(1 day, 6 hours ago)
Grand CommitteeRead Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Harris of Richmond
To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the United Kingdom’s civil preparedness for war.
Baroness Harris of Richmond (LD)
My Lords, I begin by declaring my defence interests: I am patron to the various RAF regiment associations, and I have just heard from their group captain that their gunners have shot down more Iranian drones, by quite some margin, than any other UK defence unit. I am sure that the Minister will want to congratulate them on that. I would also like to thank our fantastic Library’s research staff for their excellent briefings.
This short debate cannot really address all the issues the Government will have to face if we find ourselves in any situation in which we as citizens must react in order to survive any attack on our country. Geopolitical storms are raging in Europe, the Middle East, Africa and elsewhere, and I am concerned that we are not prepared for what I feel may well be the future: strikes on our critical infrastructure; drones—now the favoured form of bombing; sabotage; air and maritime invasions; online disinformation; cyber attacks; attacks on our underwater cables, which carry more than 95% of our international data; and attacks on the one single pipeline which carries 77% of our gas, said the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, in his speech during the strategic defence review debate in July 2025. And then, of course, there is climate change.
That excellent review, however, says little about how we citizens should prepare ourselves for any future crises that will occur when we find ourselves without the life-sustaining structures around us that we are used to—unlike Europe, which appears to be alerting its citizens to major disruptions to their lives. The EU has adopted its preparedness union strategy, which aims to
“enhance the EU’s civilian and military preparedness and readiness for future crises so that all actors are ready and capable to respond quickly and effectively if needed.”
It sets out 30 actions across seven areas. They are too numerous for me to go into this afternoon, but one of the seven areas is population preparedness and societal resilience: supporting citizens and communities to prepare for and respond to crises—not the first responders or gold commanders, but we, the citizens.
Finland, for example, to take just one of the EU countries, is telling its citizens that they must prepare in advance for disruption to internet banking services, and for natural phenomena such as storms and wildfires, pandemics, military conflicts, etc.; there is a long list of topics that can be brought up on the website. It is also maintaining its bunker network, allowing shelter for 4.4 million people. Professor Tim Lang, a food policy expert, has urged our Government to follow the example of many other countries by encouraging us to begin stockpiling foods such as dried goods, which need no cooking—and lots of water. Finland, Norway and Sweden have all issued updated preparedness guides to their citizens. Finland does this digitally. Norway and Sweden have sent physical copies and instructions to all households. Do we have any intention of doing something similar?
The strategic defence review talks about a “whole-of-society approach” to any impending emergency and, in recommendation 26 on page 92, it welcomes
“the Prime Minister’s launch of a national conversation on defence and security”.
So I ask the Minister: when will this happen, and will it provide instructions for communities on how they can begin to prepare themselves? Further, a home defence programme to meet defence’s needs in the event of escalation to war will include mobilisation of reserves and industry, but there is no mention of what we citizens should be doing. Can the Minister update us on this, please?
What has happened to the Security Action for Europe—SAFE—programme, which was supposed to start but broke down in November? We need to connect better with Europe now and learn from it how to prepare ourselves in the event of war or large-scale disruption. It has a culture of resilience and uses targeted information campaigns and educational programmes, with accessible online courses, developing household emergency plans and stockpiling essential supplies. The EU Parliament has an action plan for indicative preparedness. Do we?
Page 87 of the SDR talks about building “national resilience”, but I am not sure how we will do this if we are not told what to expect and when. I do not wish to be alarmist but, in talking to senior friends in our Armed Forces, I am aware of their concerns about any future conflicts. I simply want our Government to be clear with us about what they advise us to do in order that we can prepare ourselves in case of national disruption. The aim should be a public understanding of the challenges we face—one that feels capable of contributing to our collective response, rather than one that is either complacent or alarmist.
Iran’s rockets, and certainly those of Russia and China, can now reach mainland Europe. I am sure there are missiles out there that can reach us. Can we at least have some idea what we should be doing to help ourselves? For instance, are the Government drafting legislative measures to improve defence readiness? How will they increase public awareness, engagement and understanding of our defence? What are they doing to improve the resilience of critical national infrastructure? Finally, how are the Government advertising the GOV.UK Prepare website, getting us prepared for an emergency? The clock is ticking. We are near midnight.
Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)
My Lords, I am grateful to my noble namesake for securing this debate. I declare my registered interest as chair of the National Preparedness Commission.
Not only are we closer to widespread war than we have been for 60 years, but conflict has become much more hybrid, with increasingly hostile cyber activity coupled with deniable sabotage and other disruptions already affecting us here at home in Britain. That is to say nothing of the misinformation and disinformation that floods people’s social media feeds non-stop.
Despite the events since this debate was originally scheduled, the public remain blissfully unaware of the various threats and risks that the nation faces, let alone their urgency and scale. This must change. We urgently need the national conversation called for in the SDR, but it should not be couched solely in terms of defence; it must encompass everything else on the national risk register. The whole of society needs to be engaged. It is not sufficient simply to rely on the GOV.UK Prepare website; we need messages that are repeated in household booklets, as in other countries and as referred to by the noble Baroness. These then need to be amplified through broadcast and social media platforms. Think back to the major public health programmes that have taken place in the past: these were multimedia and you could not escape them. Everybody knew about them and everybody understood them.
We should also be building the sort of civil reserve they have elsewhere: a reserve of volunteers, with skills, that can be deployed in an emergency here at home. It is an emergency whether it is caused by a hostile state, by severe weather events or by another pandemic. Perhaps we could have a register of electricians who have had extra training to repair the grid, or retired doctors to be brought back into the NHS, or those willing, with the right skills and equipment, to clear fallen trees or masonry from roads and railway lines. We could also have people to help pile sandbags. The list is endless. Why do we not have such a public register of reserves for use in those circumstances?
My questions for my noble friend the Minister are as follows. When will the national conversation called for in the SDR start and what will it consist of? It must be much more than a top-down message; it must also foster dialogue at local level and within communities. Will it recognise that this is not just about war preparedness but all the other acute and chronic threats we face as a country? In advance of the defence readiness Act called for in the SDR, will steps now be taken to seek volunteers to offer their help and skills in emergencies and crises? Resilience and preparedness must not be an optional add-on; it is our obligation to future generations—to our children and grandchildren.
Lord Farmer (Con)
My Lords, I too am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Harris of Richmond, for securing this vital and timely debate, and it is an honour to follow the noble Lord, Lord Harris, who is such an expert on resilience.
I am on this House’s National Resilience Committee, which is looking inter alia at how to take the whole-of-society approach essential for civil preparedness for war. As we have heard, the Nordic ambassadors’ already publicly available evidence to our committee describes their countries’ decades-long approach to civil preparedness, given their proximity to Russia. It is too soon to know what the committee will recommend, but I personally admire the ambassadors’ Governments’ highly informative booklets, which are available in every single household and which we have already heard about from the noble Baroness, Lady Harris, and the noble Lord, Lord Harris. These describe not only the importance of storing water but things such as how to dispose of human and pet waste. I suggest to the Minister that this would be a low-cost implementation to start with immediately.
The Swedish ambassador defined resilience as “public support through awareness of risk, readiness to act and trust in institutions”. We must be healthily sceptical about how well the UK measures up to that. Currently, despite heightened awareness of the risks facing us, the UK population is very divided. The idea that people need to be good citizens and act in a concerted way is treated with suspicion, and trust in institutions is low. Culturally, we are not in a promising place for public support to grow.
Anthropologists say that culture is shared, deep-rooted assumptions that are powerful resistors to change. Our assumptions include that patriotism is naive and politically or culturally loaded, efforts to encourage citizenship are suspect and potentially exploitative, and hyper-individualism is the priority. An effective whole-of-society approach needs to challenge these. We talk blithely about cultural change, but people fear changing their deep-rooted assumptions, so they resist—unless they realise that their survival depends on it.
Such survival anxiety must exceed fear for cultural change to take place. Survival anxiety is currently amplified by national and international threats, but any project fear leads to panic, blame and resistance. Leaders should unashamedly draw attention to other aspects of our national culture, particularly our dogged resistance to tyranny in the 1939-45 war. Constantly criticising our past, judging its actions by today’s mores, does not illuminate a path forward—it simply denies our roots and makes concerted action virtually impossible. A whole-of-society approach must emphasise strong relationships, which, in the new infrastructure, family hubs are helping people to build. In crisis, people primarily lean not on the state but on their relationships with families, communities and, dare I say, with God. It is not sensible to think otherwise.
The Lord Bishop of Chester
My Lords, I add my gratitude to the noble Baroness, Lady Harris, for bringing this vital Question forward, and I declare my interest, having served for a brief while in chaplaincy in our Armed Forces. Both the SDR and the 2025 resilience action plan raise this whole-of-society approach as a “fundamental element” of our national security. We have heard comparisons with the Nordic states. I would also draw comparisons with such countries as Ukraine and Taiwan, except the difference is that social inequality is far greater in this nation.
I had intended to make some erudite points about faith communities, which are brought in by the resilience action plan—I am sure that my right reverend friend the Bishop of Manchester will make them far more eloquently than I could—but I was hijacked by an accidental focus group that I found myself conducting over the weekend. As I discussed this matter with my nieces, nephews and godchildren—a group of highly intelligent 18 to 27 year-old adults—some clear and, for me, shocking themes emerged.
The first was their surprise that this issue is on our radar. They said, “Surely war is a thing of the past”. Secondly, when I asked what we needed for civil preparedness, they said, “We do not feel like a cohesive group. We don’t really have a sense of national pride”. One of them even said, “Rather, it is more a sense of national shame. When people fly our national flag, we are concerned”. I asked them, “What about Covid, when we pulled together?” They said, “That’s true, we did”. I asked, “Would we do it again?” They said, “The problem is that, in the end, Covid diminished trust rather than increasing it”.
Three themes emerged from this informal conversation. The first was a really serious diminution in trust. The fact that our political system across the nation, at every level, is addicted to tearing down rather than building up will end up biting us.
The second theme was a serious reduction in willingness to volunteer or serve. One of the things my research has turned up—I struggle to believe this—is that, today, we have 12,000 fewer firefighters than we did in 2000. To me, that is a really interesting statistic in terms of what we give to serve the other.
The third theme was the well-known rise in mental health issues across society, particularly in the community made up of our younger adults and older teenagers. As I have said a number of times in this place—I deeply believe this—the question is not so much how we make Britain great again but how we make Britain kind again. The fundamental social building blocks on which civil resilience rests come down to all of us. What are His Majesty’s Government doing to invest in what one might call the softer side of this societal infrastructure, on which previous generations have fallen back and which has enabled us to stand together?
Lord Sikka (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Harris of Richmond, for tabling this debate.
A resilient economy and resilient households are key requirements for national defence, yet successive Governments have degraded them. Some 13.4 million people now live in relative poverty, and 25.3 million people live in households that fall below the minimum income standard. Work does not pay enough. Some 4.4 million people earn less than the real living wage, and 32% of universal credit claimants are in work. Millions rely on charity to survive.
Further, one in four young people in England has a mental health condition. Victorian illnesses such as rickets and scurvy have returned. Three million people in the UK are malnourished or at risk of malnutrition. In 2023, 800,000 patients were admitted to hospital with malnutrition and nutritional deficiencies. Years of real wage cuts, austerity and unchecked profiteering have made people less resilient. Some 16% of UK adults have no savings, and 39% have less than £1,000 to negotiate emergencies. Some 6.11 million individuals await 7.22 million hospital appointments. Some 300,000 people a year die prematurely while awaiting a hospital appointment, and 100,000 people die every year in poverty. This is the state of our resilience.
We are not self-sufficient in food, energy, auto, steel, bricks, cement, shipbuilding or semiconductors—and more—yet there is no reform of corporate governance and short-termism in the City of London. Neoliberalism has provided neither economic growth nor household resilience, yet welfare cuts are being mooted to make the poor poorer. The poorest 20% already pay a higher proportion of their income in taxes than the richest 20%.
It is interesting that the Ministers mooting this are silent on corporate welfare spending and the tax perks of the rich. HMRC has failed to collect more than £500 billion in taxes since 2010. In the past three years, banks have received £100 billion in subsidy in the form of interest in central reserves, yet no one is talking about ending any of that. The bones of the less well-off make poor cement for national security, and it is the bottom 50% who need to be strengthened. Can the Minister say when a different approach to managing the economy and society will be unveiled?
Lord Rogan (UUP)
My Lords, I too congratulate my friend, the noble Baroness, Lady Harris, on securing this extremely timely debate.
As we know, we are living in dangerous times. What makes matters worse is the stark reality that they are times for which we, the United Kingdom, are woefully unprepared. This was made clear last summer when His Majesty’s Government published the strategic defence review. At that time, the esteemed noble Lord, Lord Robertson, who oversaw the review, expressed his frustration that government funding was too little and too late to match the ambitious defence overhaul that was—and is—urgently required. He has since expressed even starker views, for which he should be commended.
There can be no doubt that years of underfunding under previous Administrations left the current Government with an abominable legacy to deal with. However, what now seems to be lacking is a sense of genuine urgency for putting the country back on its feet militarily. I do not blame the Ministry of Defence for that; instead, the problem seems to lie at the feet of His Majesty’s Treasury. Indeed, the Prime Minister himself essentially conceded that point when appearing before the Liaison Committee in another place.
We are many months on from when the defence investment plan was due to be released, yet it seems the Government have no clue as to how they will pay for it. The finger of blame is often pointed at the Chancellor but the Prime Minister is the First Lord of the Treasury: he needs to make that decision. In the 1950s, the UK spent 8% of GDP on defence, 6% on the NHS and 5% on welfare. In 2026, we spend a little over 2% on defence, 8% on the NHS and 12% on welfare. That imbalance is indefensible.
But there is some good news, thankfully. Replying to a Written Question from me last month, the Minister confirmed that:
“The Ministry of Defence will launch the Northern Ireland Defence Growth Deal in Spring 2026”.
That is positive; I hope that the Northern Ireland defence sector will have cause for celebration very soon. I support the Government’s resilience action plan, which focused on UK domestic resilience as a fundamental element of the national security strategy. Given our troubled past, there is no more resilient part of the United Kingdom than Northern Ireland, and I assure your Lordships that we are keen to step up and do our bit to keep the nation safe from external threats.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, gave me a copy of his Salisbury speech last week. I want to quote the final sentence because, in some ways, that speech was a cry of despair that nobody has yet taken seriously the strategic defence review. He said:
“Eighteen months ago, a national conversation about defence was promised by the new government. It is about time to get it started”.
I was very struck when I read the SDR by what a radical set of ideas it presents. It proposes the remobilisation of people throughout the United Kingdom. It also proposes a home defence programme and a new home defence force. A lot of it has to be done at the local level. A joined-up Government would not at the same time have been pushing through a complete restructuring of local government to remove local government to a further distance away from ordinary people, in which there will be lower-level councils representing half a million people, which is slightly larger than the population of Iceland. That is not local mobilisation; it is not even really local government.
What we now need, clearly, is political leadership and money. What I am hearing from those who have already spoken is that we have a political culture that encourages all political parties to attack each other and not to co-operate with each other. We have to change that. It is also a political culture in which anyone who says that we ought to raise spending rather, and that we should perhaps under the current emergency raise taxes, will bring down the wrath of the Daily Mail, the Telegraph and everyone else upon them. Political leadership requires you to change the political agenda and to call for the sort of money which is going to have to be spent on home defence as much as on reviving our ability to operate outside the home territory and home waters. So, there is a huge amount to be done, and it is extraordinarily ambitious.
If I may end, I will quote what the Prime Minister said to Parliament last February, that we should
“use this to renew the social contract of our nation—the rights and responsibilities that we owe one another”.—[Official Report, Commons, 25/2/25; col. 634.]
I agree with him. I only wish he had done more to make people aware that this is what we need, and to try to create the sort of atmosphere in which we co-operate more with each other.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Harris of Richmond, for securing this debate. Like other speakers, I will not just talk about civil preparedness for war but acknowledge that we are in the age of shocks, and that we face not just geopolitical and terrorism threats but threats from climate, from the collapse of nature and of course from pandemics, which continue to loom over us.
It is not just me or the Green Party saying this. I can go back to October 2025, when, as we now know, the Joint Intelligence Committee security assessment report for Defra warned that
“biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse”
threatened the foundation of our lives. That was in October 2025. That report was supressed by the Government and finally published on 20 January 2026. That report may only be in the redacted form. This is unclear—perhaps the Minister can tell me whether that is the full report.
Then, there was a second repressed Defra report, finally released on 24 March, which warned of the risk of the “catastrophic failure” of the UK’s food and water systems by 2030. Therefore, my first question to the Minister is: would he acknowledge that the first step of preparedness has to be the Government being honest with the public about what they know and the risks that we face?
To focus on those risks for a second, the government advice—which noble Lords may not know, because it is not very widely publicised—is that every household should keep three days’ worth of food in the cupboard. Here, I reference the very powerful speech by the noble Lord, Lord Sikka: how many households cannot afford to buy three days’ worth of food and stick it in the cupboard? There are very many. So, it is no good giving that advice if they cannot possibly do it.
Then, there is our oligarchic food system. Some nine big retailers supply 94.5% of all retail food. Tesco supplies nearly one-third of retail food sales and sends those out from 20 distribution centres. It is not just me who points out the vulnerability of that; it is obvious to anyone who might want to disrupt British society. Across all the retailers, it is 131 distribution centres.
I am going to be party political here for a second and address a question of philosophy. For the Green Party, resilience is at the heart of our political philosophy. We know we cannot have infinite growth on a finite planet. We know that an over-fertilised seedling with a thin, slender stem and very shallow roots that races up for the light will not be resilient. To be resilient, we have to build a healthy society, which is what is at the core of Green Party political philosophy.
Lord Bailey of Paddington (Con)
My Lords, I also thank the noble Baroness, Lady Harris of Richmond, for securing this timely debate.
The United Kingdom faces serious and growing security threats—Russia, Iran, China and North Korea—alongside non-state actors, criminal networks and terrorist organisations. Last year’s strategic defence review was right to say that we must engage wider society if we are to meet those threats and keep our country safe. That conclusion is becoming more and more urgent every day. An Ipsos poll conducted ahead of the review found that almost half of all Britons say that there are no circumstances under which they would be willing to take up arms for Britain. That is deeply troubling.
Sadly, it is not entirely surprising. For too long, British history has been denigrated, distorted and stripped of context. Too many people have been encouraged to feel ashamed of this country and their association with it, and they believe they should feel no pride in being seen as British. If people feel that way about their nation, it is no surprise that they are unprepared to defend that nation. As retired Army officer Tim Cross put it, we need to tell our young people that they are part of a nation and a society that needs them, including within our Armed Forces.
One practical answer to this is the cadets. As many of your Lordships will know, I am the proud holder of the office of honorary colonel of the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers cadets, so I have seen personally the value that the cadet system can provide to the country. It builds confidence, discipline, resilience and public spirit, and a sense of belonging. This is good not only for the individual but for the country. I therefore welcome the review’s conclusion that reconnecting defence and society must be the cornerstone of home defence and resilience strategy.
In particular, I welcome the ambition to expand the cadet force by 30% by 2030, with a longer-term ambition of reaching 250,000 cadets alongside the education department. That matters because the cadet force helps young people understand the Armed Forces, gain skills and qualifications, and see a pathway into future service. Critically, it opens up opportunities for young people from diverse backgrounds across the country. That supports both national resilience and economic growth.
But this cannot just be about numbers. As Michael Martins of the British Foreign Policy Group has argued, our defence strategy must engage the rest of society. That means building a compelling national narrative that wins public support, builds cross-party consensus and reminds people that national security is not the business of the Government alone but the business of this whole nation. That is the challenge we face.
The Lord Bishop of Manchester
My Lords, I share the gratitude already expressed to the noble Baroness, Lady Harris of Richmond, for securing this debate. In the short time available I will make just three brief observations, and I assure the Minister that none of them would lead to much expense.
First, on faith communities, I applaud that documents often refer to faith communities, but sometimes we appear to be wrapped up into a generic voluntary, community and faith sector. Faith groups are not just another example of voluntary or community activity; their reach goes much deeper into every corner of society. Their numbers far outweigh other bodies. They have different decision-making structures and are often networked in complex but effective ways, and many have significant links to the memberships of international bodies.
Our faith groups can and will have a major role to play in any situation that requires civil engagement and response, but that requires them to be seen as what they are, not lumped into a more convenient category. I am very grateful in my own diocese that the Greater Manchester Combined Authority fully recognises that distinctiveness. Having a very informed and supportive mayor means that we are recognised for who we are, and I believe that we make a major contribution already to civil society, as we could in terms of preparedness for a war situation.
Secondly, one word that has been uttered several times today is resilience. When I devoted my “Thought for the Day” on Radio 4 last Monday morning—that is an advert—to an exploration of that concept, I had not at that point decided that I would speak today. What I suggested then—that moral resilience is just as vital as military—remains my firm belief. Moral resilience in the face of war, or the threat of war, matters because war is not just about defending territory; it is about defending the values that underpin our society. Those currently attacking us online are deliberately seeking to pick away at those values, so the thrust of our response must be to bolster the principles of a just and open society. It must not undermine them.
Civil liberties matter, including the right to protest peacefully. The expression of diverse and dissenting viewpoints, legitimately held within Britain and in the public square, lies at the heart of who we are as a nation. These are not “nice to haves” or values that can be readily disposed of should they prove inconvenient. They are what has helped many of us to be proud of Britain, as the noble Lord, Lord Bailey of Paddington, reminded us—and being able to be proud of our country is pretty vital.
Finally, and briefly, any incorporation of civilians or civilian organisations into the defence of the realm must ensure that there is absolutely no scope for the creation or legitimation of the kinds of paramilitary or vigilante groups that presently so deeply scar the reputations of many nations. With those provisos, I am grateful that matters of civil preparedness are now being taken seriously.
Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer (LD)
I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in the gap. I sincerely thank my noble friend for her excellent introduction and for talking about the national conversation. My point is that this national conversation needs to be very honest. Do not let us have a return to the 1980s, when the Government pretended you could survive nuclear war with their disgraceful leaflet Protect and Survive, which suggested that you could cover your dining table and hide under it and you would be okay.
I was surprised when the Government chose to vote against the UN resolution on the humanitarian consequences of nuclear war. I bring this up because, as the Minister knows—I hope he is going himself—next week the review conference of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty will start in New York. There is no civil defence against nuclear war, so we should not pretend to the population that there is. But I hope that the Government, as chair of the P5, will seriously look at risk reduction. The last two NPT conferences have abysmally failed, and I hope this one will at the very least make a strong statement about how nuclear war cannot be fought and would never be won. I wish the Minister all the luck with that.
Lord Bruce of Bennachie (LD)
My Lords, I echo the gratitude that everybody has expressed to the noble Baroness, Lady Harris, for this debate. The interest in it suggests that we need more time, and I suggest that government time should be made available to extend it properly.
The Government talk about a whole-of-society approach, but where is it? The helpful Library briefing suggests that little progress has been made since the Commons Defence Committee report said that the UK “lacks a plan” on homeland defence. It said that cross-government working on homeland defence and resilience was
“nowhere near where it needs to be”.
Websites like Prepare and Ready Scotland focus on disasters such as flooding, fire, storm damage and power cuts and they provide useful checklists, but they give no guidance on where people should turn to in a war scenario.
Technology has changed mightily since the last war, but people know that we had the Home Guard, civil defence, the Royal Observer Corps and many volunteer organisations engaging citizens across the piece. Of course, I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Miller, that this is irrelevant in a nuclear war, but we are hoping that something short of that would be the worst scenario. By common consent, we are already in a war situation, with deniable threats to our critical infrastructure, including arson attacks, digital disruption, other cyber invasions, hybrid attacks and misinformation. But citizens surely need to know how they can deal with these, share information and help to prevent them—or at least secure a quick recovery. Russian submarines, ships and planes are already invading our air and sea spaces, and not with benign interest. Breaching a major pipeline or severing cables would cause major and sustained disruption to daily life. People need to know how they should act.
I am pleased that this House has established the Select Committee on National Resilience, which echoes one around five years ago and which I hope will advance the agenda. Just today, as has already been mentioned, a cross-party group of MPs led by Lib Dem Michael Martin announced an advertising campaign to highlight our lack of military preparedness for war. But, according to a poll, the majority of citizens do not believe that the UK is prepared for a major conflict and, perhaps understandably, do not want services to be cut in order to boost defence. There is the dilemma.
We need cross-party, all-of-society engagement to confront the real and growing threats and to ensure that we can build the necessary military and civilian response before it is too late. I plead with the Minister: it really is time for the Government to launch this; to engage citizens fully; to reach out across all parties and all aspects of society, including the public and private sectors; and to build not just awareness but real resilience so that the country is prepared because, currently, it is not.
Baroness Goldie (Con)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Harris of Richmond. This is a timely debate. Sadly, the impossibly short speaking time precludes a normal wind-up, so I hope that noble Lords will indulge me.
I want to talk about money, consequences and national conversation. You cannot sensibly discuss civil preparedness for war without also embracing our military readiness for war. If we are militarily on the front foot and prepared with all the necessary technology, assets and personnel, it may be possible to avoid war, shorten any conflict or mitigate the consequences of war, with a beneficial effect on our civil preparedness. Yet, nine months on from the defence review being published, the Chancellor still does not have a funding plan on her desk. There has been a scathing critique by the noble Lord, Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, which I shall not repeat it because he has, far more eloquently and authoritatively than I could ever have done, brought us up to date on where we are.
Let me make some suggestions to the Minister. I want to see a much more politically muscular approach adopted towards the Treasury. The Chagos deal, which is moribund for the foreseeable future, allows the Government to free up imminent payments that would have gone to Mauritius now to go to defence. As the MoD struggles to balance the books, with the current £3.5 billion black hole, it has to prioritise. Getting warships out of maintenance seems a glaringly obvious priority.
The lack of clarity on funding and the absence of the defence investment plan have real-time consequences for safety and national security. When the Middle East war was triggered, we had no warships or naval assets in the region. It took weeks to get HMS “Dragon” out there. That is shocking. Defence companies are existing on a wing and a prayer, which is not sustainable. They need to be clear about their own financial planning, investment and retention of a skilled workforce. They need an order book. Who or what is blocking the defence investment plan?
The national conversation proposed in the SDR is sensible. The question being asked this afternoon is: where is it? I hope that the Minister and his colleagues are not facing the Whitehall block of every department under the sun wanting to get its oar in and create stasis and stagnation. We do not have time.
I respectfully disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey. Defence should lead this, and lead it now. I am prepared to help the Minister. I have ideas about how to structure this and deliver it. Some of it can happen quickly. I make myself available to meet his officials, and I hope that that proposal might appeal to him.
These Benches do not always disagree with the Government, but this debate is another important opportunity to repeat to the Government the anger, frustration and warnings of failing political leadership. We need change. What can the Minister report by way of progress and encouragement?
The Minister of State, Ministry of Defence (Lord Coaker) (Lab)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lady Harris—it is very good to see her in person again—for bringing forward this really important debate.
On the point from the noble Lord, Lord Bruce, about whether we can have a longer debate on these matters—the noble Lord, Lord Harris, mentioned this to me beforehand—let us see. That would be really helpful for all of us in taking this forward. Notwithstanding the King’s Speech, which will I am sure include a day on defence and foreign affairs—if that is agreed—there may be some other point to have that debate. I am sure that all the people who have spoken in this debate would value it, so that people can make longer contributions—so that is a very good suggestion.
Let me set out the context for this, because it is really important. A number of noble Lords made the point about the need to engage the public. For a number of years since what has been designated as the end of the Cold War, the country has focused on the terrorist threat—that is, on Afghanistan, Iraq and those sorts of threats to our country. The threat of the sort of conflict that we face now is, in many respects, something that people think is of a bygone age and not relevant to contemporary society. What we have seen recently—although we can argue what “recently” is—has been a rude awakening for all of us. This is not to ignore any terrorist threat, but there is a need to recalibrate to the state-on-state threats and the geopolitical change that there has been.
Alongside that, as the noble Baroness pointed out, it is really important to understand that warfare has changed as well. The noble Lord, Lord Harris, and others made the point that it not just a tank versus a tank or a fighter aircraft versus a fighter aircraft: it is the threat to underwater cables and threats of cyber attacks, fake news and all of those other types of grey-zone warfare that need us to respond. That is why it is so important to have this conversation with our population. In other words, the traditional perception of war is not as relevant to today’s threats as it would have been in the past; it is not irrelevant, but the threats have changed, so we need to build a multiplicity of responses.
As noble Lords will know, the Cabinet Office has the overall responsibility for co-ordination across government, with the home defence programme, but defence obviously has a very important role to play within that. The MoD, for example, has recognised that we need to respond to the challenge in the report and to move to war-readiness in order to respond to the changed circumstances in which we operate. We are, therefore, trying to do that.
A number of noble Lords mentioned the urgency here. There is this idea that nothing has happened, or that it has not happened quickly and needs to happen more quickly. I totally and utterly accept that, particularly in terms of the point that the noble Baroness and others made about the need for us to involve citizens. There was a recent meeting with 38 local resilience forums, which were brought together to discuss what they might do to respond to the changing circumstances. We need more of those sorts of thing. There have also been two big conferences of private industry chief executives to see how private industry might respond to all this. Again, more of that needs to happen.
We are drafting a defence readiness Bill to ensure that we have the legislative framework within which we can respond to some of the challenges that we may meet in future. I understand the impatience and the need for us to act as quickly as possible—we will do so. I very much thank the noble Baroness, Lady Harris, for bringing this debate forward.
The noble Lord, Lord Harris, talked about the need to inform the public. I could not agree with him more. It is not only about informing the public through traditional media; we have to get into social media and multimedia, particularly if we want to speak to our young people. I am sure that many noble Lords have children, or, like me, grandchildren. They do not read newspapers. They get their information from social media, yet some of us still put out press releases. There is nothing wrong with that, but we have to get smarter if we want to get this information across to them.
I could not agree more with the point about how we use civil volunteers. Let us take this on. All of us have to be a bit more confident in talking about civil volunteers and all the things that we might use to support resilience. We have to ignore the barracking that we will get to do with “Dad’s Army” and all that. We have to get over that because the population understands that what we are talking about is, where possible, using people’s experience and ability to help in the face of a national emergency.
That is why, in the Armed Forces Bill, should it go through Parliament, we suggested increasing the maximum age of reserves to 65. Nobody is expecting a fully-fledged combat soldier of 65—though there may be one or two. The point is that a 65 year-old plumber, electrician, doctor, nurse, surveyor, architect, civil engineer, or any other member of all of those professional occupations and trades, could be of immense use. Yet the headlines in many of the papers were that the Government were seeking to recreate “Dad’s Army”. That is the sort of nonsense we must have the confidence to take on because, when you speak to people, they say that, of course, this is something—
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Young of Cookham) (Con)
My Lords, there is a Division in the Chamber. The Committee will adjourn for 10 minutes.
Lord Coaker (Lab)
As I was saying, I reiterate the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Bruce, that this is a really important debate for which we certainly need more time. A number of noble Lords, including the noble Lords, Lord Farmer, Lord Sikka—in a particular way—Lord Rogan, Lord Wallace and Lord Bailey, and the right reverend Prelates the Bishop of Chester and the Bishop of Manchester, talked about pride, patriotism, culture, self-worth and self-esteem. This is a big question for the Government and society, and I wonder whether we could sometimes be a bit more confident and strident in what we say about it. I say that because, just beneath the surface, there is patriotism, pride and a sense of self-worth and community.
I will give an example that I am sure many noble Lords in this Committee would use. In a few weeks’ time, on 27 June, it will be Armed Forces Day. I guarantee that, across our country, in all four nations and all regions, there will be numerous examples of pride in our country, in our Armed Forces and in what we do. That will be demonstrated and celebrated in numerous ways—not by everyone, but there will be a massive series of events that will celebrate and do all the things that we are talking about.
In answer to the noble Lord, Lord Sikka, I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, who talked about inequality and what we should do for a fairer society, but that debate takes place within a democracy that allows those debates to happen and in a society that allows us to freely express fundamentally different views, to freely celebrate different faiths and to worship in the way that we want. Those freedoms have not just been granted; at times, they have had to be fought for and defended. Events such as Armed Forces Day need to remind people about those things.
Of course, the biggest examples of that are Remembrance Sunday and Remembrance Day. Every single community has some sort of remembrance event where we do the very things that everyone here has said are important. At the heart of that are our Armed Forces, the cadets—which the noble Lord, Lord Bailey, mentioned, and which we are seeking to expand—and other uniformed organisations, such as the Scouts, Brownies and Guides, marching with pride through our streets with their parents. There is also wreath-laying at various memorials. That is the sort of thing we need to capture and to perhaps speak up about more than we do. It gives me the sense that we can do these things, and we perhaps ought to use them to remind ourselves of what they represent and speak to. It would be helpful if we could bottle that and use it more in many other examples.
Alongside that, if you look in the strategic defence review, we are going to talk to the Department for Education and others—we need to do this—about what we might do with our schools, colleges, universities and other institutions in order to take forward these debates and arguments, which are particularly important, in an appropriate way.
I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Miller, that we support the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. She will know the Government’s position on deterrence, which is that we support the NPT. We will be going to the conference in New York to try to ensure that the treaty remains as strong and as important here as it has been over there.
I agree with the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, about flood defence, climate change and the need to be resilient in the face of some of the challenges that we see around those issues. Of course, how we will do that will be part of any plan as well.
I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Goldie, for her offer of a meeting. Of course I will meet her and others to discuss how we can take the national conversation forward. She made points about our spending and military readiness. We recognise that we need war readiness. Various actions are being taken. The debate around the level of investment will continue; the debate that the noble Baroness has initiated will certainly be part of that.
As I have said before, a whole-of-society approach and effort is needed. This is about our freedoms, our democracy and our country, along with our friends and allies across the world, defending the sorts of things that we would all defend. That is in all our interests. Patriotism is not something that belongs to one party or one aspect of society. All of us can unite around pride in our nation.
I finish on this point. Sometimes, I think, we feel almost as though talking about patriotism and pride is something that belongs to a bygone age. I do not think that that is true. Patriotism and pride are perhaps of more relevance today than they have ever been. All we have done today is be reminded of that. There is nothing wrong with being proud of your country and proud of the things we stand for; we should remember that sometimes, and a reminder of that for us all should be at the heart of any national conversation.