Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)

I am very aware of the noble Lord’s interest. He is absolutely right that we have, too often, relied on our military to fix holes. One of the things I should have said in response to the noble Baroness, Lady Finn, is about module 1 of the Covid recommendations—I think either recommendation 2 or 10—about the Cabinet Office versus a lead department dealing with resilience issues. This pertains system-wide and relates to the question raised by the noble Lord. The Cabinet Office is strengthening its core to make sure that we can have cross-government oversight, but we will retain the lead department model. As part of ensuring the strengthening of our core, we would obviously seek to undertake a clear audit, to make sure that everyone has appropriate provision in place for any crisis. In fact, one of the things the action plan seeks to do is to ensure a baseline of resilience, which will require such data-gathering exercises.