The Pointlessness of Calling A 'Cobra' (COBR) Meeting.

 

The National Air Traffic Service has collapsed for technical reasons and British airspace is temporarily drastically reduced in service while the system is repaired. Within hours of the incident beginning at least one UK political party was urgently demanding that the Prime Minister convene COBR to resolve the situation. While clearly an awful day for those impacted by this, it is not at its heart a crisis which threatens the overall security and stability of the UK. Yet despite this, the demands that ‘something must be seen to be done even if it adds no value to the solution’ continue to be made by political assistants on social media, trying to make political hay while the sun shines.

The Cabinet Office Briefing Rooms (COBR) system is at its heart three things. It is a physical suite of secure facilities designed to enable Ministers and officials to meet to discuss a crisis. The heart of the facility is located in 70 Whitehall in the Cabinet Office, which depending on who you speak to is either in a deep underground bunker with flashing lights, flat screens and a direct hotline to Area 52 to enable activation of the Strategic Steam Reserve, or alternatively is a suite of fairly bland Ikea style meeting rooms… Secondly it is a communications capability without parallel in the UK with the ability to bring together the right people, at the right time to enable them to engage in meetings. In the words of Bob Hoskins – “Its good to talk” and COBR enables this to happen. Finally, it is a concept of crisis management that puts the right people round the table, empowered to make decisions and drive the machinery of central government to fix problems.

COBR is a fantastic crisis management tool when things are going very badly wrong. If you are dealing with complex fast-moving crises involving multiple departments areas of responsibility, and you need decisions made quickly on what needs to be done – the outcome of which can, literally, be life or death, and you need clarity on what the Governments priorities really are, then COBR is fantastic. It works in a way that enables people to take decisions, ensure these are communicated across Whitehall and that there is no ambiguity about what needs to be done, and what happens next. As a very blunt instrument of crisis response it works phenomenally well – it enables effective information sharing and an initial crisis response mechanism for those really messy cases where you need everyone to help out.

What COBR is not good for is to act as a long-term crisis response tool – the act of calling COBR is effectively the equivalent of pushing the SCRAM button on a nuclear reactor. You are moving to solve the problem, but you’re shutting down Government in the process. It takes priority over everything else and will be the focus for involved Departments – this is great in the short term, but after more than a couple of days, Whitehall should be moving to set up a Task Force or other empowered team to own responsibility to lead the response moving forward. COBR can be ideal for really important issues, such as a terrorist incident or urgent issues where a national security response is required, but it is intended for a specific time and place.  

In the case of the NATS failure it is difficult to see even the slightest justification for calling COBR. This is a specific incident involving one part of the UK machinery of government, which did not, at that point, need input from others. There are well tried and tested plans for crisis response at local and departmental levels which would enable airports to manage capacity and ensure passengers were looked after. Once the initial response was underway, calling COBR would be a distraction as the same teams handling the response would also need to be advising Ministers and COBR attendees on what is going on and plans to fix it – in other words, being distracted from the job of fixing the issue in the first place.

Additionally there was no threat to UK nationals or specific security issues arising from the crisis. At worst it would (and may still mean) that for a few days while it is resolved and aircraft return to the UK that there may be a larger number of UK nationals than normal abroad in unexpected circumstances. That though is a responsibility of the airlines and travel insurers to fix, not Central Government. The only point where COBR would possibly add value here would be if the issue remained for several days and there was growing pressure on support to nationals stranded in the UK at airports, where cross departmental cooperation may be needed, or if it became clear that there was some kind of national security involvement in the incident that needed Ministerial direction.

There is a danger of assuming that if COBR isn’t called then somehow the UK government isn’t taking a crisis seriously.  Although it is highly fashionable to demand that COBR is called and the PM / Ministers are attending, in fact it is actually a pointless demand. Across Government Departments there are a series of well-rehearsed contingency response plans for incidents that can be managed at Departmental level. These are regularly tested, and Departments are well versed in working where necessary to address issues and fix problems. It is certain that with the incident coming on a Bank Holiday, a huge number of UK Civil Servants will have been called to respond to the crisis – thank goodness for enabling working at home, to ensure that staff could log in easily and start work on their response at once, rather than trying to work out how to get into Whitehall on a public holiday. The response plans will have been previously exercised, teams will know who to engage with, what to do and what the next steps are. This is how routine crisis management response works. Calling a COBR now would not add anything to the initial response, because all the people who need to work together are already doing so – it’s a pointless meeting to hold.

The test that should be applied at times like this is for Departments to assess their response, understand what is likely to happen in the coming hours and judge whether this goes beyond their own, or other Departments, pre-planned responses and incident management capability. Do they need to bring in wider machinery of government for help (e.g., is there a MACA request likely). Do they need Ministers to take decisions on what the priority is (for example, do they need the RAF to start flying civilians ‘stranded’ home) and do they think that Whitehall isn’t responding with sufficient alacrity to enable them to do this, and if so, should senior Ministers be involved? If the answer is ‘yes’, then a case for COBR could be made. Similarly, from a No10 perspective, the staff there will be tracking the response and trying to understand how things are going. If their assessment is that things are going wrong quickly, or that there is unexpected friction, or that the issues emerging are so grave that only the PM or a very senior Cabinet Minister could authorise a response, then No10 may push for COBR to be called.

At times having a COBR meeting is very powerful to bring experts together. At other times having a COBR meeting with Ministers or the PM present is even more powerful – it represents the pinnacle of decision making in a crisis and should only be used sparingly. Each time you put the PM or a Minister into a crisis management meeting they are no longer doing their main work, leading Government, and their departments. It shifts focus off longer term issues and can impact on delivery - sometimes this can be helpful, but at other times it fixes them in one area and prevents them doing their job. Attendance may look good, but if its eating into Ministerial bandwidth, is it the best use of their time or could issues be solved as effectively by Officials working in close collaboration with Ministerial outer offices? A constant focus on tactical crisis leadership does not allow Minister to take the broader strategic focus on leading their Departments to deliver their manifesto pledges.  We should be wary of assuming the answer is always “more meetings with more senior people” – sometimes the best possible thing to do is step back and let the system get on with fixing the problem at hand. Often the issue will cease to be an issue without any intervention by Ministers.

Finally it is worthing noting, as is traditional in these pieces, that there is no such thing as ‘COBRA’. This is one of those hideous made up phrases that some people seem convinced stems from an acronym of “Cabinet Office Briefing Room A”. The minor problem here is that no such room title has ever existed. The original floorplans for the COBR suite can be found on the internet if you know where to look. In them it is clear that the main conference room wasn’t called “A’. It’s a lovely urban myth. Remember COBR is the briefing room, Cobra is a fairly poor gassy beer best consumed with a curry.