UK failing to prepare for war, say ex-ministers

Heappey and Wallace warn that we must wake up to the seriousness of Russia threat

BRITAIN has failed to prepare itself for war as a “whole nation endeavour”, former defence ministers have warned in a stark wake-up call to the Government.

James Heappey, the former Armed Forces minister, has revealed that only Whitehall officials from the Ministry of Defence (MoD) bothered to take part in an exercise to find out how the country would be governed from the UK’s wartime bunker.

Two weeks after leaving office, the Tory MP and former Army officer urged ministers to prepare for conflict. He called on them to put plans in place for commandeering land for cultivation to feed the nation and requisitioning consumer electronics for weapons.

His comments were backed by Ben Wallace, the former defence secretary, who said there were “too many people” in the Government “relying on hoping” that the current instability would “go away”.

Mr Wallace, who led the MoD until August last year, said it was time to “blow the dust off ” manuals drawn up during the Cold War on how Britain would be run during wartime.

The criticism from the two comes as the Government is belatedly reviewing its contingency plans for an all-out war against the backdrop of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and conflict in the Middle East.

Mr Heappey, a former soldier who reached the rank of Major, served as Armed Forces minister for four years between February 2020 and this March, when he announced that he would be standing down as a minister and would not contest the general election.

Writing for The Sunday Telegraph, he said he agreed with the assessment of Grant Shapps, the Defence Secretary, that the UK has moved into a “pre-war age” following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

However, he warned that Britain’s preparedness did not match the scale of the threat, adding: “War is a whole nation endeavour and, to be frank, in the UK we’re a very long way behind.”

During the Cold War, Britain had a set of national plans – the Government War Book – detailing how the country would transition from peace to war.

Mr Heappey, 43, said that there were parts of Government that had not given serious thought to how the UK would function at war “since I was in primary school”.

“The post-Cold War peace dividend meant that our strategic resilience could slip down the list of government priorities,” he said. “Defence meant doing things in remote places like Afghanistan or Iraq rather than in Western Europe and the North Atlantic.

“As a result, the rest of Government didn’t need to worry about defence – it was just left to the MoD.”

He said this ignored the fact that, in a war, the whole of Government would have to be involved.

Pointing out that certain Cabinet ministers have reserved desks and beds in the UK’s wartime bunker, he said: “They are there because their departments are as integral to the war effort as the MoD.”

Mr Heappey said Mr Wallace, when he was defence secretary in 2022, had “pushed hard for a whole of Government exercise to get people down to the bunker so they could see what their working environment in war would be”.

However, he claimed the proposal had fallen on deaf ears and said: “In the end, rather depressingly, it was just defence ministers, senior military officers and MoD officials that participated.

“It’s a shame that the whole of Whitehall didn’t get involved, not only because it was a useful exercise in continuity of government and would have exposed how out of date many of our procedures now are, but also because – once the doors of the bunker are

sealed – the mood does quickly change and you start to ask yourself very seriously what your job is in the most dangerous moment our nation could face.”

Mr Heappey said ministers needed answers to a host of questions, from how Britain would feed itself during war to how public services would work.

He revealed that, as a minister, he had been leading a piece of work into whether the legislation in the War Book remained usable, but had concluded that much of it no longer was.

Mr Wallace echoed the call for the Government to raise its game, telling The Telegraph: “The growing instability and insecurity directed at Britain and her allies means that the whole of society needs to make a step change towards recognising that our core duty is to think about our defence and our resilience.

“It’s how we used to think during the Cold War, and everyone from local government to the MoD played their part.”

Mr Wallace said that while the MoD had “made the change” in the past few years, “there are too many people in Government and society relying on just hoping everything will go away”.

He added: “It’s time to blow the dust off all the old manuals and processes of the Cold War, understand the role that we have to play in it, and modernise it.”

A senior national security official, who asked not to be named, agreed with the two former ministers that Britain was underprepared, saying: “We spend more time considering whether we are sufficiently diverse and inclusive than preparing for threats which would potentially destroy the nation.”

The source said that, while Whitehall had initially responded to the invasion of Ukraine as a “whole of Government effort”, it had “retreated back to business as usual”, adding: “There is a sense that we have lost our way a bit – we’ve lost our momentum on ramping up industrial capability.”

The source claimed good ideas for improving resilience ended up “lost in the bureaucratic morass of the Cabinet Office or pooh-poohed by the Foreign Office, who don’t want to recognise the sad reality of the modern world”.

The intervention by Mr Heappey and Mr Wallace comes at a time when Rishi Sunak is under pressure from many of his MPs to increase defence spending.

Britain currently spends about 2 per cent of GDP on defence, but Mr Sunak has been urged to include a commitment to move to three per cent in the Conservative Party’s election manifesto.

A government spokesman said: “We are investing a record amount in defence to protect the national security of the United Kingdom and ensure the operational effectiveness of our Armed Forces. Between 2020 and 2025, we’ve invested an extra £24 billion – the largest sustained increase since the end of the Cold War.”

‘There are too many people in Government relying on just hoping everything will go away’