Our current inability to cope with a non military National Crisis.
No one ministry has the overall brief, to ensure we are prepared for a non military threat to the country, be it from a virus, climate change, asteroid strike, solar flare or other unforeseen disaster.
The consequences have become all too obvious, with our lack of preparedness to deal with the current pandemic. Lack of PPE stockpiles and the inability to swiftly scale up vaccine production. Both due to failures in National strategic planning and its implementation.
The different ministries and Government Agencies such as Home Office, Department of Health & Social Care, Ministry of Food & Fisheries, Environment Agency etc all have their individual responsibilities but there is no ministry with oversight to ensure for example, strategic stockpiles of critical minerals, overcapacity in pharmaceutical factories that could be scaled up in a National emergency or land use related to home production of food. Who has overall responsibility for planning the response, to a sudden collapse in our communication and energy networks? The very names of ministries, regularly change, as disparate sectors are arbitrarily clumped together or broken up, as the political climate changes. The 2008 Department for Energy and Climate Change becoming the 2016 Department for Business Energy & Industrial Strategy.
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