Lord Toby Harris, chair of the National Preparedness Commission in the UK

Systemic infrastructure resilience to strategic challenges

Every nation faces a series of global trends that threaten security and stability. In addition, systems are increasingly complex an inter-related. If we are to be properly resilient, we need to focus on:
What should we prepare for?
How much preparedness is enough?
And how do we finance the necessary investment?
What are the likely societal and economic impacts of failing to prepare?

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Lord Toby Harris was made a Life Peer in June 1998 and has been Chair of the Labour Peers since 2012. He sits as a member (currently the Vice Chair) of the Joint Committee on National Security since 2016 and previously from 2010 to 2014.  He is a member of the Committee on Life Beyond COVID and was a member of the Committee on Democracy and Digital Technologies, which reported in summer 2020.  In 2013, he chaired the House of Lords Committee on the Olympic and Paralympic Legacy.  He was also a member of the House of Lords Select Committee that reported on Personal Internet Security in 2007.  He is Co-Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Policing and an Officer of the Parliamentary Internet and Communications Technology Forum. 

Outside Parliament, he is President of the Institute of Strategic Risk Management and chairs the National Preparedness Commission, whose mission is to promote better preparedness for a major crisis or incident.  He has also been Chair of National Trading Standards (which is responsible for delivering national and cross-boundary consumer protection enforcement activity) since May 2013, and Chair of the Fundraising Regulator (overseeing charitable fundraising) since January 2019.  In addition, he chairs the Independent Reference Group for the National Crime Agency.  In 2016, he conducted an Independent Review for the Mayor of London on London’s Preparedness to Respond to a Major Terrorist Incident.