Risk and Resilience: Annual Statement

Baroness Winterton of Doncaster Excerpts

Monday 4th December 2023 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister (Oliver Dowden)]

We live in a dangerous and volatile world. The risks are more numerous, more complex, and evolving more rapidly than ever before. The aftermath of the global pandemic, Russia’s ongoing aggression in Ukraine, extreme weather events, cyber-attacks, malign AI use cases—all those and more threaten the security, safety and stability of our nation. Protecting people is the first duty of government, which is why resilience is a top priority for this Government. It is quite simply the means by which we seek to prevent risks from becoming a reality.

When I published the resilience framework last December, I promised to provide an annual update to the House on our progress. This statement fulfils that commitment. The accompanying paper sets out in full the progress that we have made, but allow me to detail to the House the key improvements that I am confident have greatly improved our resilience. We have made changes to our structures, such as the introduction of the resilience directorate, COBR unit and situation centre. We have initiated new capabilities, such as the new emergency alert system. We have bolstered our resources towards severe threats, such as through our biological security strategy, underpinned by over £1.5 billion of annual investment, and we are embedding a whole-of-society approach to resilience that reflects the fact that everybody has their part to play.

As Deputy Prime Minister, I am the lead Minister for resilience and I chair a new resilience sub-committee of the National Security Council. The Government need to be ready to respond to any and all risks, so we must maintain the flexibility to respond to whatever confronts us. In the last year, as chairman of the UK resilience forum, I have regularly convened blue light and local responders, industry leaders and representatives from the voluntary sectors with Government. We have continued to play an active role with international partners, including the OECD, NATO and Five Eyes, and bilaterally with our allies. Through the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities we are significantly strengthening the capability and capacity of local resilience fora.

The national risk register published this year is the most transparent ever, because it is vital that we all understand the threats that we face—and when I say all of us, I mean the whole of society, from Government to emergency responders, industry, voluntary and community leaders, and citizens. Last week I was at Porton Down—in the constituency of my right hon. Friend the Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General, I believe—to inspect the vital work done there to protect the United Kingdom from chemical, biological and radiological threats. I saw the laboratories where highly skilled staff dedicate themselves to improving our preparedness for future pandemics and to defending our country against malicious attacks such as those we saw in Salisbury.

The people I met at Porton Down and our wider resilience community are on the frontline. They make our people safer and our country stronger. I champion them and pay tribute to them for the work they do. I also pay tribute to the local resilience fora up and down the country, who are there for us when we need them through every kind of crisis, as we saw demonstrated most vividly during the covid pandemic.

Our work to make our country as resilient as possible is a constant endeavour. The resilience framework sets out ambitious plans to continue to strengthen the frameworks, systems and capabilities that underpin the UK’s resilience through to 2030, and we are building on those plans. The Government have a role in bringing all the actors together and giving them the skills they need. Today I can announce that we are developing a new UK resilience academy that will improve the skills of those groups. It will provide a range of learning and training opportunities for the whole of society.

For professionals, there will be a curriculum to build skills, knowledge and networks, and a centre of excellence for exercising. For businesses, there will be greater guidance, with particular assistance on threats to critical national infrastructure and cyber. For citizens, there will be a unified Government resilience website, which will provide practical advice on how households can prepare as part of a campaign to raise awareness of the simple steps individuals can take to raise their resilience.

The covid pandemic demonstrated the overwhelming community spirit of our nation, through the vaccine army, the thousands of NHS workers who returned to the frontline and the millions who, through little acts of kindness, sought to protect the vulnerable and the lonely. There will be a new website to provide a volunteering hub—a one-stop shop to help all those who want to help their communities when crises strike.

We are continuing to develop our approach to chronic risks—the challenges that, if left unchecked, will continue to erode our economy, society, community and national security. Building on the national risk register, we are developing new analyses and a programme of action that we will publish next year. As the covid-19 pandemic showed, shocks have impacts across the whole of society, including imposing significant economic consequences. That is why we have allocated an additional £10 million of new funding for research on risks to the economy and to our public finances, to better factor in the savings we can achieve in the long run by spending on resilience today, ensuring the stability of our economy and supporting the sustainability of our public finances well into the future.

We have made considerable progress over the past year and our focus is now firmly on the months, years and, indeed, decades ahead. We are learning the lessons of the covid-19 pandemic, which shone a light on the importance of resilience, as well as the lessons of the UK’s world-leading vaccine programme, which set us free again and demonstrated the importance of prevention rather than cure. Resilience is our immunisation against risk. These measures are a shot in the arm for Britain and its national security. The world may be more dangerous than ever, but we will be better prepared than ever. I commend the statement to the House.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

I call the shadow Secretary of State.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his words about my longevity—I very much intend for that to continue, and I will take his comments in the spirit in which I am sure he meant them. He asked about a range of issues and I will seek to address as many as I can, but I will be happy to follow up if I miss any.

First, the right hon. Gentleman talked about the range of risks that we face as a nation. He is absolutely right that one of the principal tasks of the Government and, indeed, my Department is to be across all of those risks, which we have done for many years through things such as the national security risk register. However, what we have done differently since covid is to be much more public about those risks through the national risk register, which sets out the range of risks that the nation faces, their likelihood and their impact. We have put an unprecedented amount of information into the public domain to help people prepare, whether as individuals or in businesses, local government or voluntary organisations.

The right hon. Gentleman asked about covid preparedness. That is precisely why we have introduced the biological security strategy, a £1.5 billion annual investment to prepare ourselves for the whole range of biological hazards we might face. The 100-day challenge is part of that strategy. If we have another pandemic, whatever form it takes, the crucial thing will be getting rapidly from the point at which the disease is sequenced to an effective vaccine. We are boosting our capabilities to enable us to do that within 100 days, because we saw during covid that that was the key to setting people free.

Turning to covid contracts, I gently point out to the right hon. Gentleman and the Opposition that at the time of covid, Opposition Members were constantly calling for us to go faster and look at a wider range of suppliers; I think at one point we were urged to seek the services of costumiers and football clubs. Since then, we have recovered huge amounts of money by establishing the Public Sector Fraud Authority, which has recovered double its target in the first year.

The right hon. Gentleman mentioned energy resilience. This Government have invested in renewables. We have not only the world’s largest offshore wind farm, but the second, third, fourth and now the fifth largest, with many more in the pipeline. I am in constant contact with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, and we continue to work to ensure the resilience of our energy networks this winter.

The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to raise the risks around cyber. As I have said to the House previously, it is undoubtedly the case that the risk landscape around cyber continues to increase, not just in this nation but around the world, year in and year out. That is driven by a range of factors, not least, as he highlighted, the grey zone between hostile state actors and cyber-criminals. Against that backdrop, we continue to increase our resilience, including through the creation of the ministerial cyber board and the National Security Council’s resilience committee, which I chair.

The right hon. Gentleman also mentioned democracy and how we will prepare ourselves for forthcoming elections. Elections will happen not just in this nation but in many others next year—indeed, in this nation, it could be the year after. That is why we have instructed the defending democracy taskforce to make sure we are fully resilient.

Finally, the right hon. Gentleman talked about governance. For many years, including when he was a Minister, we have been governed by the lead Government Department model, in which each Department takes responsibility for the risks set out in the national risk register. However, this Government have created for the first time a specific committee of the National Security Council—the resilience committee, which I chair—whose task is to hold those Departments to account. That is precisely what we are doing.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

I remind colleagues that a lot of right hon. and hon. Members are hoping to participate in the next debate. As such, it would be very helpful if questions were brief, so that the Deputy Prime Minister can be concise in return.

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

How would a future pandemic be different from the previous ones in terms of strategic stocks of protective equipment, and vaccine research, manufacture and distribution, should we be visited with such a disaster by a Chinese wet market or even a laboratory?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

My right hon. Friend tempts me to talk about the origins of covid. I will simply highlight that the World Health Organisation continues its investigation, and we are very much supportive of that.

As for what we are doing differently, the key thing is to move from the establishment of the disease to the vaccine with the 100-day taskforce. We have also overhauled our governance structures. For example, we have split the long-term risks and the short-term risks by creating a totally separate unit that deals with long-term risks, which is headed by a head of resilience. That will enable the Government to deal with the long-term risks but also focus on the short-term challenges. When I was at Porton Down last week, I saw the kind of investment that the UK Health Security Agency is making in precisely this area, whether in capacity to test vaccines’ effectiveness or to test the testing equipment. I am confident that while there is more to do, as I set out in my statement, we continue to improve our performance.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

I call the SNP spokesperson.