Are we really ready for the worst?
3 min read
Food. Fuel. Medicine. In recent weeks, warnings of potential shortages have been impossible to ignore.
But a bigger question hangs unanswered: what is our plan to handle these and other risks?
Does the UK have a resilience strategy and, if so, do we know about it? How are we preparing households, communities and businesses for serious disruption, and where is the practical advice that would help us cope when it comes? In short, are we predicting adverse events in slower time or jumping to respond when they are upon us? After all, keep calm and carry on is not a resilience strategy; it is a slogan.
We need to prepare for, and recover from, threats, crises and emergencies from wherever they come – from pandemics to cyber-attacks, to disinformation and electoral interference, and all forms of warfare, hybrid or otherwise. Sometimes a local accident can spiral, as with the substation fire that closed Heathrow Airport last year: lack of maintenance in critical national infrastructure where there should have been designed-in resilience.
Other threats are malign, in the context of a volatile, dangerous geopolitical landscape where western liberal democracies are under deliberate attack. The director-general of MI5 said his teams were “routinely uncovering attempts by state actors to commission surveillance, sabotage, arson or physical violence, right here in the UK”. The strategic defence review last year said that for the first time since the Cold War “the UK faces multiple, direct threats to its security, prosperity and democratic values”.
‘Hybrid’ warfare emanating from Russia, China or Iran as cyber-attacks, disinformation or the sponsorship of proxy terrorist attacks, is commonplace. If the threshold were crossed, and the UK were the target of armed attack, our preparedness could look threadbare, not only in inadequate numbers of armed forces, reserves, equipment and weapons production but also in terms of a ‘whole-of-society’ approach which the defence review called for to little effect.
We need to prepare for, and recover from, threats, crises and emergencies from wherever they come
The Nordic countries are well ahead on this. Ambassadors from Finland, Sweden, Norway and Denmark gave evidence to the cross-party House of Lords inquiry on National Resilience, which I chair, explaining how every citizen in their countries is routinely prepared for emergencies. Governments communicate candidly about risks. The result is not alarmism but assurance. Important information is distributed to every household and to businesses, helping them maintain supply chains and financial stability in case of crisis or war.
Our inquiry, to report in November, will ask direct questions about funding and accountability in the UK, and scrutinise whether central and local government is properly equipped, and how individuals, households and communities can be fully informed and, crucially, engaged. The first Covid-19 inquiry report called the structures for emergency planning “labyrinthine in their complexity”. The first UK public survey of risk perception found most adults believe emergencies and disasters will increase in the next decade, but they also believe they are only slightly or not at all prepared or informed. Our Lords committee is determined to change this.
Preparedness and resilience are no longer a case of ‘what if?’. It’s a mindset we all need.
Baroness Coussins is a crossbench peer and chair of the House of Lords National Resilience Committee
