Govt has no national plan for defence of the UK in a war – despite renewed threats of conflict

Published

1 year ago

April 3, 2024

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The government has no national plan for the defence of the UK or the mobilisation of its people and industry in a war despite renewed threats of conflict, Sky News has learnt.

With ministers warning that Britain is moving to a “pre-war world” amid mounting concerns about Russia, China and Iran, it can be revealed that officials have started to develop a cross-government “national defence plan”.

But any shift back to a Cold War-style, ready-for-war-footing would require political leaders to make defence a genuinely national effort once again – rather than something that is just delivered by the armed forces, according to interviews with multiple defence sources, former senior officers and academics.

They said such a move would need a lot more investment in defence and much better communication with the public about the need for everyone to play their part in strengthening UK resilience and deterring aggression.

“We have to have a national defence plan,” a senior defence source said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

“It should involve what government arrangements would look like in the period before armed conflict and the transition to war.”

It can also be revealed:

• A two-day “war game” is set to take place next week, involving officials from the Ministry of Defence, Cabinet Office, Home Office and other departments, to talk through how the country would respond to an armed attack

• A paper is circulating in Whitehall that examines what can be learnt from an old but comprehensive system of plans called the Government War Book – now sitting in the National Archives – that once detailed how the UK would transition from peace to war

• Sources say lessons could also be drawn from how the UK mobilised its industrial base ahead of the Second World War when it created a network of “shadow factories” that vastly expanded production capacity for aircraft such as Spitfires

Grant Shapps, the defence secretary, used a speech in January to raise the spectre of a “pre-war world”.

He also forecast that in five years’ time “we could be looking at multiple theatres involving Russia, China, Iran and North Korea”.

Given the warning signs, Sky News has decided to explore how prepared the UK government, its military and the entire nation are for the possibility of armed conflict.

We have also looked back at the last time Britain was in a pre-war world, in the five years before the Second World War that erupted in 1939, as well as how this country subsequently dealt with the possibility of World War 3, including nuclear attack, during the Cold War years.

In the first instalment of a series – called Prepared For War? – we visited the National Archives to view a Government War Book; travelled to an old nuclear bunker once part of a secret plan to support the nation in the event of nuclear war; and examined the legacy the World War 2 shadow factories, which built the weapons that helped defeat the Nazis.

‘The problem is, there is no plan’

Setting out the challenge, Keith Dear, a former regular Royal Air Force intelligence officer who worked as an adviser to the prime minister between 2020 and 2021, when Boris Johnson was in power, said he had been unable to find any kind of detailed plan for war while in government.

He said specific planning is required to explain “what we think could happen, and specifically who needs to do what, when, to respond effectively”.

In an exclusive article for Sky News, he wrote: “Such plans are essential not only to avoid scrambling disorder and early defeats, but also so that our adversaries, awed by our preparedness, are deterred from fighting in the first place.

“The problem is, there is no plan.”

Instead, defence sources said the UK today relies on its arsenal of nuclear weapons and membership of the NATO military alliance to deter threats.

“The government assumes deterrence will always work, but no one stops to ask: what if it doesn’t?” the senior defence source claimed.

The apparent lack of a national defence plan means the army, Royal Navy and Royal Air Force – let alone the readiness of the civilian population and industrial base – are not designed to fight an enduring war of survival, the defence sources said.

“Our air defence [the ability to fend off incoming enemy missiles and drones] is dangerously thin and coastal defence is all-but non-existent,” the senior defence source said.

There is also a shortage of weapons and ammunition, while the size of all three services, both regular and reserve, is a fraction of the force that was kept at a high level of readiness during the Cold War in case of World War Three.

General Sir Richard Barrons, a former top commander, said he raised the idea inside government just over a decade ago about the need to rebuild national defence and resilience because of a growing threat from Moscow.

But “the implications of thinking about the revitalisation of a risk from Russia were unpalatable and expensive and denial – frankly – was cheaper”, he said.

War books

In the wake of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine two years ago, NATO refreshed its war plans for defending the whole of the now 32-nation alliance.

But the UK used to have its own corresponding set of national plans – set out in the Government War Book – that would trigger certain internal measures if the alliance decided to transition from peace to war.

A 1976 copy of the war book – a large bundle of hand-typed pages, bound together by string – offered a sense of how seriously the UK once took national defence planning.

Stored at the National Archives in Kew, west London, the war book contained detailed lists and signposted the way to complementary plans about how to mobilise not just the military but also civilians and industry in a crisis as well as shutting schools, clearing hospitals, rationing food and even storing national treasures.

Conceived around the end of the First World War, the government’s collection of top secret, regularly rehearsed and updated war books ensured by the height of the Cold War the UK was one of the best prepared nations in the world – and most resilient.

That all changed after the collapse of the Soviet Union as Western governments no longer felt the existential threat of global war.

By the early 2000s, the entire UK war book system, which cost a lot to maintain, was quietly shelved as the then government’s focus switched to the threat from Islamist terrorism and fighting foreign wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

It means most senior officials in today’s Whitehall will barely have any professional memory of how the state functioned during the Cold War years, let alone the two world wars.

Jonathan Boff, a professor of military history at Birmingham University, said the UK should think about producing a modern-day version of the war books.

“Some of that kind of thinking – the thinking that takes you from: we don’t need to worry about any of that to: actually if we did want to worry about that, how might we do it? – I think that’s really important,” he said.

Risk register and intelligence framework

Asked about the allegation that the UK has no national plan for the outbreak of war, a spokesperson for the Cabinet Office said the country has “robust plans in place for a range of potential emergencies and scenarios with plans and supporting arrangements developed, refined and tested over many years”.

This includes the Civil Contingencies Act, a government resilience framework, a National Risk Register and a strengthening of ties with a network of local resilience forums across the country that are tasked with responding to emergencies. There is also a new directorate in the Cabinet Office tasked with further enhancing resilience.

“As part of broad emergency response capabilities, all local resilience forums have plans in place to respond to a range of scenarios,” the spokesperson said.

“The government continues to review the risk landscape, including threats to the UK from overseas.”

Yet a flick through the National Risk Register offers a lot more information on floods, pandemics, terrorism and cyber attacks than what to do in the event of war.

A number of local resilience forums approached by Sky News also confirmed that they do not have specific war plans or planning for a nuclear strike – something that would have been a top priority for local governments during the Cold War.

Shadow factories

The funding priorities for many NATO allies, including the UK, changed following the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991, with investment switching away from defence to areas such as health and social services – more popular in peacetime.

This has started to be reversed following Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, but defence sources said it must happen with much greater urgency – especially as Russia is on a war footing and has even threatened the use of nuclear weapons.

Back in 1935, when war with Adolf Hitler’s Germany was looming, the UK began rapidly growing its manufacturing base to build more aircraft, converting automotive plants to produce Spitfires, Hurricanes, Lancaster bombers and other kit.

A programme, called the “shadow scheme”, under the then Air Ministry, saw the construction of “shadow factories” next to existing automotive-turned-aircraft plants.

But the UK’s manufacturing landscape has consolidated in recent years, while many weapons are imported, making it harder to revive sovereign industrial capacity at speed.

Keith Dear, the former Downing Street adviser, pointed at the difficulties Britain has had increasing the production of artillery shells and other ammunition to support Ukraine.

“Our inability to supply anything like enough munitions or weapons to Ukraine, shows also how hollowed out we have become by buying and building armed forces to no coherent war-fighting plan,” he wrote. “Weapons without ammunition are useless.”

‘We aren’t ready – but don’t tell Putin’

Southampton is a reminder of the UK’s former wartime resilience.

The home of the Spitfire, production lines were dispersed around the city after German bombers attacked its two main aircraft factories early on in the Second World War.

Today, Alan Matlock, a local man, heads a group called the Spitfire Makers Charitable Trust that raises awareness about the historic bravery of Southampton’s residents.

“The frontline did run through these factories,” he said. “And there were a large number [of people] who paid the ultimate price.”

Vera Saxby, who turns 100 in August, decided to do secretarial work for a company that made parts for Spitfires during the war after a German bomb exploded in her garden.

“We really thought we were doing something good,” she said.

However, resting in an armchair in her house in a Southampton suburb, Mrs Saxby said she did not think Britain was very resilient anymore – pointing in particular to the reduction in heavy industry, such as steel works and car plants that were so vital during the last war.

Asked if it was worrying, Mrs Saxby said: “Well it is but I’m too old to worry anymore… I can’t see how we would defend ourselves – but don’t tell Putin that.”

A spokesperson for the Ministry of Defence said: “We have a range of plans in place to secure and defend the country, which are reviewed and adapted in response to international security developments… These plans will be integrated as part of our contribution to ongoing work to develop a cross-government National Defence Plan, which will further enhance our preparedness and strengthen our deterrence for the future.”

Politics

Labour say there’s been a ‘massive increase’ in NHS appointments – this begs to differ

Published

2 hours ago

May 23, 2025

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Labour say there's been a 'massive increase' in NHS appointments - this begs to differ

“The target was never particularly ambitious,” says the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) about Labour’s plan to add two million extra NHS appointments during their first year in power.

In February, Health Secretary Wes Streeting announced they had achieved the feat early. He recently described the now 3.6m additional appointments achieved in their first eight months as a “massive increase”.

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But new data, obtained by independent fact checking charity Full Fact and shared exclusively with Sky News, reveals this figure actually signalled a slowing down in new NHS activity.

There was an even larger rise of 4.2m extra appointments over the same period the year before, under Rishi Sunak’s government.

The data also reveals how unambitious the target was in the first place.

We now know two million extra appointments over the course of a year represents a rise of less than 3% of the almost 70 million carried out in the year to June 2024.

In the last year under Mr Sunak, the rise was 10% – and the year before that it was 8%.

Responding to the findings, Sarah Scobie, deputy director of independent health and social care think tank the Nuffield Trust, told Sky News the two million target was “very modest”.

She said delivering that number of appointments “won’t come close to bringing the treatment waiting list back to pre-pandemic levels, or to meeting longer-term NHS targets”.

The IFS said it was smaller than the annual growth in demand pressures forecast by the government.

What exactly did Labour promise?

The Labour election manifesto said: “As a first step, in England we will deliver an extra two million NHS operations, scans, and appointments every year; that is 40,000 more appointments every week.”

We asked the government many times exactly how it would measure the pledge, as did policy experts from places like the IFS and Full Fact. But it repeatedly failed to explain how it was defined.

Leo Benedictus, a journalist and fact-checker at Full Fact, told Sky News: “We didn’t know how they were defining these appointments.

“When they said that there would be more of them, we didn’t know what there would be more of.”

Even once in government, initially Labour did not specify their definition of “operations, scans, and appointments”, or what the baseline “extra” was being measured against.

This prevented us and others from measuring progress every month when NHS stats were published. Did it include, for instance, mental health and A&E appointments? And when is the two million extra comparison dating from?

Target met, promise kept?

Suddenly, in February, the government announced the target had already been met – and ever since, progress on appointments has been a key boast of ministers and Labour MPs.

At this point, they did release some information: the definition of procedures that allowed them to claim what had been achieved. They said the target involved is elective – non-emergency – operations excluding maternity and mental health services; outpatient appointments and diagnostic tests.

However, we still did not have a comprehensive baseline to measure the two million increase against.

The government data instead relied on a snapshot: comparing the number of appointments carried out from July to November 2024 with the number from July to November 2023, and adjusted them for the number of working days in each period.

This did not tell us if the NHS had already been adding appointments under the Conservatives, and at what pace, and therefore whether this target was a big impressive ramping up of activity or, as it turns out, actually a slowing down.

Since then, a number of organisations, like Full Fact, have been fighting with the government to release the data.

Mr Benedictus said: “We asked them for that information. They didn’t publish it. We didn’t have it.

“The only way we could get hold of it was by submitting an FOI request, which they had to answer. And when that came back about a month later, it was fascinating.”

This finally gives us the comparative data allowing us to see what the baseline is against which the government’s “success” is being measured.

Full Fact passed the data to Sky News because it had seen our reporting about how the information published by the NHS in February was not sufficient to be able to assess whether things were getting better or worse.

What the government says now

We put our findings to the government.

A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: “On entering office last July, the secretary of state [Wes Streeting] was advised that the fiscal black hole meant elective appointments would have to be cut by 20,000 every week.

“Instead, this government provided the extra investment and has already delivered 3.6 million additional appointments – more than the manifesto commitment the British public voted for – while also getting more patients seen within 18 weeks.

“In the nine months since this government took office, the waiting list has dropped by over 200,000 – more than five times as much as it had over the same period the previous year – and also fell for six consecutive months in a row.”

We put this to Jeremy Hunt, Rishi Sunak’s chancellor during his last two years as prime minister, and health secretary for six years under David Cameron and Theresa May.

He said: “What these numbers seem to show is that the rate of appointments was going up by more in the last government than it is by this government. That’s really disappointing when you look at the crisis in the NHS.

“All the evidence is that if you want to increase the number of people being treated, you need more capacity in the system, and you need the doctors and nurses that are there to be working more productively.

“Instead what we’ve had from this government is the vast majority of the extra funding for the NHS has gone into pay rises, without asking for productivity in return.”

Edward Argar, shadow health secretary, accused the government of a “weak attempt […] to claim credit for something that was already happening”.

“We need to see real and meaningful reform that will genuinely move the dial for patients,” he added.

Is the NHS getting better or worse?

New polling carried out by YouGov on behalf of Sky News this week also reveals 39% of people think the NHS has got worse over the past year, compared with 12% who think it’s got better.

Six in 10 people say they do not trust Keir Starmer personally on the issue of the NHS, compared with three in 10 who say they do.

That is a better rating than some of his rivals, however. Just 21% of people say they trust Nigel Farage with the NHS, and only 16% trust Kemi Badenoch – compared with 64% and 60% who do not.

Ed Davey performs better, with 30% saying they trust him and 38% saying they do not.

Ms Scobie of the Nuffield Trust told Sky News “the government is right to make reducing long hospital treatment waits a key priority […] but much faster growth in activity is needed for the NHS to see a substantial improvement in waiting times for patients.”

The government is correct, however, to point out the waiting list having dropped by more than 200,000 since it’s been in office. This is the biggest decline between one July and the following February since current waiting list statistics were first published under Gordon Brown.

The percentage of people waiting less than 18 weeks for treatment is also falling for the first time, other than a brief period during the pandemic, for the first time in more than a decade.

There is still a long way to go, though. Figures released last week showed the total number of people waiting for NHS treatment in England had risen again in March, following six months of positive progress.

The latest figures show 6.25m people waiting for 7.42m treatments (some people are on the list for more than one issue). That means more than one in 10 people in England are currently waiting for NHS treatment.

There continues to be a fall in the number who have been waiting longer than a year. It’s now 180,242, down from almost 400,000 in August 2023 and over 300,000 in June 2024, the Conservatives’ last month in power.

But that number is still incredibly high by historical standards. It remains over 100 times higher than it was before the pandemic.

The government has a separate pledge that no more than 8% of patients will wait longer than 18 weeks for treatment, by the time of the next election. Despite improvements in recent months, currently more than 40% wait longer than this.

The Data and Forensics team is a multi-skilled unit dedicated to providing transparent journalism from Sky News. We gather, analyse and visualise data to tell data-driven stories. We combine traditional reporting skills with advanced analysis of satellite images, social media and other open source information. Through multimedia storytelling we aim to better explain the world while also showing how our journalism is done.

Politics

Starmer’s winter fuel cut U-turn claim ‘not credible’

Published

2 hours ago

May 23, 2025

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Starmer's winter fuel cut U-turn claim 'not credible'

Sir Keir Starmer’s claim he is U-turning on cutting winter fuel payments for pensioners because he now has the money is not “credible”, Harriet Harman has said.

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The Labour peer, speaking to Sky News political editor Beth Rigby on the Electoral Dysfunction podcast, said the prime minister made the move as it was so unpopular with voters.

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She also said Labour’s poor results at the local elections and the Runcorn and Helsby by-election were the “straw that broke the camel’s back”.

Sir Keir said on Wednesday he would ease the cut to the winter fuel payment, which has been removed from more than 10 million pensioners this winter after it became means-tested.

He and his ministers had insisted they would stick to their guns on the policy, even just hours before Sir Keir revealed his change of heart at PMQs

Baroness Harman said: “It’s always been contested and always been unpopular.

“But the final straw that broke the camel’s back was the elections. The council elections and the Runcorn by-election, where the voters were saying, ‘this is not the change we voted for’.

“At the end of the day, you cannot just keep flying in the face of what voters – particularly if they’re people who previously voted for you – wanted.”

Baroness Harman is unconvinced by Sir Keir’s claim he can U-turn because there is more money due to good economic management by the government.

“I don’t think that’s credible as an argument,” she said.

“It really is the fact that voters just said ‘this is not the change we voted for, we’re not going to have this’.”

The challenge for the government now, she said, is deciding who will get the allowance moving forward, when they’ll get it, and when it will all be announced.

What are the options for winter fuel payments?

The Institute for Fiscal Studies has looked into the government’s options after Sir Keir Starmer said he is considering changes to the cut to winter fuel payment (WFP).
The government could make a complete U-turn on removing the payment from pensioners not claiming pension credit so they all receive it again.
There could be a higher eligibility threshold. Households not claiming pension credit could apply directly for the winter fuel payment, reporting their income and other circumstances.
Or, all pensioner households could claim it but those above a certain income level could do a self-assessment tax return to pay some of it back as a higher income tax charge. This could be like child benefit, where the repayment is based on the higher income member of the household.
Instead of reducing pension credit by £1 for every £1 of income, it could be withdrawn more slowly to entitle more households to it, and therefore WFP.
At the moment, WFP is paid to households but if it was paid to individuals the government could means-test each pensioner, rather than their household. This could be based on an individual’s income, which the government already records for tax purposes. Individuals who have a low income could get the payment, even if their spouse is high income. This would mean low income couples getting twice as much, whereas each eligible house currently gets the same.
Instead of just those receiving pension credit getting WFP, the government could extend it to pensioners who claim means-tested welfare for housing or council tax support. A total of 430,000 renting households would be eligible at a cost of about £100m a year.
Pensioners not on pension credit but receiving disability credits could get WFP, extending eligibility to 1.8m households in England and Scotland at a cost of about £500m a year.
Pensioners living in a band A-C property could be automatically entitled to WFP, affected just over half (6.3m).

Chancellor Rachel Reeves has committed to just one major fiscal event a year, meaning just one annual budget in the autumn.

Autumn budgets normally take place in October, with the last one at the end of the month.

If this year’s budget is around the same date, it will leave little time for the extra winter fuel payments to be made, as they are paid between November and December.

Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds told the Electoral Dysfunction podcast the economy will have to be “strong enough” for the government to U-turn on winter fuel payment cuts.

He also said the public would have to wait for the budget for any announcement.

Politics

Reeves vs Starmer: Inside the ‘rift’ in Downing Street

Published

2 hours ago

May 23, 2025

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Reeves vs Starmer: Inside the 'rift' in Downing Street

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Are Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves falling out over winter fuel payments? Beth tells us what she’s been hearing in Westminster about a rift between the pair and although it’s denied by Number 11, she’s heard there’s “palpable tension” between the principal players over the change in policy.

Also, with a vote on welfare reforms coming up next month, Beth, Harriet Harman and Ruth Davidson discuss how it will play out with Labour MPs and whether the government is losing its grip despite having such a big majority.

Plus, Beth speaks to Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds about the winter fuel U-turn and whether the government can get a better deal with Donald Trump.

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