Dan Jarvis, the Security Minister, has said 84 per cent of Britons expect the government to tell them how to be more resilient, and that ministers accept the need for a national conversation about the threat, according to remarks made at the Atlantic Future Forum in Oslo.
Speaking on a panel on total defence on board HMS Prince of Wales on Armistice Day, Jarvis said he first came to Norway as a Boy Scout some 40 years ago, and that the movement’s motto of being prepared is a good guide for the subject. He said Britain is “somewhere behind some of our partners here, but we’ve just launched what we’ve called the Be Ready campaign” to encourage people to prepare in their own homes, and that he is particularly pleased at the public’s response.
On how to talk about threats without creating fear, he said the aim is for people to be “alert but not alarmed”, adding: “We are absolutely not, obviously, in the business of panicking the public. We want the public to be organized. We want them to be prepared, and that’s why we thought very long and hard about the tone of our Be Ready campaign, and I think you have to strike the right balance.”
Jarvis said the public are well aware of the risks, adding: “The polling that we’ve done recently shows that 84% of the British public expect the government to be providing that kind of useful, some would say, vital information about how they can be more resilient and prepared in their own livelihoods and in their own homes.” He said the campaign is a longer-term strand of work that initially focuses on everyday emergencies such as extreme weather, but added: “We also absolutely accept the need for a national conversation to engage with the public about matters relating to the nature of the threat that we face and that our allies face as well.” He said responsible government should be engaging with citizens, even if there will always be some cynicism and the guidance remains advice.
Behind the public campaign, Jarvis said the government has done a lot of work through the Home Defence Programme since July 2024, adding: “We don’t, for reasonably obvious reasons, get into the detail of what that looks like, but for the first time since 2004, we’ve been updating the departmental crisis plans, better known as the war books, and there are a range of other activities, including next year the largest home defense exercise that we will see in a generation or more.”
He said the government is reshaping the law through the Cyber Security and Resilience Bill and will publish a National Cyber Action Plan as soon as it can. On lessons from the Nordic total defence model, he said the more resilient allies are collectively, the stronger the deterrence message to adversaries, adding: “So we all collectively have responsibility to make sure that our own houses are in order, and that we’re then working collaboratively with our neighbors and partners.”
The government has said the War Books will be rewritten by the end of this year, and the home defence exercise has been named Albiston Shadow. General Eirik Kristoffersen, Norway’s Chief of Defence, told the same panel that it is a bigger danger not to talk about the real threats than to risk scaring the public.
