Penny Mordaunt calls for Britons to be ‘more resilient’ to take pressure off our armed forces

Downing Street said service would remain voluntary after the outgoing head of the British Army, General Sir Patrick Sanders, said earlier this week the UK should “train and equip” a “citizen army”.

“We need to be a resilient nation, and that doesn’t mean stepping up to pick up a rifle”, Mordaunt told GB News.

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

• Britain urged to axe aid amid row with Mauritius over threat to JAIL anyone calling Chagos Islands 'British'
  
• BBC branded 'unwelcoming' after staff told not to hire people 'dismissive of diversity and inclusion'
  
• Bill Belichick retirement record set straight as NFL icon mulls options after New England Patriots exit
  

“What it means is on anything that might happen to us in the future we want our communities to be able to respond to that.

“When I re-wrote this nation’s resilience strategy, setting up a civil defence force to be able to deal with some of the things that currently we ask our armed forces to do was part of that suggestion.

“We can take pressure of our arm forces by becoming more resilient to ourselves.

“And that is something important that we should do.”

Last week, the armed forces minister James Heappey said any talk of conscription being introduced if Nato goes to war with Russia is “nonsense”.

No 10 ruled out any suggestion that conscription was under consideration, saying there were “no plans” to change the British military’s “proud tradition of being a voluntary force”.

Heappey backed up that sentiment on Thursday, tweeting: “There are three issues being conflated into one in response to the CGS’s speech yesterday.

“Firstly, conscription. Nobody has ever mentioned it, nobody is even thinking about it. CGS didn’t say it. It is all nonsense.”

“We can take pressure of our armed forces by becoming more resilient to ourselves”, she said.

“And that is something important that we should do. You have been in this office before covering my campaign to build three new ships, assets, civilian assets, but for the Government to have call on if they need to, that could take pressure off our fleet, our Navy.

“So these are the sorts of things we should be looking at doing.