Seeing criticism of this, but from an emergency planning point of view, planning the "recovery phase" is definitely something which has to be considered during a crisis - it's a strategic issue which is considered separately from the day to day tactical responses 1/ https://twitter.com/Keir_Starmer/status/1250310526036398081

Think of the emergency or crisis as the tip of the iceberg. If there's a house fire, the emergency is to get the fire out & people kept safe. The recovery phase is the clean-up, the insurance, the rebuild. It can take many months to sort out compared with the time of the fire 2/

The virus is a crisis of a scale that the UK has not seen in modern times. It will take years to recover from this. If the plan is to get us back to business as normal, then the recovery plan will fail because of the impact of the crisis, we need to plan for a new normality 3/

From a transport point of view, it's going to be months before public transport comes back on line (if at all in some cases) and so there are already concerns about a leap in car use which will have all sorts of implications for those who cannot / are not driving 4/

We'll have private transport operators going bust - are we going to nationalise the operations or let them go to the wall? What about the implications for the communities they serve - there will be impacts on isolation and health as a result. 5/

On the highway network, we'll have local authorities which have lost out on revenue and capital schemes have been suspended in many cases - how will they afford to maintain what they have? What will the response be to a shattered public transport system - will they 6/

carrying on prioritising cars or will they develop plans for low traffic neighbourhoods and safety on main roads? There will be physcial distancing for some time, regardless of the political rhetoric because people will carry on being wary after official decisions are taken 7/

This affects everything we do. Every industry, health, education, transport. If we are not planning the recovery phase (aka exit strategy) then we'll extend the immediate crisis and lurch from mini-crisis to mini-crisis - we've seen that with the government response so far 8/

Starmer is absolutely right to raise it and the government response doesn't need to be detailed - it's strategic after all. If they can't answer, then it shows they are not thinking ahead. I don't have the answers, but people need to be thinking about this. 9/

Of course, we also have the Brexit shambles in the pipeline and the preparations for that have not been strategic by any means and so we haven't even seen the start of the impacts. 10/ends

Of and before anyone says saying he's right to raise it doesn't mean I necessarily agree with what he and his party push for; the issue is primarily of whether we have a strategy. So far, I doubt we do.