Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy

Lord Wei Excerpts

Thursday 22nd April 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wei (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I am thankful that we can have this crucial debate today and I declare my interests in the register. For some time, it has been clear that we are in the midst of an epochal shift, in which the old certainties of the post-war era are being eroded. In their place come times that are much more volatile and unpredictable, and in which our historical approaches may need to be adapted. I welcome the review and the Government’s determination to give birth to a more agile, inclusive and responsive approach to our national security that recognises new threats and rivalries, and the innovation needed to address them.

I want to focus my remarks on the issue of resilience and the role we can all play to help mitigate some of the shocks on the horizon. There will continue to be shocks, as the review correctly highlights, whether climate-related, a major hack or a drone attack on a major city or installation, or indeed another pandemic—manmade or zoonotic. Covid-19 has shown that it does not require a nuclear arsenal or an army, cyber or non-cyber, to effectively shut down large parts of the British economy and system; you just have to fill our hospitals with patients.

What is being done to tackle situations that, without much initial bloodshed, could bring our economy and society to its knees, through asynchronous attacks? How do we not just build resilience in our major institutions, with the usual contingency plans, resources and responses, but go further to make the structure of our government, society and services nearly pandemic, drone or weather-proof? It seems that a lot of this has to be about how we protect the internet from, for example, future quantum-based attacks, and how we use it in future to go beyond Zoom and video calling to enable our economy and services to function in a more decentralised away. It is also to do with how communities can cope if supply chains are broken or the internet and power supplies are taken down. What guidance will the Government give to civil servants, leaders and the public on how to prepare for such eventualities?

How can innovation and the private sector play a role, enabling more people like Kate Bingham to help reshape our services with the connections and insights they might have to go beyond any groupthink that might linger? Indeed, in healthcare the response so far is admirable, and we must praise those front-line workers who have sacrificed so much—including those in my own extended family here in Britain—to keep us safe. However, tough questions need to be asked about how resilient the NHS and healthcare is in this nation. In the initial wave of Covid, it looks like nearly one-third of patients caught it in hospital. Waiting lists have grown, in some cases to over a year, and death rates have increased for non-Covid-related causes, which may be due to people not accessing or being asked to access diagnosis and treatment.

Will a resilient NHS look to move more diagnosis, scanning and treatment away from hospitals and into the high street and community or even, using the latest technology, into our own homes? Will we continue to rely on a large hospital-based system that creates an easy target for enemies, human or non-human in nature, to bring us down? Will we consider creating perpetual trials to accelerate vaccine and drug development and to accelerate the adoption of new devices ahead of being hit by sudden and chronic health-related challenges, where the system would be overwhelmed and might struggle to respond from a standing start?

What about education or business? How can we ensure those who cannot work online are able to continue to operate on-site in safe ways in future pandemics? Should we encourage people to have both digital and physical work skills, so they can still have a job even if their digital or physical work environment is compromised? What does a resilient foreign policy look like?

Many other areas like these need looking at further. I believe that, in future, the winners may not just be those who are big or well-armed, or who have soft power, but simply those who can survive by being resilient enough to fight another day.