Lord Coaker (Lab)

I will make one suggestion to the noble Lord: perhaps he and the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, and others in this Chamber who have professional experience and expertise with respect to reserves, will set up a meeting with me about how we might more effectively reach the target of an increase of 20% by the 2030s. I would appreciate the experience and ideas that the noble Lord might have on that. The defence readiness Bill will come after the Armed Forces Bill in the autumn. The concept of defence readiness is, again, that we face a new type of threat, not only potentially of missiles or state actors but of cyberattack and the disablement of critical national infrastructure. I do not know whether the noble Lord realises, but the Defence Secretary pointed out yesterday that the MoD has had 90,000 state actor threats in the last two years—that is an astonishing figure—and we have seen big business bodies affected by cyberattack. The defence readiness Bill will be about asking how we protect critical national infrastructure and what we need to do to prepare for something happening. Are we ready to defend ourselves, protect our population and ensure that things continue? The defence readiness Bill will help us understand that and develop the sorts of structures we need to do that. Of course, people will be at the heart of it. That Bill will come some time at the beginning of 2026.