The 3am Call: Preparing For The Worst
August 2024: Rioting in Bristol | Image by: JMF News / Alamy Stock Photo
4 min read
As potentially career-wrecking disasters lurk at every turn, ministers should spend more time learning how to handle a crisis
There are 89 risks spelled out in grisly detail in the National Risk Register, from cyber-attack to terrorism to another pandemic. Not all of them will materialise, but there is often a crisis waiting around the corner to derail a minister’s carefully laid plans.
This government has already faced one major crisis, in the riots last summer, and has dealt with some potentially serious events like the Heathrow substation fire or the North Sea tanker collision. Part of any government’s ‘licence to operate’ is its ability to successfully manage and resolve crises: if a government flounders when it matters, how can it be trusted to manage the day-to-day business?
It is therefore crucial for ministers that they are prepared to deal with whatever crises come their way. Different crises will require ministers to respond in different ways – the role played by one minister in dealing with a major terror attack may be quite different to how another minister contributes to resolving a run on the banks.
The Institute for Government has looked into the different roles that ministers play during crises. Chief among them, like in normal times, is that of making decisions for what the rest of government should be doing – but the nature of crises often means that frontline agencies, whether security services, emergency services or other bodies like the Environment Agency, will be responsible for much of the initial work responding to the event.
The amount of room that any minister has to manoeuvre depends on the nature of the crisis, but this does not mean that ministers do not have a role to play.
Ministers must use the weight of their office to push decisions through inertia
When former justice secretary Jack Straw was awoken by an abrupt phone call at 6.30am informing him that prison officers across England and Wales had called a surprise strike, it wasn’t his job to direct how prison governors should maintain order in overcrowded prisons – rather, he had to decide whether to seek an injunction against the officers’ union and create the conditions that brought the strike to an end.
Ministers also need to be problem-solvers. They must be able to use the weight of their office to push decisions through inertia in the system by removing blockages – bureaucratic, economic or political – and they need to provide cover for those agencies leading the government’s response.
As well as a series of terror attacks in 2017, former home secretary Amber Rudd had to deal with a new threat – a global cyber-attack that wormed its way into outdated NHS systems, encrypting data and demanding a ransom on the uncertain promise that it would then release the data. It was the nascent National Cyber Security Centre that oversaw the response, but it was up to Rudd to provide political cover for the organisation to do its job and to see off interventions from other parts of the system that sought to get involved in the response and risked complicating chains of command.
As the leaders of the government, ministers are the public face of the response to a crisis, responsible for communicating with different audiences ranging from those affected by a crisis to political audiences and the public at large. Sometimes this means standing next to an expert at a press conference – like Matt Hancock with Chris Whitty and Patrick Vallance during the pandemic.
But sometimes the best form of communication is visiting affected communities. John Healey, who was appointed as minister for flood recovery in response to the 2007 floods, was a prolific visitor to areas hit by flooding. By going to the affected areas, Healey could see first-hand what people were experiencing and he was able to relay this perspective back to central government, where it could inform decision making. And of course, ministers also need to tailor messages for political audiences – Parliament is a key platform both for demonstrating leadership and keeping MPs from different parties up to date.
Crises are a test for any minister. By taking the time to think about the roles they need to play, ministers can make sure that they are as prepared as possible. It is in all our interests that they get this right.
Patrick McAlary is a research assistant at the Institute for Government
