Business to participate in preparing for extreme risks
The Government has accepted the principle of creating a forum, made up of representatives from trade associations and professional bodies, to meet in advance of and following the production of the National Security Risk Assessment or twice a year.
This statement is contained in the Cabinet Office paper ‘Government Response to Preparing for Extreme Risks: Building a Resilient Society’, published on 17 March. In it, the Government states its agreement with the spirit of the House of Lords Risk Assessment and Risk Planning Committee’s report Preparing for Extreme Risks: Building a Resilient Society.
The Government says it will deliver this forum through a new business sub-group of the UK Resilience Forum, whose purpose is to strengthen UK resilience by improving communication and collaboration on risk, emergency preparedness, crisis response and recovery.
The Office for Preparedness and Resilience will convene this body and ascertain information about business sector capabilities, inform business and industry of risks that may require a response on their part, and allow the Government to seek out best practice.
In its written evidence to the House of Lords Committee, Airmic argued that the Government should take more advantage of the knowledge and experience of corporate risk management professionals. It said:
“Engaging professionals with commercial risk management experience to join those who educate government risk management professionals, and taking part in exercises such as horizon scanning, scenario analysis and risk assessments, would help the embedding of current commercial good practice.
“Introducing commercially experienced professionals into non-executive roles as part of Government committees could increase the diversity of these groups and improve the bandwidth of Government risk governance.”