Articles
Responding to Shocks – lessons from Covid-19
14 April 2021This article for the National Preparedness Commission written by Rhys Clyne, a Senior Researcher at the Institute for Government, summarises three of the 10 lessons identified from the UK… Read more
Trust in people power
13 April 2021The Chief Executive of the British Red Cross, Mike Adamson, writes for the NPC about the importance of building trust in order to strengthen relationships. ‘The people when rightly… Read more
Strengthening the UK’s National Resilience: The Tasks Ahead
10 April 2021This article, by Lord Toby Harris, was first published by the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) on 8 April 2021 and is reproduced here with its permission. The need to… Read more
A better UK approach to biosecurity
06 April 2021Imagine a world in which you wake up, brush your teeth and breathe into a magic tube. In a matter of seconds, a sequencer in this tube tells you whether… Read more
A state of preparedness
31 March 2021This article for the National Preparedness Commission by Aidan Shilson-Thomas, Senior Researcher, and Sebastian Rees, Researcher, at Reform draws on the main tenets of a recent report by Reform titled… Read more
Futures thinking and foresight – tools for better preparedness
16 March 2021In February this year, the UK Government published ‘A brief guide to futures thinking and foresight’ in order to improve policy-making. The guide is derived from 20 years of work… Read more
Be prepared
08 February 2021This is a cross-post from The Risk Coalition by Lord Toby Harris. 2020 was not the year any of us expected. Moreover, if we go back to the early months of… Read more
What are the lessons of the last year in managing biosecurity risks and national security generally?
22 December 2020As a nation we were supposed to be prepared for a pandemic. It has been a Tier One risk in the UK Government’s National Security Risk Assessment for the last… Read more
How do we improve infrastructure resilience?
17 December 2020The recent joint Royal Academy of Engineering and National Infrastructure Commission (NIC) roundtable event was convened to discuss the resilience of national economic infrastructure. This infrastructure covers, for example, power,… Read more
National Preparedness Commission has its first meeting
19 November 2020Today, I chaired the first meeting of the National Preparedness Commission. Its mission to promote better preparedness for a major crisis or incident has never been more timely. In the… Read more