It’s hard to know where to start if you are a brand new government taking on a mega-survey of risk and potential emergencies in the UK. Beyond the Covid-19 pandemic, the challenges are many. I am an adviser in UK emergency planning and have worked on almost every disaster involving British citizens since 2001, including the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the 7 July 2005 London bombings and the Grenfell Tower fire. My inbox is full with questions of how to prepare for prison overspill, plans to prevent any future terrorist attacks, details of the devastating aftermath of constant flooding and updates on several global conflicts. And, of course, there is always the next pandemic to ready ourselves for.
Most inquiry reports that land on our desk suffer from inaccuracies and underresearch. But I was relieved when the Covid inquiry’s findings were released last Thursday. Heather Hallett proved that she gets emergency planning and some of the central tensions within it. She has urged for it be taken seriously at cabinet level – her first recommendation is the need for a ministerial committee for whole-system emergency preparedness chaired by the prime minister. Lady Hallett also recommended a streamlined bureaucracy with fewer jargonistic terms used and a simpler chain of command. She said that an effective response would come best from a disaster agency independent of government. And that a pandemic was no “black swan event”. Ministers need to be comfortable accepting that the reasonable worst-case scenario could happen rather than writing it off as unlikely or as a cynical ploy for more resources.
