Ten years ago

I am presently reading a biography of the late Jeremy Heywood of reference 1, to which I shall return in due course. In the meantime, I notice a publication event from the early days of the Cameron administration, something more than ten years ago, that is to say the security strategy of reference 2.

I find that, in the language of the securocrats, we have four tier 1 threats, of which the third is various hazards - which might once have been called Acts of God - including that of pandemic. The strategy goes on, in the section snipped above, to put the possible number of deaths in the range 50,000 to 750,000.

This strategy was published in the first months of Cameron's coalition at a time when making large cuts to public spending were occupying the foreground. Indeed, one of the drivers for this strategy might well have been the need for the sort of up to date assessment of threats to the nation which would facilitate large but surgical cuts to the defence budget.

Large cuts notwithstanding, the response appears to have been the setting up of Cabinet committees and sub-committees to carry the work forward. Work which was maintained during the Cameron and May administrations, but which has fallen away under Johnson, not least because of the Brexit drain on central resources. The sub-committee which concerned itself with these particular hazards was stood down. No trace of it at the Cabinet Office website, but Wikipedia has a longer memory at reference 4: '... the Threats, Hazards, Resilience and Contingencies Subcommittee was a subcommittee of the National Security Council with the terms of references to consider issues relating to terrorism and other security threats, hazards, resilience and intelligence policy and the performance and resources of the security and intelligence agencies; and report as necessary to the National Security Council...'.

With, one imagines, the result that planning and preparation for a pandemic was largely stood down. Perhaps down to some obscure, about-to-retire civil servant working away in the depths of the Department of Health. No-one much was thinking about the facilities and supplies that would be needed if there was a pandemic, much less actually making such facilities ready and stockpiling supplies. No-one was pulling together a statistical modelling group to keep the relevant models and the data needed to drive them ticking over. No-one was thinking about the bureaucracy that would be needed in the event of a pandemic. While I dare say the Department of Health itself was being cut down to size after the spending binge of the Blair and Brown administrations - a spending binge of which I might say I am a grateful beneficiary. Not the right background against which to be carving out money to build and mothball fever hospitals, just in case.

While one imagines now, after the first horse has bolted, that planning and preparation for the next will be resumed. How long will it take before we sink back into complacency?

Reference 1: What does Jeremy think – Suzanne Heywood – 2021.

Reference 2a: A Strong Britain in an Age of Uncertainty: National Security Strategy – Cm 7953 – October 2010.

Reference 2b: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/61936/national-security-strategy.pdf.

Reference 3: https://www.gov.uk/government/groups/national-security-council. An apparatus which was probably trying to ape the nomenclature and arrangements for this sort of thing made in the US.

Reference 4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Council_(United_Kingdom).

Reference 5: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/04/twitter.html. An earlier contribution to the debate.