RSE response to National Resilience Strategy
The RSE has responded to the UK Government’s plans to develop a National Resilience Strategy for the UK. The response has been prepared by the Building National Resilience working group of the Post-Covid-19 Futures Commission. The response highlights the following key points:
A national risk register and a national risk assessment, under continuous review, with long-term foresighting is required.
These need to cover the aggregate and interdependent risk to the UK, as only by understanding the totality of the collective risk can we gauge the national risk.
Everybody and every organisation has a role to play in helping to support national resilience. A significant step forward is needed to help all parts of society to understand risks. As part of this, government needs to communicate and discuss national risks openly and honestly with the public. Too often, national risk registers and assessments are restricted to specialists and are not the subject of national debate. This calls for transparency and widespread public debate about risk identification and risk management so that the public is well informed and can play its part in supporting resilience.
While it is impossible to predict and mitigate all causes of potential failure, decision-makers need to consciously decide on the desirable level of resilience.
Public input and buy-in is crucial to help decision determine desired levels of resilience, and in balancing potential trade-offs between different options. A key question which needs to be addressed is whether there is an unavoidable trade-off between economic efficiency and resilience.
The impacts of Covid-19 have been felt disproportionately by certain parts of society, and the pandemic has highlighted existing structural inequalities. Policies that support resilience need to be proactively weighted towards marginalised individuals and communities. Preventative approaches and early intervention should be adopted wherever possible to support individuals, particularly the most vulnerable.
The UK Government needs to set out how it plans to evaluate the effectiveness of the strategy. The Cabinet Office should consider the creation of a set of key performance measures for assessing progress towards greater resilience, and the RSE response sets out some options for assisting with this.
