Government Resilience Action Plan

Baroness Browning Excerpts

Thursday 10th July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)]

The noble Baroness makes an important point. The only issue that I would challenge her on is that cyber could affect everybody; we just saw what happened with Marks & Spencer, for example. There is potentially an impact on everybody.

The noble Baroness makes an important point about itemising the threats. We are trying to make sure that the foundations are solid, and, candidly, there are gaps. On where we sit and how we seek to move forward, it is about making sure that people understand what responsibilities they have. Even if 10% of people put in extra support at home, that means 10% of people who, in an emergency, we will not have to look after in the immediate 24 hours, and so we can focus our efforts on the more vulnerable. It is about how we make sure that our resources are more effective, and that people understand what they should have at home.

After Covid, we had many conversations about toilet roll and flour. Making sure that people have what they need at home for a week’s worth of supplies is a conversation we should all be having anyway—although, like most people, I want to put a lot of those memories in a box and not have to think about them again.

The noble Baroness is absolutely right that there has to be a real conversation with the general public. I truly believe my right honourable friend the Prime Minister has started such a conversation with the country in discussing the scale of threat, how our world is changing very quickly around us, what responsibilities we must have and what impact that might have on our day-to-day lives. Some of it is about money and some of it is about actions and personal responsibility.

[Baroness Browning (Con)]

I am sorry to take the Minister back to it, but before Covid was officially declared a pandemic in this country, there were several weeks of mixed messaging emanating from the World Health Organization. In preparing for another pandemic, what assessment have the Government made of the role of the WHO and the reliability of its global reach?