Defence Readiness Bill

Debate between Baroness Neville-Jones and Lord Coaker

Thursday 9th July 2026 Lords Chamber

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Defence (Lord Coaker) (Lab)]

I certainly never resort to rhetoric, so the noble Baroness has my assurance on that. I thank my noble friend Lord Harris for introducing such an important debate, and everyone who has contributed to it. The MoD is developing this work, and I will say a bit more about that, but the overall responsibility across the whole of government is with the Cabinet Office. I know noble Lords understand that, but it is important to lay down again that the co-ordinating function is for the Cabinet Office. Notwithstanding that, the Ministry of Defence has a crucial role and will do what it can to accelerate the progress that many have mentioned.

I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Goldie, and other contributors to the debate that the defence readiness Bill will be introduced in this Parliament. I cannot go any further than that. I cannot remember who it was, but somebody said it would be introduced in the next Parliament. The Government’s intention is to introduce it in this Parliament, which is as far as I can go.

In terms of the scope of the Bill, which goes to the heart of the question and is the point of the debate introduced by my noble friend Lord Harris, what the defence readiness Bill should contain is under discussion, so there are talks going on about what the scope should be. Many of the other points that have been raised are the responsibility of other government departments. At the same time, other pieces of legislation which deal with some of this are being looked at. One example that has just come to mind for me is the Civil Contingencies Act, but there are all sorts of other pieces of legislation which are important as well.

I also draw noble Lords’ attention to the fact that NATO has seven resilience requirements and, as part of NATO, we and all the members accept them. They deal with many of the points that have been raised: continuity of government, energy supplies, dealing with uncontrolled movement of people, food and water resources, mass casualties, civil communications systems and civil transportation schemes. All of those deal with some of the infrastructure problems and challenges that the noble Lord, Lord Harlech, mentioned. They are part of a readiness programme which all member states in NATO will be looking at.

My noble friend Lord Harris and others mentioned the important point about the changing nature of warfare and the importance of understanding that war is about cyber, climate and information and all the things we have talked about. We need to address those as well in any plan that we bring forward.

The noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Jones, asked when the Bill would be introduced. I answered that. She asked me to define “the whole of society”. I think the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, did it quite well. We can tie ourselves in knots about what the whole of society means but we all know that what we are talking about is everybody’s responsibility. Every part of society has a part to play, whether it be business, industry, government agencies, voluntary organisations, the military, individuals or groups of people—the list goes on—the devolved Administrations, local authorities and local resilience forums. All those have to be involved in bringing a plan together and in any conversation. The challenge is how you do that in a constructive and co-ordinated way that is not fragmented. As I say, the whole of society—

[Baroness Neville-Jones (Con)]

I thank the Minister for making that clear. It is an ambitious aim—in my view, it should be.

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

I thank the noble Baroness for that comment.

To answer the points from the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, from the NATO resilience actions she can see many of the things that will need to be addressed and will be addressed as we go forward. Like, I suspect, many people in the Chamber, I disagree with her about growth. I have never seen growth and the environment as conflicting. You need good growth and alongside that you need to care for the environment, but you have to have growth in the economy and trying to bring about that growth is really important.

On the NATO seven resilience actions, to the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Wheatcroft, the national conversation is absolutely fundamental. We accept that. If I was going to criticise myself, I think I mentioned to the noble Baroness that I have been moved from the national conversation; in the reorganisation it has gone to another person. I have taken on a couple of other functions within the Ministry of Defence and that has gone to somebody else. In a moment, I will come to something that I tried to do. I would not say it was “ploughing a furrow” but it was an attempt to get it moving.

I say seriously to the noble Baroness, Lady Wheatcroft, that of course the national conversation is really important and fundamental to it. We are not frightened of doing it; the discussion is about the right way of doing it. That is the conversation and that is difficult. What exactly is the message that you want to get across? You have to ensure that people can rise to the challenge without frightening them. A discussion and debate would take place, if we had it in here, about what that means and what that should be. But the noble Baroness is quite right about the need for a national conversation and for us to move more quickly.

The noble Lord, Lord Harlech, whose service as an active reservist I always try to note, will know that in the Armed Forces Bill, due to be in Committee in September, there are a number of measures about the reserves. One of them is to reduce the threshold at which you can recall reserves from “almost imminent war” to “war readiness”. It would be interesting for us to debate what war readiness means. Committee might be the time for the noble Lord to table an amendment—not to vote on, but to explore the Government’s thinking. We are trying to lower the threshold, and the noble Lord makes an important point about that. The wider point, which my noble friend Lord Harris referred to, is whether it should be not just for war but for some of the other things we have talked about. We can have that discussion. On that issue, he will know that additional sums of money are being made available; usually, it would be left up to the reserve commanders themselves to look at how that might be allocated.

I have answered many of the points that the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, raised. On national conversations, the lesson from Finland and some of the other Baltic countries is the way they have found to speak to their people without unduly worrying them while alerting them to the change. The big thing about what they do and their example to us—the noble Baroness, Lady Goldie, and others talked about this—is the importance of homeland defence. The military and conflict have always been seen as about war in the traditional sense. From a UK point of view, it is almost seen as going overseas or on to the continent of Europe, whereas we are now talking about a threat to the homeland. How we deal with that is an important challenge for us all. It takes the UK into territory that we have not been in for quite a significant period, particularly since we have not been occupied in that sense, depending on how far you go back—noble Lords understand the point I am making.

The noble Baroness, Lady Goldie, asked about the national conversation. She is quite right that it will be somebody else’s responsibility, but I have done work within the department which I hope will help move it forward. As she knows, there are drafts and drafts. We are alert in the department to the need for the MoD to move forward and talk with other government departments about what responsibilities they should have to deal with something so important. I have answered her point about the defence readiness Bill, though perhaps not with the certainty she would want. We have discussed the finance; I know she specifically asked about the defence readiness Bill, but she can be assured that we will make the case for how important it is to fund it properly.

I thank all noble Lords who participated in this debate, which is hugely important. There are all sorts of things going on across government and society to deal with this issue. It is an absolute priority for the Government and all noble Lords. We all want to accelerate the progress and process. I think the noble Baroness, Lady Wheatcroft, made the point that we should get on with it, and we would all agree with that. I thank my noble friend Lord Harris for introducing the debate. It has been a very important one.

Her Late Majesty Queen Elizabeth II

Debate between Baroness Neville-Jones and Lord Coaker

Saturday 10th September 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a sad privilege to stand up and address the Chamber as we come towards the end of this tribute. I start by paying respect to the wonderful way in which the Lord Privy Seal opened the debate, followed by my noble friend Lady Smith, the noble Lord, Lord Newby, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, who set the tone for the whole debate. I do not want to repeat all the various comments that have been made about the service that the Queen has undertaken through her long reign; that can be read in Hansard at great length. I shall just highlight one or two things before making a general comment about why the Queen was and is held in such high regard.

The first thing is her acquaintance with the military, as we saw with her service during the war, but also her long commitment to the Armed Forces, as the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, will know as well as anybody. She always championed the veterans and our Armed Forces at great length through the whole of her life, which is of huge significance and speaks to the whole nation.

I also want to refer, as did the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, my noble friend Lord Kennedy and others, to the work she did with respect to Ireland. The noble Lord, Lord Caine, will know better than anybody about what she did and the work he did around that time in Belfast. It is easy to say, as the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, will know, “Wasn’t it fantastic that our Queen went to Ireland, went to Dublin and then went to Belfast?”, but just think, as the noble Lord, Lord Caine, will know, about the controversy that arose at the time and the hostility she received. The leadership and courage that she had to show to do that should be recognised by all of us.

That was an example of how, time and again, she did not always take the popular route; she sometimes took the route that was necessary for the greater good. Just think of her going to Dublin, not just wearing green and speaking in Gaelic, but visiting the memorial for those who were killed in the Easter 1916 rising. It is unbelievable that a British monarch should be welcomed to do that. Then she went to Belfast. The noble Lord, Lord Caine, was at the Lyric Theatre, I believe, when she shook the hand of Martin McGuinness. Unbelievable. She got hostility in Belfast for doing that, but she did it in the cause of peace and reconciliation and the belief that she had to use the authority of her office to move that on.

That is the nature of the person we had as our monarch, and that is why it is so important for us to give voice to all that in this tribute and in the tributes over the last two days here and in the other place. It is not repetition when people speak of their own experiences. It is not an unnecessary thing to do. It is an important statement of something that is important to our public life, both now and in the past.

I will say why I think the Queen has been so revered and why her loss is so shocking, but also something about what we should learn from her to inspire us for the future and what her legacy to us should be. The big thing about the Queen is the values she lived and stood for. People have heard me say this time and again, but some of those values, of family, community, patriotism, country and individual responsibility, are almost regarded as out of fashion and somehow irrelevant to the modern age, not something that we should all adhere to and teach our children but which we should leave out from our schools and that our country should not champion any more—that we should not say to the rest of the world, “This is what we are proud of about our country.” We had a monarch who symbolised all those values and principles. Because of that, she spoke to the inner core of the British people, the people of the Commonwealth and beyond. That is why people are so saddened and shocked, because they do not want to see those values die with her.

For me, and I think for our Parliament and us as representatives—whatever that means within a democracy—our legacy to her should be to say, “Ma’am, we’re going to take that forward and ensure we fight for it as well.” That is what the country is looking for in its leadership. Instead of division, people want harmony. That, Ma’am, should be our legacy and our epitaph to you.

[Baroness Neville-Jones (Con)]

My Lords, I think the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, spoke for us all when he pointed to the moral courage our late sovereign showed.

When I debated with myself about whether I would speak in these tributes to Her late Majesty the Queen, I found that I had an absolutely overwhelming desire to say thank you for her life of service, and her dedication to the welfare of the United Kingdom and to the well-being of its inhabitants. There have been many outstanding contributions. Given the hour, I will not fall into the habit of insisting on repeating all these sentiments myself, but I must say that I agree with what this House feels about the contribution the Queen made to our national life and destiny.

The Queen brought good cheer—one of her characteristics. I am old enough to have known another sovereign. I was 12 when the Queen ascended to the throne. Britain was a pretty grey place. Something lifted. First of all, we saw the wonderful dress she wore, which was made with an incalculable number of pearls that came from various parts of what was then still the empire to be sewn into it. From this rather grey world we began to see something that was rather lovely and cheery. She was very beautiful. It was a great occasion. My family, like many in the United Kingdom, bought its first television set to watch the proceedings. So she started with a tremendous show, which I think greatly improved the morale and general happiness of our society.

The other thing I want to say about the way she behaved over all these years is that she was a tremendous force for inclusion in our society. Little people mattered to her—that was widely and instinctively understood and much appreciated by the general public. Very ordinary people have been saying these very complimentary things about her, and are spontaneously repaying the compliment by covering the boundaries of Buckingham Palace, Balmoral and the grass of Green Park with a carpet of flowers. I do not know whether noble Lords have seen them on the television; it is extraordinary.

We also witnessed something else. Not only did people see that the Queen represented us collectively, which they much appreciated, but many in this society felt they had an individual connection with her. They did not know her in the conventional sense, but she connected with us, and put a lot of effort into doing so. One should not imagine that this is somehow a gift handed to you—you have to work at it. It is hard work to make connections, but she most certainly did. That is one of the reasons why she was also so effective in the Commonwealth. People understood that she had thought about them and the situation, and here was the contribution she was willing to make.

Many Members of the House have recounted stories of personal encounters with the Queen. I am not among those who could claim to have known her, though I did meet her. On one occasion, there was a private sitting at which I was present—a birthday party where we were both guests. It was held in the London aquarium. As she arrived, the Queen looked round at the colourful goldfish in the tanks near the entrance. “I haven’t been here before”, she said. I happened to be standing just near her, and said “Your Majesty, when you get much further into this place, you will find that it contains a lot of sharks.” “Oh”, she said, “How like real life”.

I will make just one more point. Like most Members of the House, I watched His Majesty the King speak last night, when he made his own public tribute to his mother and talked to us about his future role. He made some very perceptive comments and important commitments on how he would seek to act. Some Members have said they think the Queen will be a hard act to follow. I am sure that that is right, but I thought that our new monarch had all the empathy that will be needed for him to be an extraordinary, commanding presence in the country and that he will communicate with us as effectively as his mother. God save the King.