Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for the answers she has given. I join in the general welcome that has been given by the Benches opposite for this action plan. As chair of the National Preparedness Commission, I will say that that my noble friend will not be surprised that there are all sorts of extra things that, in an ideal world, I would like to have seen in this action plan or, indeed, I would like to have seen it as a strategy rather than simply a list of actions that will be taken over the next four years. My specific point is that reference has been made repeatedly to the next test of the emergency alert system. I hope that, on this occasion, and I hope my noble friend can clarify this, the publicity around this will not be done in an apologetic way—“We are so sorry for disturbing your Sunday afternoon”—but much more as “This is a positive measure to try and protect the public in different ways”. This should be part of a much wider national conversation, which was promised by the Prime Minister as part of the strategic defence review and which will raise the awareness of the public in every single, possible way about the range of dangers and threats we face and the fact that these are getting worse. As a nation, we have to have a whole of society and indeed a whole of government response to deal with these issues.