Recommendation 3

There would be significant benefits in improving the public’s awareness of the main risks facing the country and what government is doing about them. The public and Parliament have limited awareness of the main risks facing the country and of what government is doing to address them. Although government has published a public-facing national risk register since 2008, this document is not widely known. Our witnesses recognised that government has a chequered history in communicating risks to the public and acknowledged that the government’s messaging on risks should be more balanced, accessible to non-experts and lend itself to practical actions. Greater public awareness of government’s planning for major risks, including the work it will carry out as part of the nascent catastrophic emergencies programme, would help avoid complacency, focus the minds of the officials who are tasked with risk planning, help to ensure the public is more aware of what is being done to protect them from harm and highlight opportunities for public engagement, awareness raising and behavioural change. The Government carried out a consultation last summer on a national resilience strategy and had over a million different interactions with it. This demonstrates a high level of public interest in these matters. Equally MPs collectively received hundreds of thousands of emails at the start of the lockdown, largely because the Gov.uk website did not provide clear and intelligible advice, or provide effective mechanisms for MPs to raise constituents problems. Recommendation: The Cabinet Office should set out how it plans to increase public awareness of the main risks facing the UK. It should also report annually to Parliament: • on what actions government has undertaken during the year to mitigate the risks covered by the catastrophic emergencies programme and provide an assessment of government’s preparedness for each risk; • what changes Government in making as a result of its consultations o