Recommendation 16

There is a striking absence of strategic leadership of the UK’s biological security work as a whole. Several Government departments have an important role in preparing for biological risks to the UK’s security, but the NSC sub-committee (‘Threats, Hazards, Resilience and Contingencies’) to which departments are supposed to report no longer exists. Neither the National Security Council nor the Cabinet Office provides sufficient collective strategic leadership of departments’ work to address biological risks. This governance gap, it seems to us, may also affect other cross-departmental security challenges, beyond the biological sphere. Without stronger direction from the centre of Government, we are concerned that long-term planning activities integral to the UK’s biological security and other cross-departmental challenges may drop off departmental agendas (particularly at times of financial pressure), or remain in departmental silos despite the objectives of the Fusion Doctrine. The failure to re-appoint the relevant NSC sub-committee may also undermine the Resilience Capabilities Programme, for which this sub-committee was previously responsible.