National Risk Register

Lord Pickles Excerpts

Thursday 4th June 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord True]

My Lords, the NSRA and the risk register are continually reviewed and considered in meetings within government. They are an important informative, inside and outside government.

[Lord Pickles (Con)]

My Lords, having reread the 2008 and 2017 editions of the national risk register and the subsidiary documents last night, I hope that my noble friend will not think me unkind when I say that the Government’s response to Covid-19 has been effective despite the register rather than because of it. Given that the level of deaths has sadly reached that which the risk register predicted for influenza, I cannot really believe that the measures suggested in the register would have been used. I suspect that they would more likely have been similar to what we have seen with Covid-19. Does he agree that the sections on both corona-type and influenza pandemics should be reassessed and rewritten, and that the rest of the register should be subject to rigorous and unrelenting questioning?

[Lord True]

My Lords, everything should be subject to rigorous and unrelenting questioning. I agree with my noble friend about updating; it so happens that the current iteration has been drafted and circulated for consideration. But, in the light of what my noble friend said, he will understand that that iteration will come after the full absorption of the lessons and experience of the Covid crisis. But I assure him that its publication will come as soon as possible, once those lessons have been absorbed.