A report has found that the assessment and planning of risks facing the UK are deficient.
The House of Lords select committee on risk assessment and risk planning produced a report in October 2020 called Preparing for Extreme Risks: Building a Resilient Society.
James Arbuthnot, chair of the committee, said that the UK's risk assessment processes had been praised across the world before the Pandemic, but the impact of Covid suggested there may be problems.
He said that if there were to be a coronaviruses, the country would suffer up to 100 deaths. We realized that we could have done better in our assessment and planning.
The country's approach to assessing and preparing for a wide range of risks, from chemical warfare to the climate crisis and severe space weather was looked at in the report.
The committee member said that the growing possibility of major disruption due to more and more frequent cyber- attacks keeps him awake at night. I worry on a timescale of tens of years about bioterrorism, bio engineered viruses and all that, which are going to be feasible.
There are a number of flaws in the report. The committee said that the government tends to focus on immediate problems rather than preparing for the long term.
Lord Mair said that there is no incentive to prepare for major risks during the term of the government.
The National Risk Register and the National Security Risk Assessment were flagged as concerns by the committee, and they called for better processes to categorise risks, including looking at how vulnerable the country would be to certain threats, and better modelling of how risks can cascade.
A lack of transparency by the government was critiqued in the report. The current risk management system is shrouded in an unacceptable and unnecessary level of secrecy and has hampered the country's preparedness, with frontline responders including local government and volunteer groups struggling to access the information they need.
The report on Exercise Cygnus, the 2016 government simulation of how the country would handle a fictitious "swan flu"pandemic, was only made public after a copy was leaked to the Guardian.
The latest report recommends some actions.
An Office for Preparedness and Resilience was established by the government, headed by a chief risk officer.
There is a presumption of publication by the government and the publication of the content of the Official-Sensitive National Security Risk Assessment.
Every two years, the government publishes a brochure on risk preparedness to inform the public on topics including what to do in an emergency.
It is better to face some of these issues, having prepared for, and practiced for, and exercised for them in advance rather than doing them first in the heat of battle.
The chance to address a public that is ready to be addressed was offered by the Covid pandemic. People have proved they are up to it.
The chair of the Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication at Cambridge University welcomed the publication of the report.
The committee's recommendation to improve the communication with the public about the risks they face is a good one. These vital issues need to be discussed.
