Deputy Prime Minister speech on resilience: 22 May 2024

INTRODUCTION/COVID CONTEXT

Four years ago – almost to the day – I was standing in 10 Downing Street giving the daily press conference during the early months of the COVID pandemic.

It was a terrifying time.

An unknown – unforeseen – entity had upended our way of life…

… was taking the lives of thousands…

… and endangering the livelihoods of millions more.

Britain's response to such a pandemic – and indeed our wider resilience – was under the spotlight.

We quickly discovered where our strengths and weaknesses lay:

We turned to business and civil society to augment our capabilities – from the ventilator challenge to the vaccine army.

While Rishi Sunak deployed our hard-won economic heft…

…to protect jobs, through the unprecedented furlough scheme…

…and to protect businesses and national institutions…

… including through the £2 billion cultural recovery fund that I led as Culture Secretary.

I'll leave it to others – including the COVID Inquiry – to make judgements on our relative performance…

… but I am hugely proud of the way the whole of society…

…the NHS, Government, businesses, civil society and individuals….

… came together in response to the generational crisis of COVID.

We were able to effect the fastest vaccine rollout…

…a speedy end to lockdowns…

… and one of the quickest economic recoveries.

RESILIENCE SINCE COVID

Although the virus is still amongst us - and continues to affect particularly those with long Covid…

…we have, largely, returned to normality.

And as much as many of us would like to forget those dark days…

… it is right that Government ensures that we are prepared for the next crisis.

That's why, on day one in this role, I turned my focus to exactly that.

In the last 18 months we have launched a new Resilience Framework – outlining ambitious plans through to 2030…

…a dedicated Resilience Directorate – constantly scanning the horizon for future threats…

…and an Emergency Alerts system – ready to notify people if lives are at risk.

We have bolstered our Local Resilience Fora…

…developed a dedicated programme to assess and act early upon chronic risks…

… we have harnessed the transformational power of data through our world leading National Situation Centre…

…and published the most transparent-ever National Risk Register.

We have also recognised that crises have a disproportionate effect on vulnerable people…

… and so we are taking specific actions to better protect those groups.

The work we do is now independently reviewed and genuinely cutting-edge.

These reforms amount to the biggest overhaul of resilience in the UK for decades.

INCREASING THREATS

But as we have been increasing our defences, the threats we face have been proliferating.

Geopolitical tensions have risen to heights not seen for decades …

… climate change has compounded the risk from natural disasters…

… and – as became all-too-real with COVID – biosecurity hazards pose potentially existential threats to our lives and livelihoods.

All the while we become increasingly dependent on digital technology which brings extraordinary opportunities…

… but also creates new vulnerabilities and threats.

In particular, generative AI has lowered the barrier to entry for malign on-line actors…

…making the UK's leadership on frontier AI risks essential.

GOVERNMENT POSTURE/WHOLE OF SOCIETY

And as the Prime Minister said last week, more will change in the next five years than in the last thirty.

So it is right that we take stock and consider how we make sure we are as resilient as possible.

There are currently around 100 risks on the Government's risk register, ranging from cyber attacks to solar flares.

It is important at this stage to say that it is not the job of Government to be optimally prepared for just one of these risks manifesting…

… rather it is our job to position our finite resources so that we can prevent risks where we can…

…have plans in place for where we cannot…

…and are able to put those plans into practice as quickly as possible in a crisis.

It's a trade-off.

You cannot be fully prepared for one and sensibly prepared for all.

One thing that COVID made clear – and that remains clear – is that crises can hit us all…

…in ways we might not be able to anticipate…

… and that resilience requires us all to be ready.

It is this ‘whole of society' approach that – ultimately – saw us overcome the pandemic.

Now, none of us want to spend disproportionate time dwelling on the ‘what ifs' or the ‘worst-case scenarios'…

… but we do ourselves a disservice – indeed we put ourselves at risk – if we don't put sensible precautions in place.

And so today, I want to outline both the steps the Government is taking…

… and the steps we urge others to take, to strengthen our collective, national resilience.

INDIVIDUALS

That resilience begins at home.

After the reaction to my intervention on preparedness last Autumn…

… where I was painted as either alarmist…

… or as some sort of doomsday prepper…

… I want to take head on the suggestion that we shouldn't talk about this issue.

Who can forget the empty supermarket shelves in the early days of the pandemic?

And how many of us have since acted so we'd be prepared if it happened again?

If there was a national power outage, how many of us have torches and batteries?

If the water went off, how many of us have a few bottles stored away?

And if there was a cyber attack, how many of us have the means to listen to the radio without mains power or wi-fi?

A poll released today by our hosts - the London Defence Conference - shows that just 15 per cent of people have an emergency supply kit in their homes…

… while more than 40 per cent of people do not have three days' supplies of non-perishable food and water.

It is still the case, I make no apologies for reinforcing my recommendations that all households take a few minutes to consider their preparedness.

I am determined to make this as easy as possible, and to offer clear guidance.

This is not about stockpiling, this is about sensible safeguards.

And so, I can announce that today we are launching a new gov.uk website, based on the National Risk Register, that offers practical information for households to make those preparations.

This is about being prepared ahead of events…

…small things we can do today that might make a big difference tomorrow.

INTERNATIONAL COMPARATORS

Perhaps it is the legacy of the old ‘stiff upper lip' mentality that means it is unusual for a British minister to talk about resilience…

… certainly there is far more of a culture of doing so around the world.

In Finland they have a '72 hours campaign' which encourages everyone to be self-sufficient in the first three days of any crisis…

… as well as an annual ‘National Preparedness Day'.

Meanwhile, I recently visited the earthquake preparedness centre in Tokyo…

… where they have an entire crisis management centre ready to go when the next big quake hits.

And although we are fortunate not to have to worry too much about the UK's earthquake resilience…

… I do want to embrace that spirit of openness around national preparedness…

… and to share lessons from our respective training and exercising programmes.

That is why I am pleased that resilience and crisis-management officials are actively engaging with their counterparts in these and other countries.

Indeed many of them are represented here at this conference.

Of course, when it comes to our international partnerships, the bedrock of our resilience is the NATO alliance…

… which is why our commitment to spend an additional £75 billion over the next six years - increasing defence spending to 2.5 per cent of GDP by 2030…

… is so important.

It is also right that we consider our resilience and our defence together…

… and so - working with NATO and other partners - we are bringing forward a comprehensive National Defence and Resilience Plan…

… based on the very latest threat assessment and bringing together both civil and military planning.

TRAINING

Although crisis-response is so often considered through the prism of central government or individuals…

… the truth is, it is communities that make the difference between success and failure.

It is the response of public services, businesses, local resilience fora and the voluntary sector that determines the extent to which services, and economic output, are hit.

In these moments we look to local leaders…

…as much as to national government.

And we want to offer all of these individuals appropriate training.

We have already announced the new national Resilience Academy… 

…which will see several thousand people trained to deal with crises

this year and next year.

And I can announce today that, for the first time, we will create bespoke training offers for both ministers and MPs…

… and I am looking forward to attending the early pilot of these courses.

EXERCISING

It is also important that we stress-test our response…

… putting both our training and our plans into action…

… and being candid about where we find vulnerabilities.

Although those on the resilience frontline are constantly working to iterate their own preparations…

… we can only assess their efficacy when we bring them together and practise them in concert.

So I am also pleased today to launch the new National Exercising Programme.

This plan schedules training over the next 4 years…

… and is designed to test as many of the common knock-on effects of crises as possible.

Importantly, next year – five years on from the heart of the first lockdown – we will conduct a major ‘Tier 1' exercise, testing our response to a major pandemic…

… this will be the largest ever simulation of a pandemic in the United Kingdom…

… and will involve thousands of people from across Government and public services.

LGD MODEL/RESOURCING

At the heart of our resilience systems is the ‘lead government departmental' model…

…where risks are delegated to those departments which already cover the relevant areas.

I am aware that the model has been called into question…

… but I believe it is still the right foundation to build on.

The alternative is to create a huge new centralised government agency…

… simultaneously duplicating sector-specific expertise…

… and potentially ignoring the expertise that departments have built up over years.

But that does not mean that we should not look to improve our current approach.

I believe we need to do so in three crucial ways:

… in our approach to central oversight…

… our approach to resourcing…

… and our approach to catastrophic risks.

CENTRAL OVERSIGHT

When it comes to oversight, it is not right that departments are able to ‘mark their own homework'…

… nor can the centre absolve themselves of responsibility for making sure those plans are robust.

And so, through the new Resilience Directorate, the Cabinet Office is being more active in embedding a culture of resilience right across Whitehall…

… developing critical cross-cutting capabilities …

… and ensuring that the join-up between departments is as seamless as it needs to be.

As part of this, we will use some of the £10 million ‘Economic and Fiscal Risks Fund' announced at the Autumn Statement last year…

… to fund necessary proactive mitigations.

RESOURCING

That fund will also be used for research into how we embed a culture of resilience into our public spending decisions.

When money is tight, the concept of spending to save falls out of favour…

… and although it is right that we have a rigorous value-for-money criteria…

… it is also true that every penny we spend on resilience today…

… saves pounds when a crisis strikes.

It is estimated that the entire cost of COVID to Government was around 350 billion pounds…

… that's well over £10,000 for every household. Money that will have to be paid back.

And yet the cost of Covid in lives would have been far greater had we not invested in our health services and life science industry in the preceding decades…

…and the cost to livelihoods would have been far greater if we hadn't had the prudent financial management that meant we could fund schemes like furlough.

Because for me there is no greater source of resilience than a strong economy.

Of course, that hindsight was impossible then… but it can – and should – improve our foresight now.

And so, as we approach the next Spending Review, I have asked all departments to consider these lessons as they look to submit their bids for resilience spending…

… and, in some critical areas, such as biosecurity and cybersecurity, the Cabinet Office is working with all relevant departments to generate consolidated bids…

… reflecting the pervasive, cross-departmental nature of these challenges.

Allocating the proper resourcing is one thing, but ensuring it is subsequently spent as planned is another.

It is understandable that, when times are tight, or unforeseen pressures emerge, you might raid the rainy day fund…

… but for too long departments have cannibalised long-planned resilience spend to ease day-to-day pressures.

There are always urgent, immediate spending priorities.

It's the job of the centre to ensure that some areas are protected from those shorter-term decisions.

And so, I can also announce today, that in the critical area of biosecurity we have agreed that all spend will be ring-fenced through the next Spending Review period…

… and I am working with the Chancellor to consider how we can extend this protected approach to all resilience spending.

CATASTROPHIC RISKS

Of the 100 risks on the National Risk Register, we consider only a handful as catastrophic in scale….

…events that would have a profound effect on all our lives and that pose an existential threat to our national security, our society, even our lives.

When it comes to these risks…

…which have cascading impacts affecting other departments and their sectors…

…the lead government department model on its own is not sufficient to either make preparations, or to manage the response.

In these instances, I believe the Cabinet Office at the heart of government should play a much fuller role in coordinating our response.

For these risks, I also think it is right to look at the interaction between the devolved administrations and central Government.

It is my belief that when catastrophic crisis have nation-wide impact, it deserves a nation-wide response.

During COVID we saw the confusion that arose when the various administrations pursued different policies…

… and even descended into political game playing in tit-for-tat announcements.

And so, where a crisis meets the threshold of having catastrophic impact…

… we will work to ensure that, in future, we reduce policy divergence in our response…

…and deliver a consistent and coordinated approach across the whole of our United Kingdom.

BIOSECURITY

The area that gives rise to the most likely, and most severe catastrophic risk, is biosecurity.

This might be naturally-occurring infections, such as epidemics, pandemics or antimicrobial resistance…

…it might be biological attacks…

…or new threats from AI.

In every scenario we are strengthening our collective defences and doubling down our delivery of the UK's world-leading Biosecurity Strategy…

…and today I can confirm we are committing to increasing our investment to mitigate these risks…

…and will be setting out the details of this in my first annual statement on its implementation to Parliament at the end of June.

CONCLUSION

Resilience is a ministerial portfolio unlike any other.

It is the only part of government where you hope that the plans you work so hard to develop never have to be put into practice.

It can feel overwhelming when you're confronted with a vast array of constantly changing doomsday scenarios.

But I approach the agenda with a deep sense of confidence and optimism.

Because while the risks are great…

…the resources and resolve we have are greater – and growing by the day.

Since the Covid pandemic – and specifically within the last year – we have seen the single biggest transformation of preparedness in a generation…

…creating an approach that is copied around the world.

We have changed resilience from something that is tucked away in government…

…into something that is a part of our everyday lives.

In many ways, we came through Covid because of the goodwill of our people.

The nurses, doctors and other clinical staff who cared for our sick.

The world-class civil servants who coordinated the government's response.

The scientists who developed the vaccine that freed us.

And good neighbours, good sons and daughters, and good citizens up and down the country who played their part.

It was a whole of society effort, underpinned by a strong economy.

But we cannot take those things for granted.

We are working ahead of time to equip the whole of society to prepare for - and even prevent - the next shock…

…while delivering a clear and robust plan that is so vital to our national defences.

And so the new measures I have set out today give us yet more tools in our armoury - whenever - if ever - we need them.