Future Capability of the Armed Forces

Lord Forbes of Newcastle Excerpts

Thursday 16th July 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Forbes of Newcastle (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Harlech, on securing this debate, which is essential to the future of our country. I thank him for his service, as I thank all our Armed Forces volunteers for theirs. I associate myself with many of the comments he made in his opening remarks.

I begin with a simple truth: the world has already changed, but our defence capabilities have not kept pace. The threats we face are no longer neatly divided into war and peace, foreign and domestic, military and civilian; they are hybrid, continuous, complex and aimed at undermining the very resilience of our society. Across Europe and beyond, nations have recognised this shift. Finland’s total defence, Sweden’s civil military integration, Israel’s Home Front Command and Singapore’s multi-pillar resilience doctrine all demonstrate one lesson: the defence of the nation is no longer the job of the Armed Forces alone; it is a job for the whole of society. Our Armed Forces remain world class, but they are being asked to do too much with too little in systems designed for a different era. We cannot meet today’s threats with yesterday’s structures. With the winds of political change in the air, I want to argue for three radical shifts.

First, we must build a whole-of-nation resilience—not a patchwork of agencies or a set of disconnected emergency plans, but a statutory, integrated approach that brings together defence, civil contingencies, local government, critical national infrastructure and the private sector. Finland’s National Emergency Supply Agency shows just what is possible: strategic stockpiles, shared planning and clear duties on every sector. We need the same here: a UK resilience agency with real authority, real resources and real accountability.

Secondly, we must fuse civilian expertise with military capabilities. Our Armed Forces need engineers, cyber specialists, medics, logisticians and data scientists, but we cannot recruit and retain all of them inside the military. Other nations have solved this through dual-track service approaches, where civilians can be mobilised rapidly into defence roles that match their professional skills. I believe we should create a UK national reserve: a modern, flexible force that draws on civilian expertise, is trained for crises, both domestic and international, and is integrated into defence planning. That would be not conscription but a national capability-building exercise for every community and every nation in this country.

Thirdly, we must redesign command and co-ordination for the hybrid age. Israel’s Home Front Command integrates civilian protection directly into military planning, Japan’s self-defence forces train routinely with civilian disaster agencies, and Norway’s civil and military co-operation doctrine plans for peacetime, crisis and conflict. We need a UK equivalent: a joint civil-military resilience command, responsible for dealing with grey-zone threats, infrastructure protection and rapid mobilisation in times of crisis. It should sit alongside the military’s Strategic Command with equal status and a clear mandate.

If we are serious about future capability, we must stop imagining defence as something that happens over there. Cyber attacks, disinformation campaigns and the undermining of trust in institutions is all happening now to our people, our economy and our country. Our Armed Forces will remain essential, but they cannot and should not be asked to defend the nation alone. Modern threats demand that we build a system where every sector, every skill and every citizen contributes to the security and resilience of this United Kingdom. That is the scale of ambition we need and the future capability that our times demand.