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With the House of Lords carrying out an inquiry into national resilience, it is timely to speak to one of the people deeply immersed in the topic and consider the role of the country’s Critical National Infrastructure as part of the system when taking a whole of society approach to resilience.
Lord Toby Harris is the Chair of the National Preparedness Commission and speaking at the Resilience Association annual conference in London, he shared his thoughts on Critical National Infrastructure (CNI) and its vulnerabilities, emphasising the increasing urgency of threats faced by the UK today.
“There is a reason it is called Critical National Infrastructure . It’s part of the essential fabric and infrastructure of society that makes us operate, what we rely on as a nation, and without it we cannot function. That is why it is critical.”
With emergency services profoundly aware of the risks associated with CNI, whether that’s a nuclear power station in their service area or the economic importance of the transport infrastructure that criss crosses the country, consideration of what will happen when crisis hits, is never far from their thoughts.
But of course they do not work in isolation. The evidence from the National Fire Chiefs Council makes this point well. “These systems are highly interdependent, and failure in one can rapidly cascade across others, particularly where critical national infrastructure and supply chains are closely linked, and disruption in these systems can have immediate operational consequences.”
Lord Harris builds on this to emphasise the wider role of society.
“Now the message is that we all need the nation to function, be prepared and to be resilient. In turn, the nation needs the rest of society to function and prepare and be resilient, and Critical National Infrastructure is crucial in this.”
The interdependency of the emergency services with their partners in a local resilience forum setting is one lens through which to view resilience but it must also factor in the private sector. “Resilience is not an optional habit,” he says, adding “much more needs to be done to engage the whole of society.”
Recent evidence to the House of Lords National Resilience Committee demonstrates that the private sector has a different view and, according to Lord Harris, the inquiry team has received high volume of evidence coming from all sectors in response to their call for contributions on this important topic.
Speaking to me after his keynote, he said he has advised the committee to take a “big themes” approach to deal with the volume and extent of the evidence. The criticality of CNI – as the name suggests – means that it’s something that government has to focus on he argues. It needs to make sure that it really works, but, he continues, “this is one of the main weaknesses: it’s not clear who owns the system because of the interconnectedness of it.”
What he means is that each part of the CNI has siloed governance and regulation but no single cross cutting view on the risk. “The regulatory mechanisms tend to be industry specific.” He reminds us that much of the legislation underpinning the CNI was done at the time of its privatisation and price was a key focus. “They don’t necessarily say anything about robustness of supply, stability, resilience in the statute, so the regulators aren’t in a position to prioritise that.”
He asks how can CNI silos work together in the event of various crises; he offers the example of fuel shortages with an eye to the ongoing war in Iran and the blockade of the Straits of Hormuz. “It’s the same with the import of key supplies, there’s nobody taking an overview of who has priority if we are restricted on fuel.”
This is a conversation I had with fleet leads in a recent Emergency Services Times webinar, when we looked at fuel shortages and the way in which emergency services can be prioritised when the petrol pumps run dry. The Civil Contingencies Act places the onus on the sector to have contingency in place but is it enough for long term shortages?
The House of Lords Select Committee on National Resilience was appointed on 27 January 2026. It is chaired by Baroness Coussins and will report by 30 November 2026.
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