Cabinet Office written statement – made at on 12 June 2023.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe
Minister of State (Cabinet Office)
My Rt. Hon. Friend the Deputy prime minister, Oliver Dowden CBE MP, has today made the following statement:
The Government is today publishing the 2023 Biological Security Strategy. The Strategy sets out the Government’s ambition to ensure that by 2030 the UK is resilient to a spectrum of biological threats and a world leader in responsible innovation, making a positive impact on global health, economic and security outcomes.
The new Strategy will equip us to respond to a spectrum of biological risks - improving our preparedness to future pandemics, but also hardening our defences to biological weapons and mitigating the risks of biological accidents and incidents. To overcome these threats, we must be proactive, collaborative and holistic in our approach.
We will adopt a globally-facing, UK-wide posture that strengthens resilience and deterrence, projects global leadership, and exploits opportunities for UK prosperity and science and technology advantage. We will continue to work closely with industry, academia, the devolved administrations and our closest international partners to encourage responsible innovation while ensuring the UK is able to turbo-charge our thriving Life Sciences and Biotechnology sectors, stimulating growth, creating high-tech jobs, and attracting inward investment.
The Strategy will prioritise national capabilities to shore up our current defences, learning and applying lessons from our experiences through COVID-19.
Key commitments include:
Developing a Biothreats Radar and National Biosurveillance Network to detect and monitor emerging biological threats to the UK;
Establishing a new UK Biosecurity Leadership Council, bringing together academic and industry leaders to help establish the UK as a world leader in responsible innovation;
Developing new UK-based microbial forensics tools and capabilities to support efforts to attribute biological incidents and deter the proliferation and use of biological weapons;
Engaging with industry to further UK efforts to achieve the 100 Days Mission - reducing the impact of future pandemics by making vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics available within 100 days of a future outbreak;
Formalising the leadership structures that oversee our biological security - including a lead Minister who will report annually to Parliament;
Establishing a Biological Security Task Force in the Cabinet Office to coordinate UK-wide efforts on biological security, including exercising our response to future threats.
Copies of the Strategy are today being laid in Parliament.
The cabinet is the group of twenty or so (and no more than 22) senior government ministers who are responsible for running the departments of state and deciding government policy.
It is chaired by the prime minister.
The cabinet is bound by collective responsibility, which means that all its members must abide by and defend the decisions it takes, despite any private doubts that they might have.
Cabinet ministers are appointed by the prime minister and chosen from MPs or peers of the governing party.
However, during periods of national emergency, or when no single party gains a large enough majority to govern alone, coalition governments have been formed with cabinets containing members from more than one political party.
War cabinets have sometimes been formed with a much smaller membership than the full cabinet.
From time to time the prime minister will reorganise the cabinet in order to bring in new members, or to move existing members around. This reorganisation is known as a cabinet re-shuffle.
The cabinet normally meets once a week in the cabinet room at Downing Street.
The office of Deputy Prime Minister is one that has only existed occasionally in the history of the United Kingdom. Unlike analogous offices in other nations, the Deputy Prime Minister does not have any of the powers of the Prime Minister in the latter's absence and there is no presumption that the Deputy Prime Minister will succeed the Prime Minister.
The post has existed intermittently and there have been a number of disputed occasions as to whether or not the title has actually been conferred.
More from wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deputy_Prime_Minister_of_the_United_Kingdom
Ministers make up the Government and almost all are members of the House of Lords or the House of Commons. There are three main types of Minister. Departmental Ministers are in charge of Government Departments. The Government is divided into different Departments which have responsibilities for different areas. For example the Treasury is in charge of Government spending. Departmental Ministers in the Cabinet are generally called 'Secretary of State' but some have special titles such as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Ministers of State and Junior Ministers assist the ministers in charge of the department. They normally have responsibility for a particular area within the department and are sometimes given a title that reflects this - for example Minister of Transport.
