Now enjoying retirement in North Yorkshire, I was a police officer for 25 years.

In 1992, while attached to the Home Office in London, I was working on an element of disaster management. I noticed a theme for the Churchill Fellowships that year for 'members of the emergency services involved in disaster management'. Professionally, I had long thought that we needed to use the territorial army at times of disasters, in the same way that the United States uses their National Guard.

I applied for a Fellowship to study how the United States worked in these situations, and I was successful. I worked with the California National Guard and the Los Angeles Police Department both during and after the Los Angeles riots in California, and with the Florida National Guard following Hurricane Andrew in Florida.

Returning to the UK, I brought the results of my work to the Ministry of Defence and various elements of the Territorial Army and ultimately the results speak for themselves. Military Aid to the Civil Authorities (MACA) is now automatically included in National Security Strategy and the public completely accept the use of military personnel (for instance with Covid-19 tests) in civil emergency situations.