Britain's readiness for conflict has been laid bare with official figures showing that if conscription took place tomorrow there wouldn't even be enough basic protective equipment for everyone.

In January, Britain's former top NATO commander ignited debate by suggesting that it was time to "think the unthinkable" and consider introducing compulsory enrolment for service to prepare the country for any potential battle. While there is no immediate threat of war, the UK Government has been urged to bolster its defence capabilities in light of conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza and as the world is "moving from a post-war to pre-war world". 

The comments, from General Sir Richard Sherriff, made the possibility of being called up to fight feel closer than it has in generations. Conscription ended in the UK in 1960 having first been introduced in January 1916, 18 months into the First World War. It required all single men aged 18 to 41 to join.

Sir Richard told Sky News at the time: "Conscription to most professional soldiers, and I count myself as one, is absolute anathema. Britain's armed forces have traditionally and culturally relied on long service volunteer highly professional soldiers with huge experience - and that is really the way we would all want it to go on."

General Sir Patrick Sanders, the outgoing head of the British Army, added in January that if NATO went to war with Russia such a conflict would need to be a "whole-of-nation undertaking". Military analyst Professor Michael Clarke added to the Sky News Daily podcast that the UK will probably have to go back to having a "citizen army" - but stressed this is "not the same as conscription".

A spokesperson for Prime Minister Rishi Sunak later said there is "no suggestion of that" happening, but on 30 April iNews reported that a new blueprint for a volunteer army reserve involving ex-service personnel is being considered by defence chiefs. The proposal, the newspaper said, suggests recruiting an initial 20,000 former regular army and reservists and the Ministry of Defence (MoD) is being urged to take up the plan by army officials, as well as Lord Robertson, Secretary General of Nato and Defence Secretary under Tony Blair.

The ultimate aim of the proposal, iNews reported, would be a 200,000-strong force, which would be made up of willing recruits from the public who would only be activated in the event of a serious national security threat.

If the UK managed to bolster its numbers, the army would struggle to provide soldiers with the body armour and helmets they needed, figures released by the MoD to Byline Times under the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act show.

In January it was suggested that conscription might need to be reintroduced to bolster the army's capabilities. Photo: Gerard Ferry / Alamy

The British Army currently has 8,364 sets of Osprey Body Armour and 130,933 sets of Virtus, which are used as body protection for soldiers. It has, official figures revealed, 178,451 Virtus helmets and 55,279 personal role radios. The MoD has delayed replying to further FOI requests by Byline Times to reveal other potential equipment shortfalls.

Dr Christopher Tuck, Reader in Strategic Studies at King's College, London told Byline Times that the question of whether these numbers would be enough depend on the intensity of any potential conflict.

“What is clear is that the UK lacks the military capability to fight a large-scale extended conventional war of attrition," he said. Spelling out exactly how underprepared the UK is, he added: “At the moment it lacks the numbers, equipment, reserves, and production capabilities to sustain such a fight.”

An MoD spokesperson told Byline Times that the Army has enough stock for its defence commitments. However, a Defence Select Committee Report from February noted that there are “capability shortfalls and stockpile shortages”. The report also noted the Army is losing personnel faster than they can replace them. 

The MoD's service personnel statistics from January 2024 revealed that 10,680 people had joined the regular Armed Forces, but 16,140 had left - reducing numbers by 5,460.

The Army represents 110,030 of the UK’s 183,130 total service personnel – both of which have dropped by 3.7% since the previous year.

Reports in January revealed that the British Army had shrunk from 100,000 in 2010 to around 73,000. General Sanders, speaking at that time, said within the next three years the army needed to be 120,000 strong with the addition of reserves. But even that, he said, wasn't enough.

Dr Tuck told Byline Times that the personnel and equipment issue was not "a new problem", explaining: “Even during the Cold War, there were doubts over the UK's abilities to sustain such a conflict, and there were great difficulties in creating even one fully capable armoured division for the Gulf War in 1991."

He said it was also not a problem specific to the UK, “even using virtually the whole of NATO's production capabilities, it has proven difficult to remedy Ukraine's capability and production shortfalls.”

Former MI6 chief Sir Alex Younger said last month that the UK should consider a “Swedish-style” conscription system – which sees relatively small numbers of adults called up for military training each year.

But Andrew Mumford, Professor of War Studies at Nottingham University, told Byline Times: “The problem is this discussion of conscription often gets conflated with examples drawn from other European countries – including the Scandinavian countries – where some form of national service is still manifest.

 “The key difference is that there are important historical reasons why that mode of national service has been maintained – and why they continue to do so given today’s threat environment.”

While Vladimir Putin's war in Ukraine, launched on 24 February 2022, set off talks of possible conscription in the UK, Dr Tuck said the chances of a conflict between NATO and Russia are "probably low, given the struggles that Russia has exhibited in its war against Ukraine alone".

 “Despite the gradual escalation in NATO's commitment to support Ukraine, there seems no appetite on the part of Putin to respond with more than rhetoric and a continuation of hybrid activities," he explained.

While the UK Government has dismissed conscription being an option, Sunak has pledged to increase defence spending to 2.5% of GDP by 2030.

 A target of 2% of GDP for defence spending is extant for NATO member states, but many countries do not meet this target.

A MoD spokesperson added: “We have announced plans to spend 2.5% of GDP on defence by 2030 – meaning an additional £75 billion spent over the next six years, which will further support equipping our Armed Forces.

“We hold the requisite stock to supply and support our defence commitments, including as a leading NATO ally, as demonstrated by deploying 20,000 personnel to Exercise Steadfast Defender.”

Drax power station burns wood pellets made of trees – a process known as biomass energy – imported from US, Canada, Brazil, and Europe for electricity production. It is the largest producer of carbon emissions in the UK.

The company, which has four sites across England and Scotland and produces around 4% of the UK's power and 9% of its renewable electricity, started burning biomass in 2010. In 2023, it fully transitioned away from coal.

Drax now claims that it is “enabling a zero carbon, lower cost energy future”. But this is simply not true. 

Biomass has been touted as a carbon-neutral alternative to burning fossil fuels for decades, but burning wood releases more carbon dioxide per unit than coal does and, in many cases, requires large monoculture tree farms, made up of rows of single species, often converted from biodiverse forests. These plantations can have devastating impacts for wildlife and the land rights and food security of local and indigenous communities.  

In Papua, Indonesia – for example – the Medco Group, funded by green financing, cleared large tracts of rainforest for timber plantations to fuel its biomass plant, non-profit newsroom, The Gecko Project reported in June 2023.

Much of this land overlapped with the ancestral territory of the indigenous Marind people, traditional hunter-gatherers. Compared to the natural forest it once was, the plantation supports less biodiversity in the area, so the Marind people reported that they found it significantly harder to source traditional foods – often returning empty-handed after hunting trips and being unable to harvest anything from groves of sago, due to mud and chemicals from the plantation. 

Growing New Trees Does Not Mean Burning Them Is Sustainable

The fact that suppliers can grow new trees does not mean burning them for energy is sustainable. These biomass schemes do not align with keeping global heating below 1.5ºC, and will likely result in net increases in carbon released into the atmosphere.

Natural forests, unlike the monoculture plantations, are an essential carbon sink, removing and storing large amounts of carbon from the atmosphere, playing a natural role in climate mitigation.

Once a tree is felled and burned, it is estimated to take between 44 to 104 years to recover the carbon that was stored by it. The UK’s own goal to reach net zero by 2050 is only 26 years away – we don’t have a century to spare.

Drax burns the equivalent of 27 million trees annually – twice the number of trees in the New Forest. The cutting and shipping of trees to Yorkshire across the Atlantic in ships likely running on diesel will never be sustainable, but the story goes further than this.

Multiple investigations have found that Drax uses pellets from whole logs sourced from important forests, including taking more than 40,000 tonnes of wood from old growth forests in British Columbia in 2023.

This happens alongside other shipments from hardwood forests in the south-eastern US, as a whistleblower from Enviva, the US company Drax sources pellets from, reported in 2022.

Old-growth forests in Estonia and Latvia have been so degraded by companies including Graanul Invest, which supplies pellets to Drax, in the last decade they can no longer be considered old-growth.

Public Will Pay Three Times Over For New Drax Project

In 2022, Biofuelwatch reported that Drax's operations were being propped up with around £1.66 million in public money each day and, despite the expense, the UK Government in January approved a bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) scheme at Drax.

BECCS theoretically involves the capture and permanent storage of carbon emitted from processes where biomass is burned and converted to energy. However, this technology is unproven, meaning this scheme will send even more trees and cash up in smoke. 

It could also be one of the most expensive energy projects in the world and the British public will be paying three times over – in tax money for subsidies, higher energy bills, and the impacts of the climate crisis. To the energy bill payer, it could cost as much as £43.4 billion over the next 25 years or £1.7 billion annually.

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology is uncertain in general, as most projects underperform or fail, as shown by a 2022 study from the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis which studied 13 cases of CCS projects that were attempted between 1986 and 2019.

CCS also does not capture all emissions from power generation, as the technology is still being developed and would require far more funding – money that could go to tested, proven approaches like clean energy.

Including CCS and BECCS schemes in climate plans is elaborate greenwashing to put off the upgrade to truly clean energy. We can, and must, leave burning fossil fuels and forests to the history books. 

The True Cost Of Ignoring the Climate

One needs to look no further than the UK to see the cost of political dithering on clean energy.

The summer of 2022 brought the country's first recorded 40ºC day, unprecedented heat-related deaths, wildfires, and pressure on the country’s infrastructure. Ongoing severe flooding has affected much of the country, and sea-level rise poses a severe threat to coastal communities’ homes and economies.

The Holderness coast in East Yorkshire, known as the fastest eroding coastline in Europe, loses an average of two metres each year to the sea, forcing people to evacuate their homes. 

The UK is woefully underprepared for the changes to come.

Investing in just green solutions, such as locally owned and generated renewable energy projects like community-owned wind and solar farms, is good for the environment and offers a low cost, proven enterprise with huge benefits to energy security.

Community-based renewable energy projects provide this security by making people less reliant on volatile energy markets, or at risk of buying from autocrats. They are also a source of reliable power in the face of worsening climate impacts – one example being a community-owned microgrid in Puerto Rico which provided solar energy to a fire station during Hurricane Fiona when the central grid failed.

Renewables would increase our resilience to climate impacts, including by preventing them in the first place. They are conveniently also the world’s cheapest source of energy.

The UK Government must reverse its decision to approve a BECCS scheme at Drax. We cannot afford to waste people's hard-earned money, nor do we have the time to bank the future of our climate on an untested and unsustainable scheme.

The real solutions to the crisis are ready now – it’s time to take advantage of them.

Steve Trent is the CEO of the Environmental Justice Foundation

In 2019, then Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab wrote an article in the Sunday Telegraph promising “enormous opportunities across the world” when the UK left the EU. “We will be a champion of the basic freedoms… and a doughty defender of the rules-based international system,” he claimed. 

This was off the back of a Foreign Affairs Committee report, in which the then Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO), had predicted a growing focus on Africa, a stepped-up engagement with Latin America, and the promise that the FCO would become “best equipped to meet our national security objectives”.

It all looked so promising.

Fast-forward five years, with a full-English Brexit, a pandemic, an invasion of Ukraine, and a 14% drop in the value of the pound against the dollar since the Conservatives first came into power (in May 2010, it was $1.45 to the pound. Today it stands at $1.25), the promises of yesteryear seem lacklustre in the cold light of today.

Dominic Raab promised that the UK would be a "defender of the rules-based international system” after Brexit. Photo: Ian Davidson/ Alamy

In a letter on 16 April this year, Sir Philip Barton, the Permanent Under-Secretary of State for the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) wrote to the House of Commons’ Public Accounts Committee on the subject of Overseas Development Aid (ODA) reductions.

In it, he detailed “the damaging impact on relationships with partner governments and other donors and the overall damage to the FCDO’s reputation as a reliable donor” that Government cuts had had in recent years.

Barton outlined how, in 2022-23, Afghanistan, Sudan, Ethiopia, Nigeria, and Zimbabwe received between £14.7 million and £39.8 million less than their initially allocated funds. Afghanistan’s ODA was initially set at £286 million but was reduced by 14%. Sudan saw a 40% cut, Ethiopia an 18% reduction, Nigeria a 17% decrease, and Zimbabwe a 35% decrease in funds.

In early 2024, the International Development Committee’s report on ‘the FCDO’s approach to sexual and reproductive health’ noted that the UK had “slashed its spending” on the issue, with devastating impact. The report described budgets cut “with little to no notice” with “the deepest impact on the most marginalised”. It concluded that this had damaged the “UK’s reputation as a credible and serious partner”.

Last year, the Independent Commission for Aid Impact (ICAI) also detailed in its report “UK aid under pressure” the past five years as being of “extraordinary turbulence”.  Not least this was because “many UK aid officials were redeployed to support Operation Yellowhammer, the government’s contingency planning for a ‘no-deal Brexit’”.

Despite Raab’s promises of 2019, then, the real impact of Brexit was – the ICAI report outlined – the FCDO’s de-prioritisation of a range of development activities “including the UK’s engagement with United Nations (UN) agencies on humanitarian crises”.

Diverted Budgets

One of the reasons for these cuts and curtailments is that the UK Government paused all 'non-essential’ overseas aid spending for four months in 2022, due in part to the Home Office takeover of the budget for domestic asylum costs.

The Home Office then spent £2 billion more than initially allocated. As the ICAI noted, “aid spending on asylum seekers and refugees in the UK rose to £4.3 billion in 2023, constituting 28% of the (ODA) budget”.

This came at a time when the total ODA budget to the FCDO itself dropped between 2018 and 2022 by some 34% – down £3.8 billion. This has had a very real world impact. ODA funds to Africa are down 57%. Pakistan, once recipient of £331 million a year in aid in 2022 only received £58 million. The African Development Fund was cut from £177 million to £27 million. 

As the latest 2022-23 FCDO annual report notes, managing “ODA budget pressures… has generated a level of uncertainty this year” which has “impacted FCDO staff around the world”. 

FCO and DFID Merger

A good deal of the chaos can be laid at the feet of Boris Johnson.

In the early months of the pandemic, on 16 June 2020, the then Prime Minister announced the merger of the FCO and the Department for International Development (DFID) into the FCDO. He did so with the aim of streamlining the UK’s international engagement by combining diplomacy and development under a unified strategy. However, the transition appeared to have been chaotic and hurtful to Britain’s global diplomatic missions. 

Ambitious integration plans were scaled back due to resource constraints, and the merger led to a loss of development expertise as many quit their posts or were laid off.

Critics have since raised concerns about reduced transparency, diminished focus on development outcomes, and an overarching impact on the quality and effectiveness of UK international aid as a consequence.

In June 2022, Boris Johnson announced the merger of the FCO and Department for International Development (DFID) into the FCDO. Photo: American Photo Archive/ Alamy

In previous comments to the Public Accounts Committee, Permanent Under-Secretary Barton has outlined how the merger led to a postponement or scaling-down of major British diplomatic initiatives designed to fulfil climate commitments, address health disparities, and promote economic reform around the world. 

It’s little surprise that, in February 2022, the Government’s Infrastructure and Projects Authority (IPA) found the FCDO’s agenda to be “overambitious and unachievable”.

Selling Assets

This accompanying squeeze on public finances has meant that the FCDO now stands accused of selling off its family silver – with sales of embassies in prime real estate getting eyed up for short-term debt repayments.

In 2018, the then FCO sold its Bangkok embassy for some £420 million to move into a modern tower block, leased until just 2034. Given there seems no apparent core maintenance budget for FCDO property, the profits from the sale were reported to have gone into new electrical wiring in the Paris embassy and refurbishments in Cairo, New Delhi and Washington. 

In 2021, it was also reported that a chunk of the British embassy in Tokyo was sold to the Japanese firm Mitsubishi Estate Group. At the time, the details were not made public but, in 2023, the chair of the Public Accounts Committee was informed that the deal was for £685.7 million. The sale, in “one of the most prestigious areas of Tokyo”, led Japanese press to speculate that the land could be used for luxury apartments likely to sell for more than £30 million each.

The latest FCDO accounts also note some £10.4 million further assets “held for sale”, on top of “£3.4 million from the sale of property in Dar Es Salaam and £1.5 million from the sale of surplus land in Skopje”.

Meanwhile, costs to renovate the British Embassy in Washington were reported to have more than doubled, to £118.8 million, in part fuelled by asbestos removal fees. As the annual report notes, “the risks to maintaining our global estate… remain high”.

A Lack of Ministerial Support

Given the parlous state of the FCDO’s funding, it is strange, then, that FCDO Minister Anne-Marie Trevelyan was last heard calling for more funding – not for her department but for the Ministry of Defence.

In March, Trevelyan, the Minister for Indo-Pacific, wrote with Conservative MP Tom Tugendhat on LinkedIn that, “protecting ourselves requires investment”. She did not, however, appear to call for her own department to be given more funds.

With a seeming lack of leadership from the political sphere, it has led to disenchanted one-time FCDO stars to speak out.

Moazzam Malik, former director-general at the Foreign Office, recently co-penned a report that called for the UK “to do foreign affairs slightly differently, to modernise our approach”, including rebranding and facing its colonial legacy "head-on". 

Others – still in the FCDO and speaking to Byline Times under conditions of anonymity – describe a depressing world of chronic under-investment, with more budget cuts looming with regards to staffing, travel, and other core costs. 

All of this seems a far cry from the hubris of Dominic Rabb just five long years ago. 

“When we leave the EU, there will be enormous opportunities across the world,” he claimed.  When such opportunities will be realised, seems – at the moment – anyone’s guess.

In mid-April, a number of allegations emerged about Conservative Party candidates collecting voter data ahead of the next election – potentially for campaigning purposes – without clearly indicating those intentions. Byline Times’ VoteWatch team has now clocked four more instances of dubious data harvesting. 

In Chelmsford, Conservative MP Vicky Ford has sent constituents a “safety survey” asking for their priorities regarding local policing. The survey initially asks residents whether they have witnessed crime and what policies would make them “feel safe”  in the constituency. 

It goes on to solicit detailed personal information and requires contact details to submit. The survey asks about political leanings, even asking respondents to rank political parties and candidates.

In the tiny text at the bottom of the screen, it reads: “This question contains special category data relating to your political opinion that may be shared with the wider Conservative Party for the purposes of Democratic Engagement with your permission. Please only answer this question if you consent to the processing of this data and sharing it with Conservative Party. If you do not answer this question then this data will not be shared.” 

Meanwhile, in South Shropshire, Stuart Anderson MP is running a similar survey initiative, this time about “sav[ing] our recycling centres”.

Again, Anderson’s survey begins innocuously with several questions about local policies. After a few pages, it asks constituents for detailed information about their party-political history and voting intentions, and the same notice as above – once again in tiny, barely legible, text – appears beneath it. 

Alicia Kearns, Conservative MP for Rutland and Stamford, has also sent local residents a survey.

In addition to local policy questions, it asks constituents: “How likely is it that you would vote for Alicia in the next election?” The only data notice respondents are given is a (very small) note about the local party’s “Data Protection and Privacy Policy”. 

In Watford, Byline Times has seen a leaflet promoting Dean Russell MP that appears as a newspaper cover and uses a Labour-red colour scheme and font. A QR code on the page sends people to a questionable-looking survey in a pop-up window, asking voters about their “local policing priorities".

The survey requires detailed contact information to submit, and a tick-box at the bottom asks respondents to consent to their privacy policy and receive campaigning material from the Conservative Party (the only time the party is mentioned at all in the process).

Under current UK electoral law, it is difficult to assess the legality of such surveys.

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has stated that, while targeted, data-driven social media advertising is widely used in British politics today, “it’s important that it is clear to people if they are being targeted” – and that “parties should make it clear that people’s personal information will be used to send them specific social media advertising”. 

These cases may fall under a grey area. As in the first two examples, respondents are technically informed about how their data will be used, but that information is arguably not presented in a clear manner.

Digital issues can be particularly difficult to contend with under current election rules. The Law Commission has argued previously that the UK’s “Victorian era electoral laws are out-dated, confusing, and no longer fit for purpose”. 

As of yet, it is unclear whether the ICO will be investigating any of these cases.

If you spot similar instances of questionable data harvesting, get in touch by emailing votewatch24@bylinetimes.com and consider reporting it to the ICO.