Brown unveils security strategy

Individuals - and even families - will be encouraged to join a new form of civil defence network to protect Britain against natural disasters and terrorism, Britain's prime minister Gordon Brown announced today.

The organisations - likened to a new breed of "air raid precautions" or "ARP" wardens from the Second World War - will team up to build the country's resilience in a catastrophe.

A new National Security Strategy also revealed that officials fear an influenza-type pandemic could kill up to 750,000 people in Britain.

It said: "We estimate that a pandemic could cause fatalities in the UK in the range of 50,000 to 750,000, although both the timing and the impact are impossible to predict exactly.

"Experts agree that there is a high probability of a pandemic occurring - and that as the SARS outbreak showed, the speed at which it could spread has increased with globalisation."

Mr Brown also revealed the Government will publish for the first time a list of the risks faced by Britain.

The strategy paper said the "risk register" would be issued in the summer, and would "enable communities to prepare better".

It set out moves by ministers to deal with a wide range of threats, including terrorism, nuclear attack, natural disasters such as extreme weather and flooding, international crime and cyber attacks.

Mr Brown told MPs: "Our new approach to security... means improved local resilience against emergencies, building and strengthening local capacity to respond effectively in a range of circumstances from floods to possible terrorism incidents.

"Not the old Cold War idea of civil defence but a new form of civil protection that combines expert preparedness for potential emergencies with greater local engagement of individuals and families themselves."

He added: "Starting later this year, we will openly publish for the first time a national register of risks - information that was previously held confidentially within Government - so the British public can see at first hand the challenges we face and the levels of threat we have assessed."

A Government spokesman said people would be asked to volunteer to join their local civil protection network, run by town halls.

They would help evacuate elderly people in the event of a flood, for example, and could even play a role in the aftermath of a terrorist attack, the spokesman said.

A new National Security Forum featuring up to 30 experts from academia and other areas will advise another body set up last summer, the National Security Committee, which features ministers alongside intelligence agencies, police and military chiefs.

Membership of the National Security Forum would be by invitation to experts eminent in their fields, a spokesman said.

New measures would also be published next month to boost the way schools, universities and prisons work to disrupt radicalisation in their midst, Mr Brown said.

He also announced reforms of the Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC), a Parliamentary body which oversees the security services MI5 and MI6, and other areas.

Conservative leader David Cameron dismissed the National Security Forum as "another talking shop".

He said: "Surely a proper national security council would have dedicated staff and decision making powers?"

He called for foreign policy to be "joined up" with domestic issues and questioned why the Prime Minister has not yet banned extremist group Hizb-ut-Tahrir, or created a border force with police powers.

© 2008 ireland.com