The National Preparedness Commission is a United Kingdom independent think tank that aims to promote better preparedness for a major crisis or incident. It brings together senior figures from public life, business, academia and civil society with the mission of promoting better preparedness in the UK for a major crisis or incident. Established in late 2020, it is based in London and receives funding from sponsorship and grants.
The Commission aims to provide a model for similar organisations in other countries. The purpose of the NPC is to ensure that if the UK were ever to go into another crisis, as a country we would be better prepared to deal with whatever came our way, largely due to the lessons we have learned during this Covid-19 pandemic.
The commission looks systemically at what needs to be done to improve societal preparedness and national resilience.
The Commission produces a series of policy papers each year looking at different aspects of preparedness. Each of these is followed by seminars to raise awareness and promote debate, either as smaller roundtables to develop further policy propositions or wider more public-facing events to widen interest and discussion.
Reports
- Resilience reimagined: A practical guide for organisations. A report produced by Cranfield University in conjunction with Deloitte that looks at how businesses responded to COVID-19 so as to identify how businesses can make themselves more resilient to future challenges. (1)
- Lessons from the Millennium Bug. This paper explains why Y2K was potentially so serious and how the risks were addressed by co-ordinated and timely action to mitigate them. It also points to important lessons from that experience to ensure future resilience.
- Building Better Resilience. This paper highlights three areas that are crucial to doing better: active resilience, human psychology and complex systems.
- Strategic Issues: a discussion paper. This paper sets out the global context and key strategic issues for the Commission’s future work.
The Commission is chaired by Lord Toby Harris of Haringey. He is President of the Institute of Strategic Risk Management and in the UK Parliament sat on the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy for most of the last decade. He has been heavily involved in resilience and preparedness issues for many years, including conducting an independent review at the request of the Mayor of London on the city’s preparedness for a major terrorist incident. He was a member of the House of Lords Committee on Democracy and Digital Technology that reported last summer and sits on the Lords’ Life After COVID Committee.
The Vice Chairs of the Commission are Sir Ian Andrews (former Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Defence), Brian Collins (Emeritus Professor of Engineering Policy at UCL and a former government Chief Scientific Advisor) and Sir Ken Olisa (Chairman of Restoration Partners and Lord Lieutenant of Greater London). They, together with the Chair, act as an Executive Committee for the Commission.
The other members are:
- Gisela Abbam (Chair, British Science Association)
- [Hon Lord James Arbuthnot] (former Chair of the House of Commons Defence Committee)
- Stephen Baker (Chief Executive, East Suffolk Council; SOLACE Lead for Civil Contingencies)
- Hanif Barma (Founder, Risk Coalition)
- Dr Ruth Boumphrey (Director of Research, Lloyds Register Foundation)
- [Braw] (Senior Research Fellow and Director of the Modern Deterrence Project, RUSI)
- [Brown] (Group Security Director, Tesco)
- Stephen Dunmore (Chair, Royal Voluntary Service)
- [Jo da Silva DBE FREng] (Arup Fellow; Global Sustainable Development Director, Arup)
- Julian Enoizi (Chief Executive, Pool Reinsurance)
- [Jonathan Evans KCB DL] (former Director General, MI5)
- [Victor Adebawale CBE] (Chair, NHS Confederation)
- Helene Galy (Director, Willis Research Network, Willis Towers Watson)
- Hema Purohit (Director of Government and Public Sector, Google Cloud, UK and Ireland)
- [Patricia Lewis] (Research Director for International Security, Chatham House)
- Professor Peter Guthrie OBE FREng (Professor of Sustainable Development, University of Cambridge)
- Deborah Higgins (Head, Emergency Planning College)
- Caroline Dwyer (former Director, Built Environment, City of London)
- Steve Fraser (Chief Executive, Cadent)
- Simon Lewis (Head of Crisis Response, British Red Cross)
- [Dame Ottoline Leyser DBE FRS] (Chief Executive, UK Research and Innovation)
- [Hon Sir David Lidington KCB CBE] (Chair, Royal United Services Institute; former de facto Deputy Prime Minister)
- [Marchant] (Chairman, Thames Water)
- [Barradell OBE] (Town Clerk and Chief Executive, City of London; Deputy Chairman, London Resilience Forum)
- [Revd and Rt Hon Dame Sarah Mullally DBE] (Bishop of London; former UK Chief Nursing Officer)
- Deputy Chief Constable Paul Netherton OBE (Devon and Cornwall Police; NPCC Lead for Civil Contingencies)
- Professor Lord Martin Rees OM (Astronomer Royal; founder, Centre for the Study of Existential Risk)
- [Hon Lord John Reid] (former Home Secretary)
- Neil Robertson (Global Head of Security, Unilever)
- Dr David Rubens (Executive Director, Institute for Strategic Risk Management)
- [Brooke Rogers] (Professor of Behavioural Science, Kings College London)
- Sir Mark Rowley QPM (former head of UK Counter-Terrorism Policing)
- [Scarsella] (Chief Executive, UK Power Networks)
- Richard Smith-Bingham (Executive Director, Marsh and McLennan Advantage)
- [Fiona Twycross] (Deputy Mayor of London for Fire and Resilience)
- Professor Liz Varga (Professor of Complex Systems, University College London)
- [Karin von Hippel] (Director-General, Royal United Services Institute)
- Professor Alison Wakefield (Chair of the Security Institute; Professor of Criminology and Security Studies, University of West London)
- Paul Williams (Head of Operational Risk and Resilience, Prudential Regulation Authority, Bank of England)
- [Rt Hon Lord Alan West GBC DSC] (former National security Minister; former First Sea Lord and Chief of Defence Intelligence)
- David Wright FREng (Director, Electricity Transmission, National Grid)
The Commission’s partner organisations and sponsors are listed on the Commission’s website.
References 1. Future pandemics? Stress tests and preparedness plans must be core part of businesses’ strategy, City AM, 30 March 2021. 2. Disaster planning committee formed after failures in UK’s Covid response, The Telegraph, 18 November 2020 3. Post-Covid planning: The committee aiming to protect us from disaster, BBC, 20 November 2020