10
Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy
Oral evidence: Societal resilience: a national conversation, HC 1841
Monday 20 April 2026
5.30 pm
Members present: Matt Western (The Chair); Lord Arbuthnot of Edrom; Liam Byrne; Sarah Champion; Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi; Lord Godson; Lord Hutton of Furness; Lord Jack of Courance; Baroness Kidron; Edward Morello; Lord Sedwill; Lord Tunnicliffe; Baroness Tyler of Enfield; Lord Watts; Sir Gavin Williamson.
Questions 10 - 15
Witness
I: His Excellency Paul Huijts, Ambassador of the Netherlands to the UK.
Examination of witness
Paul Huijts.
The Chair: Welcome to our second witness session of the JCNSS inquiry on the national conversation on societal resilience. I am delighted to be joined by His Excellency. If you will excuse me, perhaps you could introduce yourself, rather than me embarrassing myself in trying to pronounce your surname.
Paul Huijts: My name is Paul Huijts, but I am always happy to have a first name that is easier to pronounce for you all, so Paul will do. I have been ambassador to the UK since summer 2024 and before that had various positions in the Dutch civil service, lately as Permanent Secretary of the Foreign Office in The Hague and Permanent Secretary of the Prime Minister’s and Cabinet Office.
Q10 The Chair: Great. Thanks very much for joining us today. We are obviously keen to hear about how the Netherlands looks at societal resilience, but perhaps you could just give us an idea about what the Dutch Government’s key priorities have been, particularly within the frame of what is expected by the NATO spending commitment.
Paul Huijts: In the last couple of years, our Government have shifted from the more expert discussions that we had during the years I was in the Prime Minister’s Office, where we had much more discussion with specialists in defence or national security and specialists in society. Last year, we decided to start a campaign to involve the general public much more. I overheard a few of the sentences in your previous meeting with the Taiwanese ambassador. Of course, we also had a lot of discussion about whether that would be scaremongering and how we would balance that but, at the end of the discussions, our Government—our former Government, but the present Government are taking on the task—decided that it was absolutely vital to prepare society as a whole for disruptions of any kind, which are not just theoretical any more. The bell is ringing, do you want me to stop, or can I carry on?
The Chair: Please carry on.
Paul Huijts: It is a broad approach. The first view is not that we are at war, but as our Minister of Defence once said in a speech, “We are not at war, but we are not at peace either”. The fact that someone says that is quite new. We have come across different elements in the last couple of years that are relevant to our society, and I would say are similar to yours. Of course, the risk of war in its most extreme form in our view is not as theoretical any more as it maybe was in many of the last decades, when we were much happier about a post-Cold War society.
I do not have to dwell on that, given the situation in Ukraine. However, for a number of years we have also been confronted by a growing number of increasingly serious hybrid attacks of many sorts coming from state actors, but also severe cyber security attacks from criminal organisations. The effect is the same. The disruptions in a society that is so dependent on electricity, internet and communications can be very quickly devastating.
Then there are also developments in nature, of course. We are a country that was used to fighting against water, but we were quite content that we had that covered. However, given the climate change that we are all experiencing, we have to adapt again to the fact that drought, severe types of extreme rain and other things can also cause natural disasters.
It all adds up to the same: society needs to prepare more than it currently does, with a whole-of-society approach for disruptions of a large scale. The message of the Government in this whole-of-society and whole-of-government approach is that, although the Government can do a lot, people, businesses, NGOs and every part of society should prepare for the fact that you cannot just sit and expect the Government to solve problems at a moment such as that, and especially not in the first days of a big problem.
The approach that the Government have taken for the campaign for the general public is that this can happen; there is no need to panic, but it is realistic to be aware of the risks and to be aware that, if there is a large outage or a large problem, it will probably take your Government three days, let us say, before help is on its way. That is now communicated all the time. The conclusion is that, in the first three days, you had better be prepared to take care of yourself, the people in your family and the people in your community. That leads to very practical suggestions.
The Chair: That is very interesting. Baroness Kidron, if you have to go to vote then—
Baroness Kidron: I am afraid that otherwise I will miss the vote.
The Chair: Okay. You absolutely go.
Baroness Kidron: I will be as quick as possible.
The Chair: I am afraid we will have to suspend the session.
The committee suspended for a Division in the House of Lords.
The Chair: The sitting is resumed. Ambassador, you were beginning to say something.
Paul Huijts: That was the general introduction I wanted to make. It is probably best to react to further questions of clarification that you have on your side, before I go on rambling for the rest of your time.
The Chair: Just briefly, before I bring in Liam Byrne, I just have a question about the structure in the heart of government. You talked about whole-of-government as well as whole-of-society. How do you make sure a whole-of-government approach works, rather than it just being a nice phrase?
Paul Huijts: On one side, which is of course a very separate and well-organised pillar, we have everything that has to do with defence and everything that we promise in the NATO context. Of course, it is a very important one because the two work together, but the biggest challenge in organisational terms is to bring all other parts of government into action, where that might not be the traditional focus. Our central co-ordination is with the Minister of Justice and Security because that Minister is responsible for our national co-ordinator of counterterrorism and security.
That co-ordinating body does not deal only with counterterrorism; that was why it was set up after 9/11, but it is now much more a national crisis centre. It makes an analysis of national threats, but when there is a national crisis, it also co-ordinates for the Cabinet, in a very practical sense, everything that has to be done within the Government as well as with municipalities, for instance. It co-ordinates the different departments that need to play a part. For instance, the Ministry of Economic Affairs has to engage with industry to get a clear grip of what the vital processes in industry are that we cannot do without; what measures it needs to take to take care that there is redundancy in systems; and what it needs from Government. The same goes for the Ministry of Transport, Ministry of Health and so on. Of course, the Cabinet as a whole has to oversee this in order to keep it going.
The Chair: Okay. I might follow that up in writing just to get a little more detail.
Liam Byrne: Ambassador, can I just check very briefly, has there now been a budget to increase defence spending in your country?
Paul Huijts: Yes.
Liam Byrne: Did that involve quite difficult trade-offs with other aspects of social policy?
Paul Huijts: Our new Government—who have been in place for just one and a half months—in their government programme indeed said that they want to live up to the promise to grow to 3.5% defence spending by 2035 and to 1.5% for other activities such as these, to strengthen society. They have therefore introduced a few budget cuts, which are being debated as we speak.
Of course, it is not a given, especially since we have a minority Government, but they have chosen to say, “We need to first have a sound financial policy”—all Governments say that—“and we are aware that one of our priorities is to step up to the plate when it comes to defence spending”. There are painful choices being made. There is also the introduction of an extra tax on businesses and on the general population, which is in fact called a peace tax, and is presented as a necessity for everyone.
Liam Byrne: Is there a challenge in increasing defence spending, without jeopardising the social cohesion that is essential to prosecuting a whole-of-society approach to defence? Do we have to do both, in fact, rather than trade one off against the other?
Paul Huijts: Of course, that is as much a worry for my Government as for any Government. Please forgive me, but this Government are so new that they are starting only now to defend their policies. It has been shown in recent weeks, for instance, that their idea to be a bit tougher on pension age and so on, which would cut costs, can count on some resistance in and outside Parliament. We will see how far they manage to get that done, but of course the trade-off between other fields of government care—be it social security, healthcare or what have you—and defence is clearly on the table.
Q11 Baroness Tyler of Enfield: Ambassador, I want to ask you about how challenging it has been to change the way of thinking—the mindset, if you like—in your country about the importance of resilience and national security, given the lack of an immediate physical security threat experienced by some others, such as Ukraine or Taiwan. In a way, you are in a more similar situation to us. Just pursuing that discussion we have just heard, has that changing of the mindset been affected at all by this debate about how much more should be spent on defence, possibly at the expense of other areas of social policy?
Paul Huijts: I would argue that it has changed already from the start of the Ukraine war. That really had an effect. I cannot say it had an effect on everyone but, in the general debate in the Netherlands, the Ukraine war has done something to people’s sense that peace is there for ever. We all grew up in 80 years of peace, where it was a given. It did something for at least a majority of the society. That is the first one.
I cannot compare whether that fact is the same in the UK or not. I tend to think that the fact that we and other European countries have a past of occupation in the war maybe makes it easier for a Government on our side to bring back that idea that it is not a given than it would be in the UK, but that is for you to say. I always say that you celebrate Victory in Europe Day, we celebrate Liberation Day; that says it all. Even for my generation—I am from after the war—it is not so difficult to bring up the feeling that this is not for ever. It is not a scientific approach that I put on the table, but I am quite convinced of that. That is what you have to work with.
First, it was Ukraine. However, the decision to really speak up and talk about not only defence spending, but that you also need people to prepare for themselves because you cannot count on the Government from day one when there are really big disruptions, is new. Actually, it is so fresh, it started only at the end of 2025. There are some indications that the actions the Government took had some effect, but it is a campaign that will go on for the next couple of years, with different angles through that time to keep the debate ongoing.
Baroness Tyler of Enfield: I just have one follow-up. You just referred to the campaign. I understand that research after the launch of Think Ahead, your public information campaign, showed some encouraging increases in the population’s awareness and preparedness. Do you know whether that trend has continued?
Paul Huijts: I have the English version of the booklet, which I am happy to leave if you do not have it already, which was distributed in the Netherlands in November and December of last year to every individual household. Of course, there is ongoing research to see whether that message has any success. Although it has been a very short period, the research shows that, before the campaign, 30% of people thought they had made some kind of preparation for a number of days in which their electricity and heating would be cut off, for instance; now, it is 44%, so it seems to be doing something. Some 81% of the population at least kept the booklet, which is not always a given with things that the Government send them.
However, the research also showed that only a little more than 50% really understood what was being asked of them after reading this booklet. Of course, that is an important issue for government campaigns in general. Back in the day, I was Director General of Public Health and had the same problem: how do you reach people who are not easy to reach by Government? In circles such as this, it is always easy to discuss it and you get the message, but you also want to get through to other people for whom this is not easy to absorb.
The booklet is presented in seven different languages. In the next campaigns, there will also be extra municipality actions to bring this to weaker communities where government publications are normally not read or understood. We will have to see how successful that is. It is always difficult.
The Chair: Is that an updated version, or is that a complementary version that will be coming out, did you say?
Paul Huijts: No, it will be the same version. It is too new to already have an updated version. The Government are trying to keep it simple and with a clear message for the general public. The campaign is around the motto, “Think Ahead,” as you translated it. At least twice a year—this year, in June and in the autumn—there will be a new extra campaign to bring it back to people’s attention or to find a new way to draw attention to it because we know that, in any government approach, a one-off does not have the desired effect.
The Chair: Are you succeeding in getting the message to young people? You said it was 44%.
Paul Huijts: I promise you that we will try to get as many statistics as we can, if you are interested, and send them to you after this meeting. However, I believe that it has had more success with the over-50s than under-50s, but I would not dare to quote any figures at this moment.
Q12 Lord Arbuthnot of Edrom: How does this campaign survive the election cycle? Is there an all-party approach to resilience? Does your electoral system help? How would you say it survives the changes of Government that sometimes happen?
Paul Huijts: There is not any legal way to survive an electoral cycle. It is based on the fact that the former Cabinet managed to get quite broad support in Parliament for these actions. Therefore, they survived the change from our former Government to the next Government, but that was voluntary. They could have decided to do away with it, but they did not, in the same way as they took over the defence spending ambitions and our support for Ukraine. These are issues with a broad basis in our Parliament. It is only on the fringes that it is debated, in general. They were pretty sure that this would hold; that is why they dared to present it at the end, when the Cabinet was in fact already in a caretaker position.
Lord Arbuthnot of Edrom: How do you do measure resilience? How do you do that over time? For example, can you tell whether the effect of the invasion of Ukraine has gradually diminished or receded into something that some people might regard as being in the past?
Paul Huijts: I am sure that there are researchers who have tried over the last couple of years and have shown how the general public look at what is happening, as there are permanent researchers in just about anything. Something as big as Ukraine has come up in government research. The effect of this specific campaign will be monitored.
The message of the campaign is very simple, as least as far as it is directed at individual households. It is like a textbook telling you to make sure that you have enough water for your family members for three days. It even spells out how much water an average Dutchman would need every day, so that you can tell. It tells you about a radio that would be handy, run on batteries or solar power instead of electricity because it probably will not be there. It would also be handy to make sure that you know what the emergency channel is that the Government are broadcasting on in your region and put a sticker on this. It is on that simple level, in order not to have people worried and left without any clue what to do.
Of course, that is something completely different from the more in-depth discussions that the Government have with all kinds of vital parts of our economy—whether hospitals, the electricity branch or what have you—because that is much more expert to expert on a technical level. It will take many years to create redundancy. We all know that it is complex and very expensive. The ambition to be more resilient as a society is of course also limited by the funds that you have and the funds that industry has to invest in redundancy.
It is not what you want normally, but in the last couple of years we have already seen many examples of how vulnerable we are, which helps. If you look only at the “Ever Given” container ship, it was stuck for six days and disrupted things in Europe for six months. That is only one practical example. Of course, we all lived through Covid and saw how disruptive that was. In a society such as ours, which thrived on a just-in-time delivery economy, we were completely taken off guard. But it costs money. Every redundancy, every stock is extra money compared with the business model that everyone in western Europe is living on. That discussion is not easy.
The Chair: Ambassador, we are going to turn now to local government.
Q13 Liam Byrne: There is an approach in your country called a “safety region” approach. Can you tell us a little more about that and how you operationalise this excellent prepper’s charter that you appear to have organised?
Paul Huijts: It is good to know that the Netherlands is quite a decentralised country: not in the sense that we do not have a centralised government or that it is federal, but in its mindset. It has always been a country where central government has not arranged just about everything. Our security regions are based on the fact that the mayors of larger cities are responsible for taking care of order and security, as you have here. However, in a severe crisis, there is a region in which the mayor of the biggest city is granted a co-ordinating role and takes charge of a number of those activities because it goes above and beyond the level of individual cities.
We have a whole book that compares what type of crisis we have, how severe it has to be to go to the next level and what the typology is before it is taken out of the hands of an individual mayor and taken to the next level. Then on the national scale, the type of crisis could also lead to the fact that the Cabinet takes a national crisis co-ordination—
Liam Byrne: Does that risk conflict between the centre and the regions?
Paul Huijts: There is always a discussion about who is stepping in and why. It is in our tradition that it is not a given that other layers of government would accept central government stepping in, but if the crisis is big enough and severe enough, it is more easily accepted.
Liam Byrne: Is the centre inspecting or marking regions on whether their readiness is up to scratch?
Paul Huijts: This is in the preparational phase. That is much more a discussion: trying to come to a consensus with regions about what is needed and to stimulate them to do whatever is needed. Yes, on a national level, we will try to monitor that. That is something different from the point at which you would instruct—it is possible—local government and say, “Well, you’re not living up to what we expect from you”.
Liam Byrne: Do regions want money for that, or are they expected to raise the funds for that locally?
Paul Huijts: It is always a debate. If there are tasks that any municipality or province considers an extra task then, in our tradition, the central government who have decided that it should be done are asked to provide for the funds. In my experience, central government will then, first, try to explain why this was always part of the municipality’s tasks. I am sure that this sounds familiar to you.
Liam Byrne: Indeed. Is there a risk that there are particularly socially isolated groups that get left behind in these arrangements?
Paul Huijts: In this approach, that is specifically something that we ask local government to be active in. Central government cannot play a real role in that; you do not know the region as local government does. In the discussions, we ask local government, with all its knowledge of how the city or larger region functions, to see where extra help is needed. That could be the civil centres we have, or special groups that we know are not so easy to reach and to work on. It is considered to be specifically within local government’s capacity and knowledge to work with those groups. That is not to say that it is easier, but it is certain that central government cannot do it.
Baroness Kidron: I am very interested in this point between central and regional responsibilities. Is that for the book and making sure that everybody has understood and that communities are responding to the government messaging, or is it in times of crisis that they kick in? I would like to understand the responsibility.
Paul Huijts: This is based on crisis, which of course always has what is referred to in crisis management as the “cold phase” and the “hot phase”. Of course, all the time that there is no crisis, you work on the preparation and the whole legal structure that makes it possible for central government to step in at a certain point. We did so for Covid but also for other more regional problems where, if there is a terrorist attack or a huge other problem, then central government could step in to say, “We’re taking over”.
However, it is always with divided responsibilities because, at the end of the day, we do not have a simple command structure that goes from the Prime Minister to the policeman on the corner of the street, let alone hospitals and others. There is always an element of trying, even in a crisis, to convince those who are involved to group behind central government in doing this. I have been in central government for many years, and my experience is that, if the problem is big enough, we succeed in doing so, even in a country where people like to listen and then do it their own way.
Q14 The Chair: Let us go back to the measures, Ambassador. I think there are 41 quoted specific measures relating to the guidance on resilience. Are you able to send us an English copy of them, just so we understand what it is that you cover with those? Would that be okay?
Paul Huijts: Yes. I have here what I think you are referring to. It is a policy brief talking about the resilience task. It divides the Government’s actions on societal resilience into a number of pillars, with objectives underneath ranging from the military side to vital sectors of the economy and to the things that we try to do for individual citizens, as I talked about. I have not counted them. They might easily add up to 41, but if this is not what you are looking for, please let me know.
The Chair: That is very kind.
Lord Godson: Apologies, Your Excellency, for being late.
Paul Huijts: I fully understand.
Q15 Lord Godson: Thank you for your patience. I just have a question on threats to societal resilience. At Policy Exchange, I recently had the pleasure of welcoming the Finnish hybrid warfare centre that talked to us about Russian and Belarusian weaponisation of migration attempted against its society. I am wondering, first, whether you are getting any of that weaponisation of migration to increase community tensions in the Netherlands. Secondly, in connection to the broader range of things we have discussed today, is there any UK-Netherlands co-operation in substantive policy and operational terms that you would like to commend to us from your own unique vantage point?
Paul Huijts: With regard to immigration, from time to time we have seen weaponisation of immigration on the borders of the EU. However, by the time people get to the Netherlands, it is a very mixed group from all sides. It is a discussion that is on the table when it comes to Belarus or others, but not so much for the national migration debate, however complex that is in itself.
With regard to co-operation with the UK, an example is that, on all sides of the North Sea, we have become more and more aware over the last couple of years that we have created a high-quality but very vulnerable network of subsea cables. This issue is often on our agenda, and there is the question of who is going to do what. Traditionally, this was not on the agenda of the coastguard or the Navy, but we have seen many examples, and you have too. Of course, for some there was still the discussion of whether this was an accident or a provocation, but we are all aware that this is not theory any more. That is a clear example where we are working in the same arena and working together very well. However, it is difficult and it is still a work in progress because the length of our subsea infrastructure is so impressive that it is not that easy to find a perfect solution to keep an eye on that. That is one we share.
On any policy topic, we compare notes with the UK. It is often one of the countries that we, the Dutch, traditionally work with very easily. I really cannot mention anything in which we do not find willingness on this side, and that is regardless of which Government is in place here on the UK side. It has been going on for as long as we remember, and from our side it is the same. Our Prime Minister was here last week and again stressed the need to work together in any field that you can think of.
The Chair: Just to be clear, which has been the hardest NATO baseline requirement for you to meet?
Paul Huijts: That is a hard question for me to answer. I will have a look at my military adviser to see if he would dare to answer that.
The Chair: Ambassador, perhaps you can just write to me.
Paul Huijts: All right, yes. I am certainly not going to improvise on this one, for sure. If you allow me, I will ask that and tell you which is more difficult for us.
The Chair: Thank you. Ambassador Huijts—I think I pronounced that correctly—thank you very much for giving up your time. Sorry it was interrupted by the bell, but thank you for your forbearance, perseverance and patience. We will write to you with just a couple of queries that perhaps we have mentioned during the course of the session, just for some clarification. For now, thanks very much for giving up your time and bearing witness to this inquiry. That concludes today’s session. Thank you again.