He also suggested people could lose 'access to finance'
During the BBC Question Time leaders special, where the public put questions to the leaders of the UK’s main parties, the Tory leader Rishi Sunak was quizzed about his party’s policy of reintroducing National Service. Under the Tories’ proposals, every young person in the UK would be required to undertake military service or engage in mandatory ‘volunteering’ work.
In the middle of his responses, Sunak said: “It’s really important for people to know the military option is optional, right, no one’s going to be forced to do it. It’s actually going to be very selective.”
The programme’s host – Fiona Bruce – then intervened to ask: “Well the whole thing’s going to be optional isn’t it?”
Sunak then clarified: “National Service will be compulsory – the military option will be something that people chose to do.”
This led to a baffling moment in the broadcast, in which Sunak seemed to suggest that young people would be prohibited from holding driving licenses if they didn’t participate in National Service. That, or they would have their ‘access to finance’ revoked.
Bruce asked Sunak: “If National Service is going to be compulsory, how will you make people do it?”
Sunak responded: “Well you’ll have a set of sanctions and incentives, we’ll look at the models that are existing around Europe, to get the appropriate mix of those. There’s a range of different options that exist. There’s all sorts of things that people do across Europe, whether that’s looking at driving licenses, other access to finance, all sorts of other things.”
Bruce was rightly confused at this stage, asking Sunak: “Access to finance? So, if people don’t want to do National Service, what, you’re going to take their bank cards away? They can’t get a loan?”
Sunak’s response didn’t clarify matters very much. He instead said that he would introduce a ‘Royal Commission’ to look at the different options for forcing people to do National Service.
Perhaps, just perhaps, the Tories haven’t quite thought this one through.
Chris Jarvis is head of strategy and development at Left Foot Forward
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