The prime minister has advised people to stock up on tinned food and bottled water in order to be prepared for emergencies.
With storms battering the UK, and in the wake of online disruption caused by a major security flaw, Andy Burnham said “unexpected events seem to be becoming more and more common”.
The government has drawn up recommendations for households to have three days’ worth of bottled water and tinned food to deal with a crisis such as a war, an online attack or a natural disaster.
Defending government advice to stockpile essentials, he suggested people should also allow themselves some wine to get them through a difficult situation.
At Labour’s conference last month, Housing Secretary Angela Rayner joked that her emergency box, external would include a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc wine.
She said she’d include: “Mascara, concealer, I don’t know, a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc, a tin of baked beans because you’ve gotta have some baked beans, and I like a good tin of custard as well so I think that’ll keep me going for a while.”
Asked whether he agreed with her, Burnham told Radio 5 Live’s Matt Chorley: “Well, I’m not sure a bottle of wine is your best first port of call if you’re in a slightly crisis situation, but it probably helps when you’ve done the hard work, but I’ll stick to the basics I think.
“I do like my beans, so I have plenty of those in the cupboard and soup.
“I think those are the kind of things that I would recommend people to have as well as well as Twiglets, I’m not sure I can get by without, for too long without those.”
Last month, the National Audit Office (NAO) warned Britain’s food supply chain is at risk given the growing threat of cyber-attacks and the climate crisis and said the Department for Food, the Environment and Rural Affairs (Defra) had not done enough in recent years to improve supply chain resilience.
The chief executive of the Cold Chain Federation, which represents firms transporting temperature-controlled foods, also told the the UK is being targeted by Russian cyber-hackers who “know that there are pinch points in the food supply system”.
Speaking at a wildfire resilience summit in Liverpool, Burnham denied the government had failed to properly prepare, saying: “No, we’re having the conversation with people about being better prepared because we’re living in a world where unexpected events seem to be becoming more and more common.
“Obviously, weather events, and we’re in a situation today where the UK is facing storms and obviously, we feel for the people without power in Cornwall right now.
“It is just having those supplies in the house to get you through those moments. So we are having that conversation about resilience.”