“(1) Within one month of the passage of this Act, and every 12 months thereafter, the Secretary of State must lay a Defence Readiness Plan before both Houses of Parliament.

(2) The Defence Readiness Plan shall include, but shall not be limited to, a statement of the number of personnel in, and readiness of, each of the Reserve Forces governed by the Reserve Forces Act 1996.”—

This new clause requires the Government to publish a Defence Readiness Plan which must include information about the numbers and readiness of reserve forces.

Brought up, and read the First time.

I beg to move, That the Clause be read a Second time.

This is the last new clause we will debate today, so I will try to keep to the point. New clause 17 would require the Government to publish a defence readiness plan, which must include information about the numbers and readiness of reserve forces.

In a sense, the new clause gets to the heart of what people conceptually believe our armed forces are for. I have always believed that they exist to save lives, by persuading any potential aggressor that they could not win a war with ourselves and our allies. The Minister will forgive me, because he has heard this from me before, but it is summed up in the Roman military theorist Vegetius’s famous phrase, “Si vis pacem, para bellum”—“He who desires peace should prepare for war”.

When he published his strategic defence review, Lord Robertson emphasised readiness, but the official policy of the Government, as announced in that review—from memory, on page 43—was that we in Britain should be prepared to fight a peer enemy with allies by 2035. That is nine years from now. The Chief of the General Staff, General Sir Roly Walker, said about a year ago that we might have to be prepared to fight the Russians in 2027, just one year away, and the First Sea Lord is on the record in another forum saying that we might have to fight them by 2029. There is a clear dichotomy in terms of readiness between the policy of the Government and the Ministry of Defence and the policy of at least two of the service chiefs.

When the Government asked Lord Robertson to front the SDR, they knew what they were doing. He is very widely respected, he oversaw the 1998 strategic defence review, and he is also a former Secretary-General of NATO. When added to Sir Richard “not-an-armchair-general” Barrons and Dr Fiona Hill, in fairness to the Government, they had a credible front-of-house team to conduct the review. They were all adamant that the price of delivering readiness was defence spending at 3% of GDP.

What did Lord Robertson say about our preparedness and readiness to go to war, if necessary, at a speech in Salisbury on Tuesday night? He said this:

“We are underprepared. We are underinsured. We are under attack. We are not safe…Britain’s national security and safety is in peril.”

Lord Robertson is deeply respected. There is no way he could be characterised as some kind of Tory stooge; he has never been a stooge for anybody. For him to be warning us about these risks is a really serious wake-up call, and for him to accuse the Prime Minister of “corrosive complacency” in being ready to defend this nation is an extremely powerful Intervention. In pub English, the authors of the review have plainly had enough. They have gone public and are being very critical of the Government. What was the point of them spending a year doing that very detailed report if the Government they reported it to have not followed up on what they advised them to do?

I note in passing that the Health Secretary is today quoted as saying that we should cut welfare to fund defence. When he was challenged about why he said that, he said that Ministers

“need to put more money” into the armed forces, and that expenditure has

“got to come from somewhere.”

In terms of improving our military readiness—here is where I suspect we part company—we announced a few weeks ago that we would return to the two-child benefit cap. That would generate about £3.2 billion in a full year, and we would use at least half that money to increase the size of the Regular Army, subject to the problems of recruitment and retention, to 80,000 and the active Army Reserve to 40,000, making for a mobilisable Army of 120,000. There is a very clear difference between us and the Government on this.

For the sake of brevity, I end with one plea to the Minister for information. We have had our argument about when the defence investment plan should be published. We are asking for a defence readiness plan through new clause 17, but the Government have promised a defence readiness Bill. As we are pretty close to the King’s Speech, can the Minister tell us whether that Bill will be in it? If it will be, when is it intended that the defence readiness Bill—which, given its name, surely will be designed to improve our readiness for war—be on the statute book? We have Lord Robertson telling us that we are underprepared, underinsured and under attack—do not take it from me; take it from him—so where is the plan and, more to the point, where is the defence readiness Bill?

I thank the right hon. Member for his views on the Bill and acknowledge his request for us to publish a defence readiness plan that must include information about the numbers and readiness of the reserve forces. One of the main reasons we are underinsured, underprepared and under attack is the systemic underfunding of defence over the last 20 years, and since the end of the cold war, and our pursuit of usually non-state actors at a cost to our state-countering capability.

However, for the first time in decades, the Government have set a clear path for the next decade and beyond to transform and boost our reserve forces, through the strategic defence review. I reassure the Committee that we have been clear about our move to warfighting readiness, and the MOD is working around the clock to deliver that through our armed forces plan, as stated by the Chief of the Defence Staff at various recent briefings.

However, for reasons that I am confident all Members of the House will understand, these readiness plans should not be subject to a statutory requirement for publication. The House is already equipped with robust and appropriate mechanisms to scrutinise defence and defence readiness, including this Committee, the House of Commons Defence Committee, the House of Lords International Relations and Defence Committee, and the Intelligence and Security Committee.

Furthermore, the Ministry of Defence publishes quarterly personnel statistics containing data on strengths, requirements, intake, applications and outflow. The latest set, containing data up to 1 January 2026, was published at the beginning of the month. We already provide extensive information on the readiness of our reserve force, and disclosing comprehensive details of our readiness plans could risk giving our adversary a strategic advantage. I hope that provides the necessary reassurance to the right hon. Gentleman and, on those grounds, I ask him to withdraw the motion.

We do indeed have a disagreement on principle. I suspect that the Minister might privately have some sympathy with the new Clause but, for reasons we are all aware of, he cannot say so today. I will give him a chance to vote with us by pressing the new clause to a Division.

Very kind.

Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.

The Committee divided: Ayes 3, Noes 7.

Question accordingly negatived.

Schedules 1 to 7 agreed to.

That brings us to the end of our line-by-line scrutiny of the Bill. I will put the Question to report the Bill to the House once we have agreed the special report next week.

On a point of order, Mr Efford. I take this opportunity to thank all colleagues and all Opposition Members for our healthy and important debates. Importantly, I also thank all the Clerks, officials and you in the Chair, Mr Efford, for pulling the Committee together and making it run smoothly. It is not lost on me that the Bill is hugely important. A lot of the clauses are about getting us ready and preparing us should a crisis befall the country. The Bill is doing nothing other than thickening our ability to protect the freedoms that we have exercised here in this Committee Room. On behalf of those of us on the Government Benches, thank you very much indeed.

Further to that point of order, Mr Efford. I very much echo the Minister’s sentiments. We have agreed with the general thrust of the Bill from day one. We said that we would attempt to be a critical friend and to improve it, or to make suggestions, and the Minister—to be fair to him—has said on a number of occasions that he will take things back to the Department or take a closer look. I know him, and if he says that, I know that he will. I am afraid the officials will have some extra work to do.

Thank you, Mr Efford, for chairing our proceedings with a light touch and, if I may say so, a sense of humour. I thank the excellent Clerks for assisting us with amendments and providing good advice, and for organising the excellent visit to Portsmouth. I hope that we have done the House some service. Along with all my colleagues, I thank all who have been involved in this process. We look forward to producing our report and to debating these matters on Report.

I do not think it is normal for a Bill Committee Chair to say something, but this is a peculiar Committee, because it has been a Select Committee and a Bill Committee. It has been a joy to chair these meetings. I just say to anyone who is following our proceedings that everyone here is trying to do their best for our armed forces. We understand what they go through and put themselves through, and we have absolute respect for them in their roles. Everyone here hopes that, with what we are doing with the Bill, we will do the best we possibly can for our armed forces. I thank all the officials who have supported me in getting the Committee through the Bill, and I will see Committee members at our private meeting next Tuesday to finalise our report. Thank you all very much.

Committee rose.