Armed Forces Bill

Lord Lancaster of Kimbolton Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 6th July 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lancaster of Kimbolton (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton. I start by declaring an interest that, as of 15 June, I was appointed Assistant Chief of the Defence Staff, with responsibility for reserves and cadets. I am now the de facto most senior reservist in defence. Perhaps if the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, could give me another couple of weeks to get my feet under the table, I would happily accept the burden of responsibility for the things he mentioned in his remarks. I hope to offer him some encouragement that progress is indeed being made. Equally, before taking up this recent role, I was asked, in my capacity as the independent chair of the Reserve Forces Review 2030—RF30—to give oral evidence when the Bill was in Committee in the Commons. After consultation with the Minister, and with the permission of your Lordships’ House, it is in this capacity that I speak today—as an extension of that earlier evidence session.

I support the Bill, as it brings much-needed clarity and simplification to the role of the Strategic Reserve and provides the enablement, through the formation of a non-departmental public body, for the reserve forces and cadets associations. The reserve landscape is complex. RF30 sought to simplify this landscape by broadly dividing the reserve between the Active Reserve—part-time and predominantly, but not exclusively, paid volunteers, such as me—and the Strategic Reserve; that is, former regular service men and women who retain a liability to be called back into service.

In recent years, the Strategic Reserve has been pretty much ignored. This Bill does much to enable its greater use, as both the Active and Strategic Reserve will be essential not only in war but in the transition to war, and it is the latter that elements of this Bill enable.

To the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, I say that considerable work has been done in this area. In recent months, tens of thousands of records of former service personnel have been checked and reloaded on to defence databases. I was surprised to discover— although perhaps I should not have been, given that the average age of a service leaver is 31—that the vast majority of these members of what will be the Strategic Reserve are under the age of 45. So, even though this increases the age of liability to 65, the vast majority of the Strategic Reserve is relatively young—just like us.

I will say a few words on the Active Reserve—the part-time volunteers—and equally, I hope to cheer up the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire by dispelling the myth that somehow these reservists are a contingent capability who train only at weekends and on drill nights. Today’s Active Reserve is a very different beast, with a large percentage of reservists in all three services and Cyber & Specialist Operations Command contributing on a daily basis to delivering defence capabilities on operations in the UK and around the world: for example, on recent reserve-lead UN missions in Cyprus or specialists such as cyber experts bringing their skills to defence, or working shifts as logistical experts at RAF bases. They are fully integrated with our regular force and must be valued as such.

I want to try to tie together the measures in this Bill with the aspiration, the ends and ways, of the Strategic Defence Review, published last year, and the Defence Investment plan, the means, published last week. The SDR, published in June 2025, called this

“the most serious and least predictable”

security environment since the Cold War. The ongoing war in Ukraine and recent events in the Middle East underline this assertation. At its heart, the SDR highlighted three shifts: a move to warfighting readiness; an integrated force model; and, crucially, a whole-of-society approach to national defence—a theme that has already been explored by the right reverend Prelate and, indeed, my noble friend Lady Penn.

The SDR proposed a major boost to the reserves: a new UK Strategic Reserve by 2030 and a commitment that the Army should be able to rapidly expand and mobilise reserve forces. The Strategic Reserve measures in this Bill are sensible, in that they provide both simplification and harmonisation between the three single services, with liability to 65, and form the basis of that rapidly expandable force. The key, though, will be the data that we hold on individuals and its digital management. We need to move away from a traditional paper-based system to a digital solution: interrogating the data we hold and contacting reservists digitally, perhaps via mobile phone apps, so we can best mobilise and employ reservists based on their current skills as well as their historical skills, and at pace. Defence should invest in this technology as a priority, otherwise we will struggle to convert whatever legislation we pass in the Bill into genuine defence capability. I was pleased to see the DIP specifically highlighting the need to invest

“in new methods and technology for engagement with the Strategic Reserve”.

The SDR also recommends an expansion of the Active Reserve by 20%, albeit with the caveat “when financial conditions allow”. I would say to the Minister that the Reserve is a fragile beast, overly reliant on the goodwill of its volunteers, and, while we await the financial conditions that will allow its expansion, we must in the meantime ensure we continue to nurture it.

Notwithstanding the ambition to increase the size of the Active Reserve within the SDR, it is worth taking a moment to compare ourselves with the actions being taken by some of our NATO Allies. In Belgium, a territorial force, a combination of regular and reserve, is being developed with a focus on the protection of the homeland and critical national infrastructure, with an ambition to have 0.5% of the working population as reservists. Canada is doubling the size of its active reserve forces to 100,000 and developing a strategic reserve of 300,000. Simplifying processes for recruiting and training, the Canadian armed forces have had their best recruiting year for many years, led by a national conversation from the top of government. The Czech Republic is reported to have increased gross numbers of reserves by 5,000 in a year from a population of just 10 million. This contrasts with the increase of a few hundred for the UK Reserves; however, we should note that numbers of applications continue to grow. We are not alone in recognising the need to expand our Reserve Forces as an effective addition to deterrence.

RF30 and the SDR were both clear on the need for reinvigorated training and modernisation, and learning lessons from Ukraine on drones, autonomy and digital warfare. I was pleased to see the recent Defence Investment Plan prioritise these measures. This preparedness for conflict, however, cannot be Defence’s job alone. The SDR was also clear that defence to be a whole-of-society matter—something that other noble Lords have raised. With our homeland under attack via cyber, and critical infrastructure on a knife edge, we cannot simply contract out our defences to those in uniform.

That means we need civilian and military integration, with Defence playing a key role in the Cabinet Office-led home defence programme; community mobilisation—the SDR envisages substantial numbers of volunteers at local level; civilian rescue teams, reserve firefighters, special constables and a new home defence force; and partnering with society with a new partnership with industry, wider participation in resilience, an expansion of the specialist industry-sponsored Reserve and a national conversation on security.

This builds directly on the recommendations of the RF30 report, which asked us to redefine the Reserves’ relationship with society, to share expertise with industry and academia, and to unlock flexible service, enabling regulars and reserves alike to move between civilian and defence roles, sharing their expertise. The SDR and DIP were clear: we need a defence that is NATO first, innovative and lethal, but we also need a defence that is rooted in our communities. Our reservists, be they Active or Strategic, are the bridge between regulars and civilians, between barracks and boardrooms. If we are serious about resilience, defence is not just the job of the Ministry of Defence; it is the responsibility of all of us.

The modernisation of the Strategic Reserve and the Reserve Forces’ and Cadets’ Associations elements in this Bill represent a good first step, which I hope will be built on in the Government’s future defence readiness Bill. But legislation, as I have said, is only one element, and I have one plea to the Minister—apart from, of course, for continued support for the Reserve. It is that the Government embark on a conversation with wider society to explain why defence is a national responsibility. I know that work is being done on that within the MoD and I am very grateful to the Government for ensuring that it is being done—but we need to start that conversation now.