Andy Burnham has been urged to set up an emergency register of civilian volunteers who could be called on if Britain comes under attack.
The Liberal Democrats want a formal network of people who would put their names forward in advance to help in a major emergency or an attack on the UK. The party’s defence spokesperson said Britain “urgently” needed such a network and that politicians should be “more direct” with the public about the dangers facing the country.
“Countries like Finland and others already have these kind of registers out there, and I think it’s something a lot of people would be very willing to sign up to if we gave them the option,” the spokesperson said.
The party has also called for a new Cabinet post, a Civilian Readiness Secretary, to organise non-military resources before a crisis rather than after one. What the volunteers would actually do has not been spelled out.
The call lands at a charged moment for Europe. Emmanuel Macron said last week that the Russian hybrid threat against France and the continent had intensified in recent weeks, and that attacks on France would not be left “without a response”. Donald Tusk told Poland’s parliament there was a real risk Russia would strike NATO territory with drones or missiles and call it an accident, to test whether the alliance’s Article 5 guarantee means what it says. Asked about those warnings in Copenhagen, Admiral Giuseppe Cavo Dragone, the chair of NATO’s Military Committee, said: “In case of an attack, we know how to do it.”
The pattern behind the warnings is well established. Romania has logged more than 40 drone incursions into its airspace in 2026 alone, and NATO jets shot down a drone over Lithuania this month after more suspected crossings over Latvia. Officials and analysts have attributed a series of drone incursions across NATO countries since 2024 to Russia, describing them as attempts to probe air defences and test the alliance’s response. Russia dismisses the claims as scare stories. Germany has formally accused Moscow of a failed drone attack on Leipzig airport in August, which the Kremlin denies. And this month Reuters reported that Britain, Norway and the United States had tracked and confronted Russian submarines and deep-sea vessels near Svalbard in the spring, preventing them from completing what officials described as training to unleash a secret weapon designed to disable critical undersea cables without leaving any trace. Moscow denies planning any attack on Europe.
Some European intelligence chiefs have gone further. Michal Koudelka, head of the Czech Republic’s BIS intelligence service, told The Guardian that Russia could test the alliance with a limited incursion or a false-flag provocation in “months, not years”. Latvia’s security chief, Normunds Mežviets, told the same paper his service sees “no signs of an imminent attack”.
At home, the register arrives on a Prime Minister already under pressure to spend more on defence. Burnham, in Downing Street since July, has so far refused to set a date for reaching three per cent of GDP, while the NATO target of 3.5 per cent for core defence spending, within a wider 5 per cent commitment, by 2035 hangs over every budget review. His Chancellor, John Healey, resigned as Defence Secretary under Sir Keir Starmer in June over exactly this. “You have been unable, and the Treasury has been unwilling, to commit the resources that the nation needs to defend the country at this time of rising threats,” Healey wrote in his resignation letter.
Ben Habib, Chairman of Great British PAC, was more critical:
“The left forever criticise the right for wanting stronger defences. They prefer to put social security ahead of national security. The result? Our enemies emboldened to attack us.
“Having weakened the country’s military Davey the buffoon wants to sacrifice our youth.
“The left will lead the UK into a global war without the ability win”
The Army, on official figures confirmed to Parliament, is heading below 70,000 regular soldiers, a level it last stood at in 1793. Work has begun on updating the “war book”, the national plan for keeping the country running in wartime, which had gone decades without revision. A public campaign will soon urge families to keep bottled water and tinned food at home. The Chief of the Defence Staff, Sir Richard Knighton, said this week that the threat from Russia had made this the most dangerous period of his 35-year career.
That is the argument for the register. The response, when the story broke at the weekend, was immediate and unforgiving. On social media, critics called it a conscription register in waiting. One Reddit response to the story set the tone: “I don’t think young people will be queuing up to fight for a country that has treated them with nothing but contempt.” Many of the replies in that discussion were less about Russia than about trust in the country asking them to volunteer.
The mood did not come from nowhere. YouGov polling for Sky News found just six per cent of Britons would volunteer to fight in the face of an “imminent” invasion, with a further 14 per cent saying they would fight if called up. The BBC asked this week whether Britain was “psychologically ready” for war, and the historian Margaret MacMillan gave the answer many in Whitehall would rather not hear: “No, I don’t think we are psychologically prepared.” On Monday, Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg warned in a video posted online that it “is not impossible that in the next few years we may face a war”, and that there “may even be circumstances where people have to die to save their country”.
The Liberal Democrats point to Finland, where conscription, reserves and crisis roles for every hospital and water company bind the whole of society into national defence. The Finnish military has run crisis courses for the country’s leaders, from bishops to chief executives, every year since 1960. It is the kind of civilian preparedness model the party is pointing towards. The register, in Finland’s system, is one small part of a much older bargain between state and citizen.
Claire Bullivant, CEO of Great British PAC, said:
“Great British PAC supports the principle that the UK should be prepared to defend itself and that citizens who voluntarily want to help their country in a national emergency should be encouraged to do so.
“But a civilian register cannot become a substitute for rebuilding Britain’s Armed Forces.
“Before politicians start creating new ministerial jobs and registers, the Government should make sure we have the soldiers, sailors, air personnel, reservists, equipment, ammunition and infrastructure necessary to defend the country.
“There is also an important distinction between asking civilians to volunteer their skills during a national emergency, whether in communications, engineering, medicine, logistics, cyber security or protecting critical infrastructure, and expecting untrained members of the public to fight. The Liberal Democrats need to explain precisely what they are proposing.
“Finland takes national defence extremely seriously, but its model cannot simply be reduced to putting names on a register. If politicians want Britain to emulate countries with a stronger culture of national resilience, the conversation needs to be much bigger: properly funded Armed Forces, stronger reserves, protection of critical infrastructure, civil defence planning and a renewed understanding that defending the country is a national responsibility.
“Britain should absolutely be prepared. But preparedness requires considerably more than another Secretary of State and another government database.”
The Government has so far not commented publicly on the idea. Much of the public already has.
