The pandemic is a wake-up call: We need a new approach to Resilience and Wellbeing – Lords Committee

This is the major conclusion of the House of Lords COVID-19 Committee which has today published its legacy report, concluding its work examining the long-term implications of the pandemic on various aspects of our lives.  The Committee undertook work on the impact of the pandemic on wellbeing, the effects of people living more of their lives online, children and families, and towns and cities. 

The report, entitled Living in a COVID World: A Long-term Approach to Resilience and Wellbeing emphasises that lessons must be learnt from the COVID-19 pandemic and applied in the future as our current understanding of resilience and preparedness is not fit-for purpose. The report further highlights how the long-term resilience and wellbeing of society, and people’s ability to respond to post-pandemic challenges will be undermined by factors such as financial and health inequalities which can be exacerbated by racial injustice.

The Committee concludes that we must reset the state by placing a new emphasis and focus on governing for the long-term with greater emphasis on wellbeing. Governments must develop policies in partnership with communities so that people’s lives are improved and all societal inequalities are addressed. If specific groups or neighbourhoods are left behind so they remain disadvantaged; without significant signs of development or progress, then any wellbeing agenda will be ineffective. Monitoring wellbeing will allow us to create an inclusive Wellbeing State which will feed into creating resilient groups, communities and neighbourhoods.

The Committee observes further that the new resilience agenda must also address inequality, digital inclusion and public health, and strengthen civil society and the integrity of our information systems. This new resilience agenda is not the sole responsibility of the Government. Non-government actors, communities, businesses, and charities must also mobilise, with the Government taking an enabling stance and adopting a co-ordination function to ensure that the efforts of all parties are cohesive. This increased emphasis on resilience must be underpinned by an efficient, and effective, system of government and there must be strong social capital and community connection within, and between, diverse communities, higher levels of social and economic equity, and resilient and adaptable public services.

Commenting on the report Baroness Lane-Fox of Soho, Chair of the COVID-19 Committee said;

“As we begin the process of living with the pandemic it reminds us that the cycle of politics does not cope well with long-term problems. This is a wake-up call which must be heeded. Political leaders and policy makers must begin to think about ways to deal with long-term issues, where the problems and possible solutions will extend beyond the life of one parliamentary regime or single electoral cycle.

“Our ability to plan and to co-ordinate has been shown to be wanting; now is the opportunity for us to reset the state and build it back to be more adaptable, more resilient, more devolved, and more collaborative so we can effectively deal with any disasters, crises or systemic shocks that may occur in the future. Wellbeing and resilience must be at the heart of this reset for it to be successful.”

The report highlights a number of other key conclusions and recommendations including;

• Co-ordinated Government policy should prioritise narrowing the gap in healthy life expectancy so that no one group is left behind. The Office for Health Improvement and Disparities should collaborate with other Government departments and devolved administrations to assess lessons learned during the pandemic about the socioeconomic determinants of health.  

• Efforts to build trusted relationships between the state and all groups within society must be renewed. Resilience requires the different needs of various communities to be considered when it comes to building trust and investing in building relationships over the long-term. The Department of Levelling Up, Housing and Communities should conduct an assessment of the relationship between both the national and local state and communities and develop a plan for improving trust over time.

• Major efforts to build social capital through community-level public service innovation. This should start with a new wave of devolution to return power to local government, and beyond to local communities. The Department for Levelling Up and Communities should move to a three-year rolling financial settlement for local authorities, enabling them to plan more effectively and plan for the transformation of services, in partnership with community-level organisations.

• A new approach to efficiency, recognising the importance of some redundancy of provision in public services. In effect, the pandemic reminds us that surge capacity is an essential component of resilience, even if it looks expensive during normal times. This will require a major shift in our approach particularly to workforce planning, which will need to continue to leverage volunteer and community capacity in a systematic way, alongside formal provision. In effect, we need to move away from a “just in time” model of provision to a “just in case” model for many services.

• Future Select Committees should consider how best to improve connections between Parliament and the diverse citizens of our country. Committees should consider methods for improving the finding of and inviting diverse witnesses with lived experience to give evidence and ensure those from marginalised communities are actively encouraged as well as practically supported to do so.  In addition, future Select Committees should undertake inquiries exploring the impact of the pandemic on their subject areas and the wider trends associated with it looking five, ten and twenty-years into the future.