National Resilience and Preparedness

Richard Foord Excerpts

Tuesday 7th January 2025 Westminster Hall

[Sir Roger Gale (in the Chair)]

Order. I suspended the sitting until 11 o’clock but, with the mover of the motion and the Minister present, I see no reason not to start. I will call Richard Foord to move the motion and then the Minister to respond. As is always the case with 30-minute debates, there is no opportunity for the Member in charge to wind up. Without further ado, I call Richard Foord.

[Richard Foord (Honiton and Sidmouth) (LD)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered national resilience and preparedness.

It is an honour to serve under your chairship, Sir Roger. I have brought this debate to the House so that the people I represent can hear from the Government what they are doing to make the UK more prepared and resilient.

I was partly inspired by the Hallett inquiry into covid-19, and its module 1 report published in July, but I want to go beyond pandemics to think of the UK’s broader resilience and preparedness. At Cabinet Office questions last month, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster confirmed that the Government would respond to module 1 this month, and we look forward to hearing what the Government have to say. I want to focus on three areas: future pandemics, food security and hybrid threats.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I commend the hon. Gentleman for bringing this issue forward. It is important to have efficient contingency plans across the United Kingdom for all sorts of national crises and disasters, like those that the hon. Gentleman referred to. Local communities are encouraged to engage in activities, emergency plans and response units. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that there is more the Government can do to engage with the devolved institutions—in particular local councils—to ensure we have a joint strategy across the whole United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland?

[Sir Roger Gale (in the Chair)]

Order. The hon. Gentleman is an old friend and has been here a long time. We really must get out of the habit of reading into the record pre-prepared interventions. An intervention is an intervention, not a contribution to the debate.

[Richard Foord]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman that the civil contingencies legislation in this country puts a lot of the onus on the devolved institutions and a lot of the responsibility on local government. We cannot afford for national Government to therefore shed all their responsibilities and simply rely on local and devolved institutions.

Resilience is the capacity to withstand or to recover quickly; I suggest that the UK Government do not currently offer us that. The covid-19 pandemic exposed critical weaknesses in the planning and preparedness for large-scale emergencies. While the UK has made great strides in terms of our recovery—and we did after the pandemic—we may still lack the capacity to withstand other crises. Our vulnerabilities to emerging climate change, to food security risks and to hybrid threats from the UK’s adversaries leave us unprepared to endure shocks and unable to recover swiftly.

On covid-19, module 1 of the Hallett inquiry was a crucial call to action. The report concluded that the nation was “ill prepared” and that citizens were “failed” by the systems we had in place at the start of 2020. I think of how Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister at the time, was wandering around hospitals shaking hands while the national guidance proposed that we should do something completely different. The report revealed that the UK’s emergency planning was too much focused on influenza and failed to account for any other sort of pandemic.

One of the most critical failings identified was the “unduly complex and labyrinthine” nature of the UK’s civil emergency planning structures. Responsibility for pandemic preparedness was dispersed across multiple bodies, leading to inefficiencies and a lack of clear leadership. The inquiry also scrutinised the Government’s risk assessment processes, finding five major flaws that significantly affected the UK’s preparedness, including a lack of focus on prevention and insufficient consideration of interconnected risks, including economic and social vulnerabilities.

The 2016 preparedness exercise Exercise Cygnus, which simulated the impact of a flu pandemic, identified critical gaps in the UK’s preparedness, including insufficient capacity in the health system and a lack of essential supplies such as PPE. The recommendations from the 2016 exercise were not acted on, and when covid-19 emerged the same shortcomings persisted, with delays in the provision of PPE, inadequate testing, and healthcare services that became overwhelmed in some places.

Over 200,000 excess deaths have been attributed to covid-19 in the UK, many of which may have been preventable with better planning and better resilience. The pandemic also inflicted severe economic damage, with the UK experiencing one of the deepest recessions among the advanced economies. Businesses closed and jobs were lost. The strain on the public sector and on public services like our NHS is still being felt to this day.

The inquiry’s report set out key recommendations to overhaul the UK’s approach to civil emergency preparedness. The recommendations included regular pandemic response exercises and enhanced data sharing. Yet just last Thursday, Clare Wenham from the department of health policy at the London School of Economics stated:

“We’ve had the biggest pandemic of our lifetimes”

yet in 2025 we are

“we’re worse prepared than we were when we went in.”

When the Minister responds to the debate, it would be interesting to know where the Government are in relation to the World Health Organisation pandemic preparedness treaty. One of the 10 key recommendations from the covid-19 inquiry’s module 1 report emphasised the importance of enhanced data collection and data sharing. The emphasis on domestic resilience—the subject of this debate—has to be balanced with the obligation to co-operate internationally. Pandemics do not respect borders and require global solutions. The Government should act swiftly to implement the inquiry’s recommendations, engage with international frameworks such as the World Health Organisation treaty, and rebuild public trust in the nation’s ability to protect its citizens.

Covid-19 also highlighted some of the difficulties in other aspects of our resilience. We need only think about the supermarket shortages we saw and how people reacted: that was a reminder of just how vulnerable Britain is to food supply shocks.

[Sarah Dyke (Glastonbury and Somerton) (LD)]

I thank my hon. Friend for bringing forward this really important debate. The latest food security report from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs found that fewer households were food secure in 2023 than in 2020. No element of national resilience can be more important than food security, so does my hon. Friend agree that the Government should introduce a comprehensive national food strategy that tackles rising food prices, ends food poverty, ensures food security and improves health and nutrition? Does he further agree that we must give the Groceries Code Adjudicator more powers not only to protect consumers but to address unfair price rises?

[Richard Foord]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and I shall now get into the subject of food security. She draws attention to the Government’s food security report. Since the 1980s the UK’s self-sufficiency in food production has declined, going from 78% in 1984 to just 60% today. The statistics emphasise what my hon. Friend said. As for the Groceries Code Adjudicator, my hon. Friend is dead right: we need supermarkets to honour their deals and pay on time.

[Edward Morello (West Dorset) (LD)]

I thank my hon. Friend for securing this debate. On the point about the reduction in food security—I think it is actually below 60%, at 58%—he, as my constituency neighbour in the west country, will know the importance of the role that farmers and food producers play in our community, but we have also just seen 18 months of the wettest months on record, following swiftly on from one of the driest summers on record, in 2022, and we know there will be a devastating effect on food production as we see increased extreme weather conditions. Does my hon. Friend agree that climate resilience and action on climate change will also be an important part of the national resilience strategy?

[Richard Foord]

My hon. Friend is spot on. A report produced last October by the University of Exeter and Chatham House highlighted the fact that climate change and environmental degradation are a real weakness in the UK’s national security strategy. Authors Tim Lenton and James Dyke from the University of Exeter contributed to that report, and talked about the national security strategy having a glaring blind spot for climate threats. The report specifically identified risks to the food supply chain as a critical concern, no doubt exacerbated by some of the challenges we have seen lately from Government policy around agricultural property relief and the proposed changes to inheritance tax.

By contrast, Finland is a shining example, not just on food security but in many respects in relation to resilience. Finland has strategic food reserves, whereas the UK very much depends on real-time logistics, which poses severe risks when we see severe weather events, fuel shortages, or conflict.

Another factor is the UK’s departure from the European Union. Until 2021 a significant portion of our imports came from the EU, and trade disruptions following the UK’s departure from that bloc have heightened the risks. Between 2018 and 2023, import volumes from the EU decreased by 6%, and it is not yet evident how the UK is compensating for the lost relationships with our European partners in terms of food supply resilience.

The UK’s self-sufficiency in fresh vegetables—key in supporting the health of our nation—is at its lowest since records began. We are at just 53% for vegetable self-sufficiency. I have been involved in a campaign to have sections of British supermarkets that illustrate where products are grown in Britain or sourced in the UK, because at the moment it is easy in supermarkets not to know where food comes from. People are able to buy food from all around the globe, all year round. While that may be good in times of peace, we have seen during recent threats to global security that it may not persist.

Threats to food security have reminded us of what we could see in the future for our national security, so let me move finally to the issue of defence and hybrid threats. Defence is no longer just about protecting against armed attacks. Over the Christmas period I read Keir Giles’s book “Who Will Defend Europe?” The chapter on hybrid threats is excellent at illustrating how such threats range from cyber-attacks to disinformation. Those forms of aggression from states such as Russia mean that when we think about defence, we must think so much more broadly than just bullets and bombs.

[Ben Maguire (North Cornwall) (LD)]

On the subject of defence, and particularly technology, does my hon. Friend agree that mandating battery back-ups for all mobile phone masts, both existing and newly installed, would provide a simple, robust solution to ensure uninterrupted communication access, particularly in rural areas such as mine in North Cornwall?

[Richard Foord]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. I have not considered battery back-ups for mobile phone masts, but it strikes me as an example of a kind of psychology that we need to get into in this country—a way of thinking about our critical national infrastructure and how we might support it, rather than just supposing that everything is going to be all right on the night.

Just last week, NATO’s deputy assistant secretary-general for innovation, hybrid and cyber warned that Russian hybrid attacks are now at a level that would have been absolutely unacceptable five years ago. We must not underestimate the damage that Russia can inflict on the UK without firing a bullet. The UK’s relaxed approach to security has left some of our critical national infrastructure vulnerable. A stark example is the Loch Striven oil fuel depot in Scotland, which stores fuel for NATO warships and aircraft but was reported late last year to be now surrounded by land brought into Russian ownership.

The UK’s lack of preparedness is evident in many areas. A damning report by the Royal United Services Institute on the NHS’s wartime capabilities reveals that it has no capacity to manage either military or civilian casualties during conflict. I have seen this eroded and undermined in my Honiton and Sidmouth constituency. In east Devon, we have five community hospitals from which beds were stripped out under the last Government. We have seen about 150 beds removed; if that trend is scaled up across the country, it is little wonder that we see shortages of hospital beds during a spike in flu cases, let alone thinking about our preparedness for any sort of national emergency. Hospitals beds are one factor, but we need to think about blood supplies, transport and train personnel, shortages of which would mean the system would be overwhelmed in no time.

A couple of months ago, my researcher Fraser Johnson went to Finland. The Finnish Government showed him that they have taken a long-term approach to resilience and preparedness. They require their people to have a whole-of-society approach to these things. Defence is not solely the responsibility of state authorities: it involves citizens, charities, non-governmental organisations, businesses and schools. The schools teach children how to analyse sources and combat disinformation. Finland has regional security committees that conduct local defence exercises twice a year. The concept of citizens as security actors ensures that resilience is embedded throughout society. Helsinki’s emergency preparedness is a model of comprehensive planning. It has underground shelters equipped with oxygen supplies, water reserves and beds for 800,000 people to be used in staggered eight-hour shifts.

Of course, Finland is not the UK; it has some fairly unique challenges, such as being desperately cold and having a very long border with Russia, but we need to take some lessons from our north European neighbours. Finland’s broadcaster operates a secondary news desk 30 metres underground with its own energy supply, ensuring uninterrupted communication during emergencies. The Finnish National Emergency Supply Agency maintains a network of 1,000 public and private partners to ensure stockpiles of six months of fuel. We saw during the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 not only that the UK had become dependent on gas exports from Russia, but that we did not even have sufficient gas reserves in the UK, with the result that the price here spiked considerably.

Despite its proximity to Russia, Finland achieves all that with a defence budget of 2.4% of GDP, so it is partly about how we use the funding that we have. Our geographical distance from Russia should not lull us into complacency. By their nature, hybrid threats are difficult to detect and combat, and their impact will only escalate without decisive action. In January 2024, the Chief of the General Staff called for a shift in mindset to prepare for the possibility of war. The journalist David Parsley broke a story months later about how the Ministry of Defence is sketching out plans for a so-called citizen army of perhaps 200,000 volunteers, trained by reservists.

The UK should adopt a total defence approach focusing on stockpiling, training and central co-ordination to enhance resilience against hybrid threats and other challenges. We must move beyond our piecemeal responses and develop a proactive plan to safeguard our nation and its future. Will the Minister commit to implementing the UK covid-19 inquiry’s recommendations to strengthen our emergency preparedness? Will she prioritise a national food security plan to ensure resilience against climate change and supply chain disruptions? Will she outline the steps the Government will take to develop a comprehensive strategy to counter hybrid threats and protect our national infrastructure?