National Resilience Committee — hearing of 16 July 2026: transcript & video

00:04 - 03:00

Speaker 9

Good morning Minister, good morning Mr. Hargreaves, thank you very much for joining us today to help us with this important inquiry. I should remind you that it is a public session, it's being broadcast live. In a couple of days you'll each receive a transcript of the session and so if you spot any inaccuracies there, that's your opportunity to make corrections. And if you think at the time that there's something missing that you might or that you should have said, then we'd always welcome additional supplementary evidence in writing. We've obviously got a lot of questions for each of you and before you give your first answer it would be helpful for the record if you just introduced yourself briefly.

Yes, so I'm going to kick off and first of all I'd like to say congratulations Minister on your point, on your latest appointment. Very good to have you here. And Mr. Hargreaves, thank you for your letter yesterday and also for engaging with the committee at a much earlier stage, but it's good to have you here now in the public session so that we can get your thoughts and advice on the record so we can take account of that in our report. We've obviously all seen yesterday's statement. And what I'd like to kick off with is a bit of background and context.

It seems to be generally more and more acknowledged now that the threats and emergencies that we might face are very unlikely to remain in one sector or silo, but they would cascade pretty quickly into a multi-sector scenario. And I think that's implicit in yesterday's statement as well. And alongside that, we've heard evidence from a number of witnesses both in person and in writing, the view that the resilience systems in place at the moment seem to them to be response and recovery heavy but planning and preparedness light. And so in that context, I wanted to ask you first, and perhaps I could turn to the Minister first, whether you think there is a case for refining or changing the current model of the lead government department which oversees a response. And alongside that, whether you think there's a case for any adjustments that could be made helpfully to ministerial responsibilities, for example, having a minister responsible exclusively for resilience and nothing else.

03:00 - 03:39

Speaker 2

Well, firstly, it's a great pleasure to be here. I'm Angela Eagle, Member of Parliament for Wallasey, but for for the purposes of this hearing obviously the Security Minister. Now my brief does range across the Home Office and the Cabinet Office. And in some ways I think that the the paradox of your question wanting to have a minister only for resilience actually was disproved by the earlier bits of your question when you were saying that risks are changing and morphing and becoming interconnected.

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