Civil Preparedness for War

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Monday 20th April 2026 Grand Committee

[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.