National Youth Strategy

Lord Naseby Excerpts

Thursday 13th March 2025 Grand Committee

[Lord Naseby (Con)]

My Lords, my contribution will be a little tangential to this history of what I would call a civic service.

A year ago, on 7 March, I put down an Oral Question, taken on the Floor of the House, about whether His Majesty’s Government had any plans to introduce compulsory, or some other form of, military service. The answer came back clearly: “No. We rely on people being recruited and being volunteers, and we have very good Armed Forces”. At the time, I said that it seemed to me that “warning signals” were coming up and that we would need to review this.

The timing, a year on, is absolutely dead on. Now we move on a year and what do we find? We have a serious lack of men and women for our Armed Forces. We also know from looking at the television that, in today’s world—including in what is happening on the front in Ukraine against Russia—it is men and women and the numbers on the ground that remain important, not just armaments and things flying through the sky. The time has come when we might have to look again at some form of youth service, though not through a copy of the 1948 Act.

I remind the Minister here of what the Minister at that time, Mr Isaacs, said during the passage of the then Bill:

“Primarily, the need for the Bill arises from the fact that the regular components of our Forces have seriously run down, owing to the fact that there has been no regular recruitment during the war”.


Our forces are the same but for other reasons. He then referred to

“the need for the nation to build up efficient, well-trained reserve and auxiliary Forces”.—[Official Report, Commons, 31/3/1947; col. 1671-73.]

That was rightly accepted on an all-party basis.

Today, our country and Belgium are the only two countries that have no form of military training. Everyone else in NATO has all sorts of different kinds. My request to the Minister and the Government—which will, I am sure, have the support of my party—is that this matter be looked at in the context of today’s situation on the ground. I repeat the final words that Churchill said, having supported the then Bill all the way through:

“We should have carried far more weight in the councils of peace if we had had national service”.—[Official Report, Commons, 31/3/1947; col. 1697.]


We have a Prime Minister who is carrying weight in the context of what I am talking about. The challenge is there for the Government. All I say for myself is that I will do anything I can to help on that front.