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Strategic Defence Review (Green Paper)

I commend the Secretary of State for raising as one of his strategic questions the matter of armed forces ensuring security and contributing to resilience in the UK. The Institute for Public Policy Research's commission on national security, of which I was a member, stressed the importance of that. Has he looked again at the 1960s civil contingencies legislation and considered whether we should have a homeland security force, who would staff it and how it would work with the Home Office and local government agencies? That is a serious matter in protecting our critical national infrastructure, particularly if we get pandemics.