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Government Urges Every Home to Stockpile Water, Tins and Cash
— 4 mins read
The Cabinet Office’s new Be Ready campaign asks households to prepare for three days without power, water or the internet. We look at what is behind it.
Last Thursday the Cabinet Office published new advice asking every household in Britain to be ready to cope for three days without power, water, phones or the internet. The checklist covers nine litres of water per person, tinned food that needs no cooking, a wind-up radio, a torch, a charged power bank, blankets, a first aid kit and some cash in case card payments fail. It is the first stage of a three-year campaign called Be Ready.
Ministers took it in different ways. The Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, said that “unexpected events seem to be becoming more and more common”. Angela Rayner had already joked that her own kit would include a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc. The Treasury minister James Murray told BBC Breakfast that his own stockpile was mostly coffee, and admitted: “I’m not going to pretend I’ve followed all that advice myself yet.”
So why now? There are three plausible explanations.
Theory one: it is exactly what it says it is
The official reason is resilience. Last winter’s storms left parts of Cornwall without power, the summer brought wildfires, and a security flaw recently forced a precautionary shutdown of government websites. France, Ireland and the Netherlands already give their citizens similar three-day advice, and the Government says it consulted them.
The evidence supports this. The campaign was trailed in July, under Sir Keir Starmer, and it was expected in September. A version of the same advice appeared in 2024 under Oliver Dowden, when polling found that only 15 per cent of adults kept an emergency kit at home. This is a long-running piece of Whitehall housekeeping, not a sudden alarm.
Theory two: it is a nudge to get us spending before the Budget
The timing is awkward. The advice landed six days before John Healey delivers Wednesday’s Budget, the first of Burnham’s premiership. A day later the ONS reported that retail sales fell 0.4 per cent in September, with supermarket sales slipping. A Chancellor short of good news would welcome a trip to Tesco from every household in the country.
A Chancellor short of good news would welcome a trip to Tesco from every household in the country.
It doesn’t hold up, though. Most food is zero-rated for VAT, so a cupboard of tinned tomatoes earns the Treasury almost nothing. The guidance itself tells people to check what they already have and add items gradually during their normal shop. The British Retail Consortium has said before that most households already have enough in the cupboard. A few pounds of tins and batteries won’t change the economic numbers. And a campaign planned since July and delayed for months is hard to time around a Budget.
Theory three: it is quiet preparation for something worse
This is the theory that deserves the closest look. The Defence Secretary, Wes Streeting, effectively announced the campaign while answering a Sky News question about when ministers would talk frankly about preparing the public for possible war. He said the country needs to prepare for food shortages and cyber attacks, and has spoken of supply chain disruption caused by “hostile state actors or terrorists”. The Government’s own wording lists war alongside cyber attacks and natural disasters.
He said the country needs to prepare for food shortages and cyber attacks, and has spoken of supply chain disruption caused by “hostile state actors or terrorists”.
The Baltic and Nordic states talk to their citizens openly about surviving a conflict. Britain has chosen a softer register: “alert but not alarmed”, in Streeting’s words. The launch was so low-key that no minister fronted it, which people working in resilience privately called a disappointment. You can read that two ways. Either the threat is modest and the Government sees no need to make a fuss, or it is serious enough that ministers would rather not say so out loud.
What this means for households
The guidance does not ask people to buy everything at once. It tells households to check what they already have, list what is missing and add items gradually during their normal shop, then review their supplies every six months. When similar advice was issued in 2024, the British Retail Consortium said most households would find they already had enough non-perishables in the cupboard, and supermarkets warned against panic buying.
The Government accepts that not every household will be able to follow every step. People who need extra help during an outage, including households with children under five, can join the free Priority Services Register. James Murray has said ministers will not publish a “government shopping list”. Andy Burnham has rejected suggestions that the campaign is a sign of government failure, and describes it as part of a national conversation about resilience.
