Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, whether he has made an assessment of the potential merits of including timber supply metrics in the National Security Risk Assessment.

The National Security Risk Assessment (NSRA) is the government’s principal tool for identifying and assessing the most serious malicious and non-malicious risks facing the United Kingdom and its interests overseas.

Whilst timber supply is not currently included as a discrete risk, both threat to domestic timber and critical supply chain disruption are considered from a range of causes across the NSRA. Malicious risks impacting imports and a plant pest affecting UK forestry, for example, currently assess this topic.

Furthermore, all risks are assessed for their economic and macroeconomic impacts, and a disruption to construction materials sufficient to disrupt the UK economy (regardless of cause) may be identified here.

Both the NSRA and the publicly available version, the National Risk Register (NRR), are kept under continual review to reflect the changing risk landscape. During every update, policy makers are encouraged to consider the potential implications of their risk across a range of sectors.

The Lead Government Department (LGD) model ensures departments with the day-to-day responsibility for an issue or sector are responsible for leading work to identify serious risks and ensuring that the right planning, response and recovery arrangements are in place.