Former Tesco chief Sir Dave Lewis has urged the UK government to overhaul the infrastructure in the country and to “plan for the worst and hope for the best” amid the current Omicron wave.
As per recent reports, Lewis in an email has warned that the “seismic move in consumer shopping habits…together with a global shipping challenge has shown the pressure on our existing supply chain infrastructure”.
Lewis was drafted in by prime minister Boris Johnson to advise on the supply chain problems which hit the British economy in the autumn. His mandate was to help “future-proof” Britain’s supply chain in an attempt to aid the economy’s recovery from the pandemic.
In the email, he has concluded that major infrastructure changes are needed to avert repeated crises.
Although the message, which was sent last week, did not highlight specific solutions to the problems he encountered, he did claim that a new strand of work examining the future of the freight industry would emerge early next year.
“The opportunity to step back and strategically consider infrastructure options which reflect the changing consumption habits of the population, the decarbonisation agenda and the need to enhance supply chain capacity and resilience is very real,” Sky News quoted the message.
A shortage of HGV drivers which triggered huge queues at petrol stations across the country, problems with the supply of carbon dioxide to industrial users and even concerns about the availability of poultry for shoppers coalesced during the autumn into a political storm for the government.
Lewis’ immediate recommendations were widely regarded to have helped alleviate the logjams at British ports while accelerating the licensing of lorry-drivers.
Earlier this month, Lewis was appointed as chairman-designate of GlaxoSmithKline’s £40 billion consumer healthcare arm.
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