Preparing for Extreme Risks (RARPC Report)

Lord Harris of Haringey Excerpts

Thursday 12th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[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.

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[Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)]

Did the Minister say that they have appointed a head of resilience?

[Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)]

Has that been announced?

[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.

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[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.