and we have achieved systematic change by ensuring that investment in resilience is embedded into decision-making across government. It is always a difficult area, but the commitment, the framework and the new Cabinet committee will make a considerable difference to prioritisation.
The noble Lord, Lord Rees, talked about biological security. Our refreshed strategy will strengthen Euro-Atlantic security. It will stimulate R&D in the life sciences sector and underpin the UK’s international leadership and advantage across the life sciences and applied data science.
The noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, raised many questions in a wide-ranging speech, mainly about health. I will look at what she said and see if I can add anything to what I have already said about the progress we are making.
The Government have already taken on board many of the recommendations of this report with individual actions, and the resilience framework goes even further. Building resilience is truly a whole-of-society and national endeavour. We are determined to work together to be better prepared for the challenges we face. I thank the committee warmly for its important contribution to this task. I look forward to further discussion in this House on these important issues and to bringing the immense expertise to bear in making our country more resilient and better able to deal with the crises that, sadly, from time to time emerge.
Heatwave Response
Lord Harris of Haringey Excerpts(1 year, 9 months ago)
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Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)
My Lords, I refer to my interests in the register. The Minister has several times referred to the importance of local resilience forums. He has been asked in the past what their current level of funding is, and whether it has been maintained. Could he also tell us whether that funding is going to be properly ring-fenced? The other day I asked him about the Civil Contingencies Secretariat. Can he tell us whether that still exists, or whether it is continuing but on a basis of a 30% vacancy factor?
Lord True (Con)
My Lords, I very much regret that, although I wrote to the noble Baroness opposite about the resilience forums and funding, which is embedded and due to continue, I did not reply on the question that the noble Lord has asked and has asked again. That is a deep fault within me; I apologise to him and to the House, and I shall come back with an answer on the point that he asked about. I hope that he will pardon me for a day or two, until I get that information to him.
Extreme Heat Preparedness
Lord Harris of Haringey Excerpts(1 year, 9 months ago)
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The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Lord True) (Con)
I will certainly place it in the Library, because I regret to say that I do not have it in my folder.
Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)
My Lords, I refer to my interests in the register. Can the Minister confirm that the Civil Contingencies Secretariat in the Cabinet Office has been operating 30% under strength for a number of months and that, in addition, it was wound up last week? Who is minding the shop?
Lord True (Con)
My Lords, so far as the management of the response to the heatwave is concerned, that is my right honourable friend the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. Overall responsibility for the longer-term net-zero objectives of this Government, which are greater than those of any Government before, is carried forward by Defra. The implication of the noble Lord’s question is that there might be some failure. I pay tribute to all those involved in planning for this heatwave. The forward warnings and information for the public have been very clear, and the emergency services have responded extraordinarily well. I express my thanks to them.