Last night, in an extraordinary press conference, Prime Minister Boris Johnson promised to do “whatever it takes” to protect Britons during the COVID-19 outbreak, declaring to act like any wartime government. Chancellor Rishi Sunak unveiled a £330billon lifeline for the economy, including loans, mortgage holidays and grants for retailers and pubs, adding he will go further if needed. It comes as more than 10,000 British soldiers, sailors and airmen are poised to be unleashed to help ease the pressure on critical national services and Chair of the Defence Select Committee, Tobias Ellwood, has told Express.co.uk the role he would like to see them play.

He said: “My expertise now comes in at crisis management and contingency planning – what role will the Armed Forces play in backing up departments if the numbers are as bad as they suggest they might be.

“The Army is that insurance policy, they may have to slide across and help in every department, whether that be prisons, the police keeping the law in order, or running mobile hospitals – there’s a plethora of support that will be required.

“The difference between this and helping with flooding is that we are affected by the same challenge that we are actually going out to help.

“At the moment, the ability to test is the Achilles heel.”

The biggest challenge in the Armed Forces will be to curtail the selfishness, the panic

Tobias Ellwood

Mr Ellwood, who served in the Royal Green Jackets, said he would like to see the Armed Forces helping to increase the number of tests nationwide.

He added: “If you’ve got a cough, where do you go? Home – the chances are you haven’t got coronavirus, but that’s the advice we’re taking.

“If you are able to be tested straight away, and prove you haven’t got a cough, then you can continue doing your work.

“We need to get better at testing, that way the key support, five million in essential services, can keep Britain going.

“That’s where the Armed Forces may come in as well.”

But, Mr Ellwood worries that instead, the Armed Forces will be held up in a fight against maintaining public order.

He continued: “Ultimately,  we have two or three months where the nation really will be put to the task – we need to get through that.

“The Treasury has come out with financial support for businesses, the NHS is supporting people, the next piece is actually making sure that making sure, as a society, we can still exist.

“The biggest challenge in the Armed Forces will be to curtail the selfishness, the panic – to keep the nation calm.

“But, what we are seeing now, and it’s important to say this, there is an awful lot of collaboration.”

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Many leading supermarkets have introduced measures to prevent the panic buying seen over the last few weeks.

Some have also opened their doors for a few hours specifically for the elderly, to prevent them from going without.

Mr Ellwood says Britain is constantly learning how to fight COVID-19, thanks to those countries a few weeks ahead in the outbreak.

He added: “Italy, Spain and France – death tolls and number of cases way ahead of ours are sharing their knowledge and what they are doing with the UK.

“We can then adapt and apply it to the UK’s situation, and the scientists themselves can make judgements about how relevant that is and what can be done.

“As we speak now, there are MoD teams in every department, from Energy, to Justice and Health and the Environment making those decisions on how you keep those critical services going.

“They might be going to local authorities and saying ‘you need to stop the grass cutting and focus on waste collection’ because that’s more important.

“So how do you then retrain those people, so if you lose 20, 30, 40 percent of your workforce, you’ve got backup people to do that.

“But that is what our military does really well.”

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