Civil Preparedness for War

Lord Sikka Excerpts

Monday 20th April 2026 Grand Committee

[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?