Preparing for Extreme Risks (RARPC Report)

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Thursday 12th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, it is an honour to follow the noble Lord, Lord Mair, who is one of the most eminent engineers and experts in this field I have come across. I very much welcome this report and the work that the noble Lord, Lord Arbuthnot, and his team have done. It is very persuasive, in part because of the amount of evidence gathered from so many different people.

My concern is about the Government’s response. I know that we have the resilience framework, but when one reads the response and finds that all but two of the recommendations are accepted, it is easy to say, “That’s fine; let’s sit back and do something else”. But when you look a bit further, you can see that the response is saying, in my words, “Yeah, we’ll talk about it a bit more and not do a great deal”.

One of the most important responses is to the second recommendation, on an office for preparedness and resilience, et cetera. It is interesting, but then the Government qualify it by saying:

“It will be important for any change to strengthen and complement existing and well tested accountability structures and to avoid unintentionally diminishing the accountability of those most responsible for managing risk.”


To me that means, “We are going to carry on as before and just pay a bit of lip service to some new organisation”. That is really worrying.

I declare an interest as living in probably the lowest property in relation to sea level in this country, on the island of Bryher in Scilly. We look at the waves, the high tide and the storms—this week is not a bad example —and wonder, “How long is it going to last?” There are many other examples around this country—not just sea, water or floods, as the noble Lord, Lord Mair, and others have said.

My concern is that it has taken the committee and the Government about two years to get this far, but what will happen next? As many noble Lords have said, the threat is changing very fast and widening. How will we monitor—independently, as the noble Lord said—the progress, or lack of?

I am a member of the Built Environment Select Committee in your Lordships’ House. We took evidence this week from the Infrastructure and Projects Authority, which all noble Lords probably know. I will not tell your Lordships what the chief executive said because it is probably still confidential, but if one looks at its annual report, which came out I think a few months ago, one will see that it now has a process for monitoring all the different projects that it chooses on their cost and progress and whether they are likely to succeed or fail. It publishes a sort of traffic light system. I always worry that it publishes this thing, but who in government takes any notice? The worst one I have discovered from about 150 projects on the list—noble Lords will be glad to hear that I will not read them all out—is one that we are probably all aware of: the emergency services mobile communication programme. This has been on the traffic light list for nine years, and it is still not working. This is emergency services communication, which of course will be fundamental to many of the crises that may happen in future.

I am sure the Minister will not be able to tell us why this has happened or whether that programme will work next week and so on, but it seems to me that something such as this, with the IPA keeping a monitoring role over all the recommendations from the committee and reporting regularly, would be a useful adjunct to whatever happens next. I will be pleased to hear the Minister’s response.

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[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I think the noble Lord is right that the main focus is on the next five years, but I will perhaps come back to him to discuss that point further. It is clear from what I have been saying that we are looking at extreme risks, and they are not necessarily going to arrive tomorrow, so I understand and sympathise with the point he has made.

The second step is strengthening the crisis and resilience structures in the Cabinet Office with the creation, as I have said, of the resilience directorate and the COBRA unit. We are responsible for resilience planning and national crisis response, working closely with departments which have sectoral responsibilities. This includes identifying, planning and preparing for risks, and building capacity to respond effectively. The changes to how it is organised will help to ensure that the Government have the capacity and capability to respond to emergencies, which is obviously particularly important in the wake of Covid-19.

Thirdly, we are working to improve our resilience to chronic risks and vulnerabilities, such as climate change—which was emphasised by the noble Viscount, Lord Thurso—and artificial intelligence. We have recognised that this type of risk poses continuous challenges over time to communities, the economy and security, and requires a different type of response to more acute risks, such as flooding or terrorism.

The scale of the risks we face has required a new strategic approach to resilience. That is why we published the UK Government Resilience Framework in December, which previously had the working title of “national resilience strategy”, to respond to a point made by several noble Lords. It is a new strategy which is already being implemented across government. It reflects our ongoing commitment to resilience which we made in last year’s integrated review, and the new strategic approach will be reflected in further publications this year, with the refreshed national risk register, the updated biological security strategy, and the update to the integrated review itself, which has also been promised.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

The noble Baroness has given us some good information about progress being made but, as the noble Lord, Lord Arbuthnot, said in his introduction, this is all a question of when it is going to happen and having some independent monitoring of progress. Does she not think that it would be a good idea to have something independent, rather like the Infrastructure and Projects Authority, as I mentioned? I can quiz her further when she comes to meet our Select Committee next week, but I would really rather hear it now.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord for his intervention, and I will reflect further on the best way of satisfying him.

I emphasise that the framework is important and strategic. It strengthens the systems, structures and capabilities which underpin the UK’s resilience to all risks and those that might emerge. It is based on three key principles. The first is a shared understanding of the risks we face. The second is a focus on prevention rather than cure, wherever this is possible, as several people have mentioned. Some risks can be predicted or prevented, but it is more difficult to do so for others. The third principle is of resilience as a whole-of-society endeavour. Everyone seems to agree on the importance of that. We are more transparent, and we want to empower all parts of society to make a contribution, so I was glad to hear from the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leicester about the possible role of faith groups and volunteers of all kinds. He is right about the contribution they make in crises, as I know from the work of the churches in my own local area of the Nadder Valley. Faith groups are also part of the local resilience forums. In London, for example, we have a voluntary, community and faith sector sub-group—but the key message is about resilience as a whole-of-society endeavour. Covid taught us the value of that.

Nobody has mentioned this, but central to delivery on those three principles is improving the communication of risks and impacts. We want people to better understand what they may actually experience, and what they can do to protect themselves, their families and their communities. We must drive early action on risks; that is at the core of the framework.

Some noble Lords will have looked at the framework, which sets out our ambition to 2030. It includes improved risk communication by growing the Government’s advisory groups to bring in experts, academics and industrial partners. We are strengthening local resilience forums, which has included extra DLUHC funding to improve multi-agency planning. I should say that my husband is chair of a parish council, so I know that resilience systems already assist in great detail towns and villages, and how important that was in marshalling voluntary effort during Covid. We need to build on those sorts of strengths. The measures include delivering a new UK resilience academy built up from the Emergency Planning College, thereby making world-class professional training available to all who need it. I have a lot of material on that, if noble Lords are interested. We are also establishing a new Cabinet sub-committee of the National Security Council. I suspect that we will have many more debates, because we are introducing an annual statement to Parliament on civil contingencies risk and the UK Government’s performance, which I hope will help noble Lords to hold us to account.