Civil Preparedness for War

Lord Bruce of Bennachie Excerpts

Monday 20th April 2026 Grand Committee

[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.