Strengthening Community Resilience
With your permission, Mr Speaker, I wish to make a statement on the steps that the Government are taking to ensure that the UK is the most resilient country that we can be. Let me begin by sending my condolences to the families of the two men who tragically died in storm conditions this weekend. It is an all-too-grim reminder of the devastating impact that storms can have. I saw that at first hand when I visited Cornwall in the wake of Storm Goretti earlier this year. Weather stations recorded wind speeds of 100 mph; some 50,000 homes, schools and businesses were left without power; and entire communities became trapped as fallen trees blocked country lanes. I heard families’ fear as they talked about how quickly the basic necessities of everyday life were stripped away—power, water and the internet. I thank the first responders for their tireless efforts in clearing roads and reconnecting homes. Those scenes will be familiar to Members right across the House. On 8 January, in the south-west, it was an extreme storm. Over the summer, across the UK, it was wildfires. This week, it has been Storm Austen and Storm Boelo. Climate change is making extreme weather not just more likely, but more powerful. This winter is set to be difficult, with El Niño increasing the likelihood of storms and heavy rainfall. Since we came into government in 2024, we have been hardening and sharpening the UK’s approach to resilience. We have re-written the Government’s pandemic strategy, investing more than £1 billion to build the UK’s biological defences. We have launched the home defence programme to ensure that our country is best prepared for the full range of potential threats, no matter how unlikely they might be. Up and down these isles, we are taking co-ordinated action to prepare our infrastructure for difficult weather this winter. We have £1.4 billion invested in flood defences in this financial year alone; £24 billion invested to maintain and improve our roads and rail network over the next four years; and £2.6 billion invested to climate-proof our rail infrastructure, with projects under way or completed in places such as County Durham, Derbyshire and Cumbria. Throughout the coming winter, I will be working across Government to ensure an effective response to storms as they occur. However, in reflecting on the experience of the people I met in Cornwall, it is clear to me that, in the middle of an emergency, our brilliant first responders cannot be everywhere all at once. It is clear that proper preparedness begins in our communities, streets and homes. Our research shows that just 13% of people in the UK feel that they are prepared for an emergency, such as a severe storm, that could cut them off from the services that they rely on. That figure is far lower than the figure for our European neighbours. The very same research showed that 84% of people in the UK want the Government to share more information about the steps that they can take to increase their preparedness. To give some credit to the Opposition, they recognised that resilience gap while in government and launched a new website to share preparedness guidance with the public. However, that website stopped short of a proper campaign; not enough people noticed it, and those who <span id="189" class="column-number" data-column-number="189"></span>did found the guidance hard to follow. This Government are committed to having an honest conversation with the public about the risks that we face and helping them to prepare—household by household, step by step—to improve our national resilience. To that effect, we have published updated preparedness guidance for households and launched a three-year campaign to raise awareness of the simple steps that people can take to be ready for everyday emergencies. I want to be clear from the outset that we are not launching this campaign because of any specific or imminent threat. Instead, launching this campaign brings the UK into line with almost every single European country and countless others around the world that already run similar campaigns every year. In developing the campaign, the Government have worked with more than 500 different organisations—emergency services, businesses, voluntary groups and local authorities—to develop guidance that meets the needs of communities. I will touch briefly on the guidance before outlining the campaign. The guidance is designed to help households to be self-sufficient for three days in an emergency. We have published a full checklist of the simple steps that households can take. The two main actions are: ensuring that you have three days-worth of water and non-perishable food, and signing up to the priority services register if you or someone in your household is eligible for extra support in a utility outage. As many people who can follow that common-sense guidance should follow it. By playing their part, people will be helping themselves as well as others in their community, because, in an emergency, every household that has taken the steps set out on the checklist is one less household that the emergency services need to give extra support to. We are also encouraging people to check in on their neighbours and to be ready to help each other out. We have worked hand in hand with charities to ensure that the campaign is helpful for everyone, including organisations representing disabled people, people struggling with their mental health and people who rely on food banks. Many actions on the checklist—such as signing up to the priority services register—are completely free, and others can be ticked off over time by adding one item per week to the weekly shop. This is about helping as many people as possible to be ready for an emergency, so that help can arrive to those most in need first. To those who think this campaign is an overreaction, I say, “Think of the people I met in Cornwall and those in countless other communities across the UK, including the tens of thousands of people who were without power this very weekend.” Their lived experience proves otherwise. The campaign will run for at least three years, and is called “Be Ready”. It is being run hand in hand with our emergency services, local councils and resilience forums, and voluntary organisations. I am pleased to report that since launch, the campaign website has been viewed hundreds of thousands of times and the campaign checklist has been downloaded tens of thousands of times, and while it is too early to have formal polling data, anecdotal evidence and partner data shows that people up and down the country are heeding our advice. This is just the start, however; over the coming weeks, people will begin to see information about what they <span id="190" class="column-number" data-column-number="190"></span>can do popping up online, on the radio, and out and about in their local community. That is just the point—this is a community-led campaign. Over the coming weeks, we will also be sharing toolkits that partners can use to get involved. I encourage Members across the House to support the campaign, read the advice and help their constituents to be ready. Together, we can ensure our communities are ready for everyday emergencies, whenever or wherever they occur. I hope that the Be Ready campaign will unite communities across the United Kingdom, and I am working closely with the devolved Administrations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, all of whom back this campaign and the lifesaving advice it will share. Mr Speaker, before entering Parliament, I was proud to serve in the Parachute Regiment, whose motto, “Ready for anything”, comes to mind today. What you might not know is that, even longer ago—perhaps longer ago than I would care to admit—I was a Boy Scout, hard though that might be to believe.