{"id":4398,"date":"2026-09-10T09:37:19","date_gmt":"2026-09-10T09:37:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/smartinvestingschronicle.com\/index.php\/2026\/09\/10\/politics-home-tories-draw-up-plans-to-give-every-household-civilian-emergency-pamphlet\/"},"modified":"2026-09-10T09:37:19","modified_gmt":"2026-09-10T09:37:19","slug":"politics-home-tories-draw-up-plans-to-give-every-household-civilian-emergency-pamphlet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/smartinvestingschronicle.com\/index.php\/2026\/09\/10\/politics-home-tories-draw-up-plans-to-give-every-household-civilian-emergency-pamphlet\/","title":{"rendered":"Politics Home | Tories Draw Up Plans To Give Every Household Civilian Emergency Pamphlet"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\n
\n <\/p><\/div>\n

(Alamy)<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n


\n 4 min read<\/span>1 hr<\/span>
\n \n <\/p>\n

\n

Exclusive: The Conservatives are developing a policy to distribute pamphlets to every UK household advising how to respond to a civilian emergency.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

The plans are inspired by European countries like Denmark, where the government uses\u00a0literature to instruct the public on what steps to take within\u00a0the first 72 hours.<\/p>\n

The Tories say they also want the government to be more honest\u00a0with the country about threats facing the nation, which could include declassifying information held by the state.<\/p>\n

Shadow defence minister David Reed is leading on the party’s national resilience policies.<\/p>\n

In an interview with PoliticsHome, the Conservative\u00a0MP for\u00a0Exmouth and Exeter East said the coronavirus pandemic had created\u00a0a public mindset that the state can do everything for them, when, in the event of a national emergency, people will need\u00a0to take\u00a0steps themselves, especially in the first hours and days.<\/p>\n

“The\u00a0onus needs to be pushed back onto the citizen to say, if things are coming down the track… you need to start thinking more about yourselves and your families, and start preparing so that you can be more resilient and really start to reinvigorate that idea of being a citizen, contributing, and being part of the community,” Reed said.<\/p>\n

“By physically giving something to someone, posting it through their door, what I want to see is the narrative in people’s minds change.”<\/p>\n

The government is preparing to launch a public awareness campaign around household resilience later this year, with a spokesperson telling PoliticsHome: “The campaign will bring the UK in line with European countries that run similar campaigns already. We’ll announce further details in due course.\u201d<\/p>\n

Last month, the\u00a0Financial Times reported\u00a0that people\u00a0would be encouraged\u00a0to stockpile emergency supplies, including\u00a0tinned food and bottled water, as part of the push to help households\u00a0prepare\u00a0for hostile state acts, cyber warfare, and extreme weather.<\/p>\n

In an interview with Sky News Defence Insider, published on Thursday, Defence Secretary Wes Streeting said the UK does “need to have a national conversation about resilience”.<\/p>\n

Streeting pointed not just to state-based threats but climate-based disruption, too, and said people\u00a0should\u00a0consider\u00a0practical questions, like\u00a0“in the event you have a power cut, would you know where you keep your torch? Have you even got matches or candles?”<\/p>\n

Last week, the National Audit Office warned that government had not done enough to engage with households and businesses to strengthen resilience to supply chain shocks.<\/p>\n

Reed, a former Marine, is concerned that the planned comms campaign will “fall flat” unless it goes as far as giving every household in the country a readiness pamphlet.<\/p>\n

A version being drawn up by Conservatives,\u00a0seen by PoliticsHome, seeks to communicate that, for\u00a0a short period after\u00a0a national emergency or major disruption, it will be up to people to take action where the government cannot\u00a0help. It sets out a three-point household response, based on stockpiling supplies, making a plan and checking on each other, and lists key items to have in an emergency kit.<\/p>\n

The European Commission has encouraged\u00a0citizens to stockpile enough supplies to last for 72 hours to increase readiness, following in the footsteps of Germany and Nordic states.<\/p>\n

“If you look at the Danes, if you look at the Dutch, and if you look at some other European countries, they produce a pamphlet, and they deliver it to every single house in the country, and it just goes through really simply in a nice,\u00a0civilian-digestible way,” Reed said.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

At the same time, the shadow minister said the government should look for\u00a0non-military figures to\u00a0communicate the importance of preparedness, especially to young people, and said ministers should “definitely” consider influencers as campaign spokespeople.<\/p>\n

The Conservative MP argued that due to the UK having experienced peaceful decades since the mid-20th century, resilience has become\u00a0“such an abstract concept”, especially for younger generations, “that you can’t even have the conversation at all”.<\/p>\n

He referred\u00a0to the experience of his 84-year-old father, born in 1942 during the Blitz in Plymouth: “That’s the\u00a0last generation that has any sort of real semblance, that physical idea of border insecurity and things not being right in terms of security”.<\/p>\n

“Work does need to be done with the younger generation because they will be helping out. They will have to help out with all these efforts,” Reed stressed.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He also called for a greater central government focus on resilience, pointing to Denmark,\u00a0where they have their “own ministry for national resilience and preparedness, and they’ve got a centralised minister that has been able to work with the different departments to be able to have the conversation about what needs to be done, to be able to set targets”.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Alamy) 4 min read1 hr Exclusive: The Conservatives are developing a policy to distribute pamphlets to every UK household advising how to respond to a civilian emergency. The plans are inspired by European countries like Denmark, where the government uses\u00a0literature to instruct the public on what steps to take within\u00a0the first 72 hours. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4399,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4398","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/smartinvestingschronicle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4398","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/smartinvestingschronicle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/smartinvestingschronicle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smartinvestingschronicle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smartinvestingschronicle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4398"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/smartinvestingschronicle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4398\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smartinvestingschronicle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4399"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/smartinvestingschronicle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smartinvestingschronicle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smartinvestingschronicle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}