Recommendation 22

The challenges the UK has faced in the covid-19 pandemic reflect longer-term gaps in the systems for planning and preparing for biological risks. While the Government has identified top-tier biological risks to the UK’s national security, that assessment does not appear to have had the required practical effects in terms of exercising and mitigation. This raises questions over the impact of the risk identification and ‘tiers’ system of the National Security Risk Assessment in practice. (Paragraph 118) Biosecurity and national security 57