The government is to tell Brits to stock up on a host of non-perishable items in a bid to improve “resilience” at home.
The deputy prime minister Oliver Dowden will today tell Brits not to panic buy but that not enough British homes have emergency supplies handy.
A ‘Prepare’ website launched alongside the speech tells Brits to buy enough water for three days and to stock up on wet wipes and tinned, non-perishable meats.
“Who can forget the empty supermarket shelves in the early days of the pandemic?,” Dowden will say.
“And how many of us have since acted so we’d be better prepared if it happened again? If there was a national power outage, how many of us have torches and batteries? If the water went off, how many of us have a few bottles stored away?”
Stocks of bottled water have become a more common sight in British homes in recent years due to a series of water crises, ranging from Thames Water service interruptions to contaminated water in Devon, with parasites leaving 50 people ill.
Dowden will say he is not a “doomsday” prepper but that sensible guidance brings us into line with countries like Finland – which sits next to a warmongering Russia in one of the world’s most inhospitable climates – and Japan, which regularly experiences earthquakes and tsunamis.
Meanwhile, Sue Gray – the former civil service official now working on Labour’s campaign to take power in the next election – has drawn up a series of problems which any new government will need to solve.
The list, first reported by the Spectator and seen by the FT, is known as ‘Sue’s sh*t list’.
It includes issues like water quality and provision.