24
The Economist
April 22nd 2023
Britain
orous, following criticisms that precovid
simulations of pandemic risk were not tak
en seriously enough. When officials were
unhappy with the results of “Operation
Mighty Oak”, a recent test of what would
happen to key institutions in the event of a
power cut, they reran it.
The National Security Risk Assessment
(
NSRA
), a classified assessment of the
greatest risks facing the country, has been
overhauled. Now it can draw upon infor
mation from a whizzy new Situation Cen
tre, a secret room in Whitehall which co
ordinates data on the most serious threats.
The
NSRA
will also start measuring some
risks over fiveyear time frames rather than
two (though that is still not long enough to
consider threats like the failure of the
Thames Barrier, which just about stops
floodwater surging into London).
Central government cannot prepare for
everything: financial constraints alone
prohibit that. The December framework
commits to beefing up local resilience fo
rums, teams of localgovernment officials
and emergency responders which plan
their work based on the national risk regis
ter, an unclassified version of the
NSRA
. It
also stresses the importance of involving
firms, voluntary bodies and the public.
And crises are not always the result of
sudden events like a solar storm, a terrorist
attack or a flood. Most of the really big
emergencies are “slowburn” crises, which
smoulder for years without the govern
ment really noticing, says Sir David
Omand, a former head of
GCHQ
, Britain’s
signalsintelligence agency, and author of
a forthcoming book called “How to Survive
a Crisis”. As an example he points to socio
economic strains caused by rising inequal
ity or simmering disgruntlement about
pay on the part of healthservice workers.
An emergency alert cannot help tackle
these kinds of problems.
n
Dry run
The economy
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