Is the UK’s Biological Security Strategy fit for purpose?
Tuesday 2 February 2021
The House of Lords Risk Assessment and Risk Planning Committee will tomorrow question experts on The UK’s Biological Security Strategy, which identifies four main biological risks to the UK: a major health crisis (such as pandemic influenza); antimicrobial resistance; a deliberate biological attack by state or nonstate actors (including terrorists); and animal and plant diseases, which themselves can pose risks to human health.
The session will take place virtually on Wednesday 3 February at 10:30am and can be followed on Parliament TV.
Giving evidence will be:
- Dr Cassidy Nelson, Acting Co-Lead Biosecurity Research Group, Future of Humanity Institute, University of Oxford
- Dr Opi Outhwaite, Senior Lecturer in Law, St Mary’s University
- Dr Catherine Rhodes, Senior Research Associate with the Biosecurity Research Initiative at St Catharine’s College (BioRISC)
Questions the Committee is likely to ask include:
- Is the UK’s Biological Security Strategy, published in 2018, still fit for purpose?
- How does the UK avoid ‘fighting the last war’ in understanding and implementing lessons learned from the current pandemic?
- How effective is the UK’s monitoring and management of dual-use biotechnologies? Does the UK’s biosecurity strategy adequately account for the risk from animal to human disease transfer?
- How effective is the UK’s current domestic legislative and regulatory framework in mitigating against biosecurity risks?
