Civil Preparedness for War

Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer Excerpts

Monday 20th April 2026 Grand Committee

[Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer (LD)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in the gap. I sincerely thank my noble friend for her excellent introduction and for talking about the national conversation. My point is that this national conversation needs to be very honest. Do not let us have a return to the 1980s, when the Government pretended you could survive nuclear war with their disgraceful leaflet Protect and Survive, which suggested that you could cover your dining table and hide under it and you would be okay.

I was surprised when the Government chose to vote against the UN resolution on the humanitarian consequences of nuclear war. I bring this up because, as the Minister knows—I hope he is going himself—next week the review conference of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty will start in New York. There is no civil defence against nuclear war, so we should not pretend to the population that there is. But I hope that the Government, as chair of the P5, will seriously look at risk reduction. The last two NPT conferences have abysmally failed, and I hope this one will at the very least make a strong statement about how nuclear war cannot be fought and would never be won. I wish the Minister all the luck with that.