Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)

My Lords, we have been talking about public safety under Amendment 5. I want to check with the Minister how far the Bill is linked to some of the issues with which other departments in Whitehall are dealing. We all know that all the complicated policy problems are cross-departmental. Chapter 6 of the Strategic Defence Review was about a whole-society approach to home defence and home security, and the need for a broad approach to the multiple threats that we now face, including terrorism, climate change and hybrid warfare of one sort or another. The review stressed that we need local resources, knowledge and co-operation in order to make sure that we face some of those threats. So, I am glad to see public safety here. I recall that when the Salisbury poisoning took place, the public health officer in Salisbury played a vital and impressive role in sorting out its response. I also remember that, when the Covid pandemic struck, the Government outsourced the placing of testing centres to two large companies, one of which had its headquarters in Miami and made a remarkable number of mistakes in where to place the centres. We need not just strategic but local authorities to be leading on this. I hope that the Minister can assure us that public safety is one of the dimensions with which we are concerned. I am struck that it has been eight months since the Strategic Defence Review was published. It also said in chapter 6 that we needed to start a “national conversation” on how we respond to multiple threats. I have not heard any of that national conversation yet. I hope that the Minister’s department and the Ministry of Defence are in active conversation about how this dimension is built back into our society and our government structure and how the resources—because it costs money—will be provided to local authorities, local civil rescue services, local fire services and police forces to make sure that we can face these multiple threats to our public safety.