Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answer by Lord Agnew of Oulton on 13 May (HL3564), whether any single authority or body was responsible for monitoring and assessing individual departmental plans to ascertain the level of national readiness for a pandemic; and if not, why not.

Planning for a pandemic inevitably engages the work of many different departments. Each department is responsible for ensuring its own preparedness, and that of its relevant sectors, to manage the impacts of a pandemic. The Cabinet Office's role includes coordinating the regular assessment of the UK’s overall risk landscape for both internal and public purposes, the Resilience Capabilities Programme, managing central government response including by convening COBR, providing crisis management training through the Emergency Planning College, and working with Departments to test emergency response plans.